Super Ginormous

Category: Personal

Posts of a more personal nature.

  • Tag, I’m it.

    Another day, another meme. Thanks for the tag, Jesse.

    Christmas MEME

    1. Egg Nog or Hot Chocolate?
    Hot Chocolate, with marshmallows.
    2. Does Santa wrap presents or just set them under the tree?
    Both. It depends on the gift :)
    3. Colored Light on Tree/House or White?
    White.
    4. Do you hang mistletoe?
    Nope.
    5. When do you put your decorations up?
    Early December is when I start. I eventually hope to finish putting them up/out sometime around Christmas.
    6. What is your favorite holiday dish (excluding dessert)?
    Deviled eggs.
    7. Favorite holiday memory as a child?
    Getting buttloads of Ninja Turtles from Santa. Me and my brothers were in heaven that morning.
    8. When and how did you learn the truth about Santa?
    Can’t pinpoint an exact time. I think I sort of knew the truth at some point, but it’s the idea of Santa that’s more important than whether he’s real or not.
    9. Do you open a gift on Christmas Eve?
    Yes. An unfortunate necessity when you try to spend Christmas with both sides of your family.
    10. How do you decorate your Christmas tree?
    Randomly. :)
    11. Snow. Love it or dread it?
    LOVE IT. Miss it. :(
    12. Can you ice skate?
    Umm, not really. But I can fall especially well.
    13. Do you remember your favorite gift?
    Hmm, it’s hard to pick a single thing…. but I’d probably say my iPod is one of my faves.
    14. What’s the most important thing about Christmas to you?
    Being with family; celebrating the birth of Christ.
    15. What is your favorite holiday dessert?
    Cheesecake. I know it’s not strictly a holiday dessert. I just only tend to eat it during the holidays.
    16. What is your favorite holiday tradition?
    Watching A Christmas Story over and over again.
    17. What tops your tree?
    An angel, because my wife says so. :P If it were up to me, we’d have an iPod on top, or something.
    18. Which do you prefer, giving or receiving?
    Giving. Though, receiving ain’t half bad.
    19. What is your favorite Christmas song?
    Hmm… Christmas in Hollis, by Run DMC? :)
    20. Candy Canes. Yuck or Yum?
    Meh. I’ve got to be in the mood for em.

    I’m tagging:

  • Change is afoot

    I’m going to begin the process of migrating the site over to Sandbox in a couple of days. Right now, I’m using something loosely based on Qwilm!, but I want something a little more standardized, with better semantic markup as the basis for my site.

  • Thirsty

    Full Throttle Family

    Lately I’ve been on an energy drink kick. If I had to choose a favorite, I’d probably say Full Throttle and its’ two other flavors, Blue Demon and Fury, would be it. (Sonic’s Full Throttle Fury Slush is awesome, BTW.) But I digress, that’s not really what I wanted to post about.

    At home, I drink a concoction that could be described as “Mud”, “Dirty Water”, “Dirty Toilet Water”, etc. It looks disgusting. Because the color of the beverage is a very – umm – odd-looking shade of brown. What is this odd concoction? It’s 50% Orange Juice, 50% Pepsi (or a cola of your choice). I’m not quite sure when or where I picked up the idea for this drink, but I love it. My wife, on the other hand, nearly gags everytime she sees me drink it. (And she didn’t appreciate how much Tyler seemed to like it either.) I’ll try to post a picture of it later. If I had thought about it, I would have snapped one last night while I was drinking it…

    I suppose it goes back to when I was a kid, when me and my brothers would mix “Suicides” together at fast food places. In Germany, we called them Mezzo Mixes, because Fanta actually had a soda out that was a combination of several soda flavors called a Mezzo Mix. Depending on my mood, I’ll mix most sodas together… Orange Fanta, Coke, and Sprite is a personal favorite, with Fruit Punch and Coke a close second. Funny thing is, the last time I ate at a Burger King I noticed something odd at their beverage counter… They have drink recipes decals on the soda dispensers! Mix 1 part X with 1 part Y and it makes Z. And here I thought I was the only sicko that enjoyed mixing it up a bit.

    What kind of weird drinks do you like?

    Speaking of beverages – check this out.

  • Thankful

    It’s Thanksgiving Day here in the U.S., and there’s lots to be thankful for. Here’s what I’m thankful for this year:

    • I’m thankful for each day I’ve been given and every day I’ve yet to have.
    • I’m thankful for my friends and family.
    • I’m thankful for my wife – who continually puts up with me, when no human being should.
    • I’m thankful for my job, and the wonderful group of guys I get to work with each day.
    • I’m thankful for my son, who has made this year – the best year ever.
    • I’m thankful for that which I have, because I know it could be taken away in a second.
    • I’m thankful for …

    Well I could go on, but what are you thankful for? Hope you all have a wonderful holiday with your friends and family this year.

  • Happy Halloween

    It’s my job to hand out candy tonight, while Kim brings Tyler over to see her family. I volunteered to be on candy duty. So, here I am sitting on my front porch, laptop in hand, seasonal music playing… and I’m waiting. We’ve had a few children come by, but not many at all. I blame the poor turn-out thusfar on a couple of things…

    1. We’re a new section of the neighborhood. Many people might not know where we live.
    2. Our street is poorly lit.
    3. It’s still early.

