Wow, it is 2005. Of course, everyone is always amazed as every year passes. In reality, it isn’t all that amazing. We are careening out of control towards 2006 already, so don’t be surprised when that rolls around. I’m warning you now, it is right around the bend.
Bob & Lisa and Joe & Brittany camped out here last night and we all went over to Denny’s for breakfast this morning. We had a good time and hung out at the restaurant for a while but everyone needed to get home so we couldn’t loiter for too long.
We came back to the house and Bob picked up one of our computers to borrow for a little while. He has a stack of video games that he has gotten recently that he hasn’t been able to play because his computer has been too old to be able to handle them. So he is borrowing one of our lease machines that isn’t needed right at the moment.
After everyone took off, Min and I did some house cleaning but really the place wasn’t bad post party at all. I got The Sims 2 installed on Min’s computer and she spent the rest of the day playing that. She really loved the original and the new one seems to be quite a bit nicer. For one thing, it comes on DVD which is a huge bonus since the old one took SO many CD’s to completely install, it was really annoying. And the new one is rendered in 3D as well which is a lot nicer. The game seems like it is a bit bigger and more expansive. Min had only played it for a little while when she determined that this one was quite a bit more complex that the old one. Maxis really has a good strategy with these Sims games since they work so well for releasing expansion packs. In fact, the first expansion pack for The Sims 2 is due out in just a few months. In March, I believe.
A boyscout stopped by today collecting cans and bottles for a fund raiser that they are doing. He was very surprised when we turned out not only to have the bottles that were all over the kitchen but also a 55-gallon garbage bag completely full of bottles ready for him. We had over-filled our returnables container and were planning on making a run to turn them in today but they stopped by just in time. So it worked out really well for them, they probably made as much off of us as they did in half of the village!
I have taken most of this week off from work so today I am doing some to catch back up again. It works out well since Min is playing her video game while I work. She did take a break to cook dinner. Andy took a few hours out of his schedule and assembled the air hockey table that we received from Min’s family for Christmas. It is a really nice one. Right now, we have it up and running in the “basement” room, the one right at the bottom of the stairs between the theatre and the server room. I think that eventually we will get castors for it and will wheel it in and out of the sump area when we want to use it. That way it takes up as little space as possible but is still readily accessible. Andy and I played for about half an hour or so. Miranda is still here and spent the day playing the Simpsons video game that Andy has on his computer.
I am putting in a real effort to have the web site up to date in 2005. That is my New Year’s resolution. That and maybe keep the house a little bit cleaner than we have been. That is always a struggle. We attempt to use way too much of the house as living space and we end up not having any space that is ligitimate storage space and so everything spills into the living space.
My schedule this week includes: Monday working all day in Ithaca. Tuesday I will be in Buffalo at the Microsoft show. On Thursday I will be at the Rochester Microsoft show. I have to work in Perry at some point along the way. Whatever day I work in Perry, I will probably work in Castile as well. Dad and Min are going to the Microsoft show on Thursday with me. I think that Andy is going. And John Stephens is supposed to be going. So it should be quite the party. So it should be a relatively busy week.
I moved all of the December dailies out to the archives today (I left some dupes in here just so people could go back a few days in case they missed anything.) I have to apologize again, the last TWO seasons have been the two slowest seasons of SGL since the first quarter of 2002! I will definitely be doing a much better job of keeping up this season. I guarantee. In fact, I think that I may have already written more today than I did in the last quarter of 2004.
Andy and Miranda went down to the theatre tonight to watch some of the third and final season of the original Star Trek. Andy has finally completed his collection and has been working through them at a rate of about two episodes a night. He is really dedicated. I can’t really stay awake even through a single episode. They really are SO much more boring than I remember them being. I think that it might be better for me to just remember them fondly and not to watch them ever again because the more I see of them, the more that it gets ruined for me. I haven’t really seen the original series, more than one of two episodes, since I was very young.
I worked until pretty late. Min was so into her video game that she didn’t even notice so I figured that it was a good chance to get some work done.