BeMused

No, I didn’t decide to celebrate CSS Naked Day early. Nor did I break anything. For a change.

Nope, I decided I’ve had it with my whining and bitching about creating my own theme/layout for wordpress. So, as part of my New Year’s resolutions, I’ve decided to strip the site pretty much completely, and then start building it back up, bit by bit. First to figure out a layout I’m OK with, then start adding stuff back in.

And, knowing me, it might take me all of 2008.

A rather scary thing happened to Gail and I yesterday.

We decided to take the dog for a walk and went our normal route. Part of that route is along Algonquin Parkway, which is a four-lane rode divided by a wide grassy median. There’s a bike/jogging path that we walk along that is up a slight incline from the road. Gail and I were walking quietly on the side of the road going against traffic, when we heard a terrific squeal of several cars’ brakes from behind us.

We flipped around and witnessed a car that had been traveling in the far lane swerve crazily across the road, into the median and crash through a road sign. The car then came into the on-coming lane (the one we were walking along side) , shot straight across it causing cars to swerve and brake, and then jumped up onto the bike path we were walking on, crashing head-first into a tree. The spot the car stopped at was the spot we’d been not 15 seconds before.

I handed the dog’s leash to Gail and sprinted to car. When I got around to the driver’s door, a lady about my age was struggling to get out. I shoved the door open (it was crimped fairly tight as a result of the crash) and helped her out, walking her a bit of ways away from the car and sitting her down on the bike path. She had a dazed, far-off look in her eyes, and kept asking if she’d hit anyone. A gentleman came up who’d witnessed the crash and identified himself as an EMT. He started asking questions and I left her in his care.

Several people were stopped along the road or had come from their houses by now and calls had been made to 911. The lady was asking for her purse so I got back into the car and retrieved it. The nitrous smell from the airbag was strong, and I found her purse on the floor. After giving it to her, I went back and turned the ignition off. The car itself was steaming quietly, the front end completely mangled.

Seeing as how it was under control, and she was in no immediate danger, I went back to Gail. The poor dog was shaking and howling. She quieted down once I got back, and we continued our walk.

If we’d left the house just 15 seconds later, things might have been drastically different this Christmas morning. Many small prayers of thanks were said, I think, between both of us as we finished our walk in silence.

Merry Christmas everyone. I hope everyone has a wonderful and safe holiday.

Yeah, changed the theme again - one of these days I’ll get around to creating my own. In the meantime, I’m sticking with the three-column layout. It’s grown on me.

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Tonight is opening night for our reading of “A Christmas Carol” - “our” being Sarah and myself. She’s playing the part of Tiny Tim, and is very cute doing it. It’s an interesting adaptation, and I hope I get invited back next year to do the full production.

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I have a birthday sneaking up on me here, on Sunday to be exact. I’ll be all of 38, which sounds so grown up and mature, but I still don’t know what I want to be when I grow up, so go figure. Speaking of, anyone want to buy me this? No? I’ll settle for this. Hrm, still no takers? Guess this is out then…

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Had a parent/teacher conference with Cody’s math teacher yesterday. Kid is failing math, not because he doesn’t know the material, and not because he’s not paying attention. It’s because he’s lazy and doesn’t want to do his homework and lies to us about having done it. My past is coming back to haunt me. I did the same damn thing. His teacher even said that when called on, he knows the problem. But because he doesn’t do the homework, he doesn’t do as well as he could on the tests. Turkey.

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After Christmas, I’m going to go out and buy a new hard drive and install linux on it and start messing with that again. Once I get Gail her iMac, I’ll take over her laptop and install something other than Vista on that. Vista out of my house would be a wonderful thing.

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Dicewars Cheats.

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If Slack doesn’t fix his white border problem, I swear to god I’m hacking into his site and fixing it myself.

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If I don’t see you or post again before Christmas, I want to wish everyone the very best holiday possible. Make it more of family, peace and love than “look what I got!”. Merry Christmas everyone.

I hate this time of the year.

No, not because the retailers are shoving all their sales items and non-sales items down my throat every time I turn on the TV or Radio. It’s not because I’m sick unto death of all the Christmas carols. Truthfully, I’ve managed to avoid a lot of them. And it’s not because the commercialization of Christmas has overshadowed the spirit of Christmas. I’ve actually seen quite a few people smiling, being polite and in general, just being nicer.

Nope, I hate this time of year because in their desire to be generous and giving this holiday season, my co-workers all feel the need to share their cookies with me. Everyone of my co-workers. All 632 of my co-workers. They all have cookies! And they’re GOOD cookies. Chocolate chip. The peanut butter cookies with the big Hershey’s Kiss on them. Sugar cookies in festive shapes of season (I derive a sadistic sort of pleasure from biting Rudolph’s head off). Butterscotch Snaps. Peppermint. Cookies with icing, cookies with M&Ms, even oatmeal raisin, which I don’t like. If you’re going to send me cookies, don’t send oatmeal raisin.

Lord do I feel fat. I really need to get out and exercise. Walk the dog, walk the mall (akin to committing suicide this time of year, I know), maybe go to the rec center and play some raquetball or something. I need exercise!

Whoa, wait. Was that a tray of chocolate meringue cookies that just went by?

Can

Most Terrifying Video You’ll Ever See.

I’m looking at the world today and I’m thinking, “Is the world insane? Is everybody just eff-ing crazy?”

It’s kind of unnerving.

Somedays, Windows Vista just irks me to no end.

 Guess I’ll check back tomorrow…