Ahhh Christmas
I really do love Christmas. While I’m really a religious person, I just love the whole idea of being able to do things for my friends and family. As a result, it takes me a little bit longer to get up to speed, but by the time the 25th rolls around I’m quite ready for it. This year I got to play Santa a lot. As I was shopping around for my family I’d keep an eye out for things for friends and ended up getting stuff for many people. It was great fun.

Today’s been very mellow so far. Since it is just my parents and me things have been fairly quiet. We went through our stockings and then opened up presents. The big hilite for me this year was the Twin Peaks First Season DVD set. My parents also got me a nice hardcover version of the Lord of the Rings trilogy. I had an old old old paperback box set of the Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, but the box was long gone, the books have been through many many a move and were missing pages, so this was a great gift. AND, after seeing the movie I wanted to start re-reading the series.

The my mom’s friend Ellen Carey came by and joined us for a yummy breakfast of Eggs Benedict. So now it’s time to relax until we head over to my cousin’s for dinner, and then I’ll be on my way back to Boston tonight. All in all things worked out pretty well.

Once again, hope everyone’s holidays were great!

Merry Christmas!
Merry Christmas to all my friends out there everywhere. I hope all your holidays are good ones. Now it’s time to start getting ready for the New Year. (Does this mean I need to start thinking of resolutions for the new year already?)

Book Report: naked by david sedaris
I’d heard a lot of David Sedaris’ stuff on This American Life on NPR. Some of them even are in this book. I really enjoy the way he tells a story, This book has quite a few. He has a way of talking about topics that might normally be depressing in a way that makes you laugh about it (many times a bit nervously).

I definitely would recommend it. As I mentioned earlier in the weekend I really enjoyed how I can hear his voice telling these stories. If you can find a copy of this on tape I bet it owuld be quite good. I’ve listened to his latest book ‘Me Talk Pretty One Day’ and it was really good.

The downside to system updates
So after doing a bit of research i discovered that in fact, those brand new Zio! drivers I downloaded last week do not work with OS X 10.1.2.

I wish I had known this before I had gone and upgraded all the systems I use. I figure it is because it looks like apple upgraded their USB support with this rev, but it still annoys the crap out of me. I’m going to have to try and install drivers in classic and download some pictures there.

The good and the bad
The Good: Lord of the Rings was stunning. I was just speachless as I left the theatre. I was very skeptical of this movie when I heard it was being made. There have just been too many good stories ruined by Hollywood. But as the reviews started coming in, I was finding myself getting more and more excited for it. I wasn’t let down in the least. It also got me thinking of a number of other series of books that I always thought couldn’t be made into movies. There’s a heck of a lot of potential out there.

The Bad: My damn smartmedia reader stopped working. The card still works in the camera, but when I plug it into the reader hooked to the computer it didn’t show up. I’m pretty sure that it is the reader because I tried it in both my parent’s computer and mine. As a result, no picture for today. I’m going to try and pick up a replacement one tomorrow because I want to be able to post pictures on Christmas day.

LotR
Well, I’m off to check this out. My parents tell me the new theatre down the street from them is pretty great.

Relaxing
My parents had some pictures from snapfish.com show up as available to view online today. This one is from Thanksgiving and is me sitting with my nephew, Cameron. This was one of those rare quiet moments where he was watching Scooby Doo with me. He loves Scooby Doo. It’s fun watching it with him. It’s amazing the power of television on kids though. If something like Scooby Doo is on and he walks past the TV set he’s stuck. He’ll just stand there staring at it. (He wasn’t real thrilled with the cooking channel though, that bored him and he wandered off to play with legos).

More OS X geeking
So I am down at my parent’s place and they have this swanky new G4 running OS X. I realized that I could make an account on the machine for myself and now I have my own environment on their machine that I can play with as I like. I always hated the idea of having to share bookmarks and things like that because it just gets so cluttered. I have to say it works amazingly, better then I would have expected. I can have my own setup of Entourage, all my own settings for the desktop (I like things at a higher resolution then my parents :)). It rules.

Ugh
The other day a friend of mine from online had a heart attack. He seems to be recovering fairly well, though is still having some problems remembering things. The whole thing has kind of re-freaked me out a little bit. I have this kind of feeling that people my age should have to be having these major medical issues. Last year a friend of mine went into this hospital suddenly for a blood clot in his brain, my lungs are all broken and I’m waiting for new ones. It seems like having friends go into the hospital used to be a rarity for me. In fact, I know it was. I’m just not real sure how to deal with it.

Anyways, my thoughts go out to Turner, who needs to doodah doodah again soon.

Childhood
My mom was going through some of her old stuff and found a mother’s day card that I made in school one year. It’s great. The front is colored in crayon and has some flowers on it and on the inside is stapled a piece of that three lined paper with the following written on it:

A mother is someone who
Buys food
loves you
Takes you to the movies
helps you plant your garden
Teaches you things
cleans the house
makes the bed
paints the house
love Gregory