    Perhaps I am over-reacting a bit, who knows?

    Regardless… Halloween used to be one of my favorite holidays. This was partly due to my dad’s extreme dislike of it. Growing up in the Bronx, he had heard more than enough horror stories about sicko’s giving kids needles, bad candy, and the like. So his distrust of Halloween was understandable – at least now, anyways. As a kid I didn’t understand that he was just trying to protect me and my brothers.

    The times I went trick-or-treating were great though… I remember when I was around 10 or 11 and me and my friend Tory Richardson went around the neighborhood we lived in in Karlsruhe, Germany and amassed an amazing amount of candy. We went from door to door like mad men. I swear we both filled up around three pillow cases each filled to the brim with candy. Man, I miss those days.

    Nowadays, kids can’t really go off and do that sort of thing. You never know who is out there, or what ulterior motives they might have. I worry for the day when Tyler asks to go off on his own and Kim and I will have to make a decision regarding whether we’ll let him or not.

    I know that day will come soon enough. Until then, I’ll be happy to just hang out here, on my front porch, passing out candy.

  • Quick Update

    My internet and phone service has been down at home since Friday afternoon. BellSouth has been soooooo very helpful. (Yeah, right.) I called on Friday night, and they told me the issue should be resolved by Monday. I’m not the only one who’s been affected either. At least one of my neighbors was without phone and internet service as of yesterday evening, and who knows how many others have been out of service so far.Hopefully the issue will be fixed when I get home today.

    • 09.18.06 @ 2128 – UPDATE: No dialtone still. But guess what does work all of a sudden? My DSL connection.
    • 09.20.06 @ 0710 – UPDATE: Still no home phone service. This is getting ridiculous. Worst part about it? My internet works. I spoke with my neighbor and their service has worked since Saturday. I think I’ve been more than patient with BellSouth up until this point… I am not happy.
    • 09.21.06 @ 1245 – UPDATE: Phone service finally was restored yesterday. Ridiculous.

     

  • Five Years Later

    Has it really been five years? Where has the time gone?I wrote these thoughts last year, and rather than rehash things I figured I’d just direct readers to the older post… Remembering 9/11

  • One Month Down

    Saturday marked the end of our first month in our new home. We’re not completely settled in yet, but we’re getting there. I wish I could say it’s been completely stress-free, but it hasn’t been. Our house turned out great, but I’ve struggled with dealing with the contractors working on our street. We’ve had several contractors use our backyard as a cut-through. Some even ran over our sprinkler heads (which prompted me to put string up around my yard to keep them out).
    Over the past few weeks, we’ve had several neighbors move in on the street. We haven’t met them all, but we’re glad to see traffic on the street other than contractors. So far, it’s a pretty good mix of people. uite a few couples are around Kim and my age. A number of them have children.

    The thing I’m most excited about though, is being closer to friends and family. Scott and I have already started talking about “Lost” parties in the fall when Season 3 of Lost starts up. I can’t wait.

  • Fear

    We all fear something, be it death, snakes, spiders, etc. My fear is public speaking. As Franklin Delano Roosevelt once said, though, “the only thing to fear is fear itself.”
    I conquered my fear by giving a presentation at the Georgia Educational Advancement Council Summer Conference at Augusta State University this past Friday. I’m still amazed I agreed to speak at the engagement with so little time to prepare, but given the topic – New Media 101 (Blogs, Wikis, Chatrooms, and more) – I felt like I could handle it. In attendance at my workshop were 40-50 University System of Georgia employees from institutions all over the state. I had no idea what their depth of knowledge would be, no idea what the format of the discussion would be… I just showed up to do my best. A few minutes in, it was pretty evident that there would be a consistent back and forth between what I was presenting and questions from the attendees. This worked out perfectly.

    I was worried going in about doing well, mis-speaking, getting something factually wrong, etc. – but in the end, I did okay. I built all of these “worse case scenarioes” up in my mind trying to defeat myself before I even got started. As my boss told me before going into this… “You’re the expert here. You know this stuff. You’re going to do alright.” And he was right.

    I survived the presentation, got over my fears of speaking in public, and sent people on their way equipped with the knowledge I shared in my presentation. Thank God. :)

  • 10 Years

    I knew today was “important” somehow. I graduated from Denbigh High School ten years ago today. On June 16, 1996, we were holding commencement exercises at the Hampton Coliseum in Hampton, Virginia. If you had asked me then what I’d be doing now, I probably would have told you “working for the United Nations”. I was young and idealistic and fresh off a number of Model United Nations conferences. I didn’t know any better back then ;)

    A reunion has been planned for August 11-13, with activities scheduled all weekend long. On Friday night there will be a Meet and Greet at Jillians at Waterside. On Saturday afternoon there will be a cookout at Newport News Park. On Saturday evening there will be an Adults-Only party at the American Legion Post in Denbigh. To close out the weekend, those who’d like to can meet to attend church services together, and meet for brunch afterwards.

    If you’d like more information on the reunion activities, visit the Denbigh High School Class of 1996 Yahoo! Group.