New Year's Day

I tried to drum up some excitement, but our lives just don't revolve around these kinds of milestones anymore. My next waypoint is next Tuesday, when we go back out on the road. The whole New Year's thing is just something that happened while we were home.

Mara and I spent New Year's Eve playing games online; her on Everquest II and me on Star Wars Galaxies. It struck me as sad at one point that I was in-game, watching virtual fireworks in the city of Theed on Naboo (in Star Wars), and completely missed the real thing. Oh, well. On one funny note, Mara mentioned to some online that she had a chance to go out and party with her friends, and I told her that she had partied with her friends (online).

Well, there are no resolutions. Well, I intend to lose weight this year, but that was pending before the holiday and is not a New Year's Resolution. I've reached 350 pounds. If I don't do something, I'm going to wind up on Montel Williams. So Mara and I are both going to get back on Atkins (the only thing that works on the road). Other than that, we just plan to work on the house, and I plan to buy some recording equpment (that perrenial favorite).

I didn't talk much about anything through Christmas. That struck me as strange, after the fact. For the most part we just enjoyed being home. We bought Mama a nice embroidery type sewing machine. Mara got a nice jacket from Mama that she's been wanting, and from me an iPod mini, a ring (Galadriel's ring from LOTR) and the first season of Farscape (my wife is a geek). For my part, Mama bought me a Behringer V-amp 2 and a Bass V-amp (she doesn't understand what these are, exactly, but they'll really come in handy), plus some really cool clothes. Mara bought me an 40-gig Apple iPod.

Long story short, we had a pretty good Christmas. We bought an artifical, pre-lit tree this year, because we just didn't have time or energy to round up a real one. Plus, Mama has a hard time tending to a real tree. It was a good decision (on Mara's part). It was a beautiful tree. I normally hate artifical trees, because they look so tacky and cheap. But this one reminds me of the tree we had when I was a kid. It looks real, and it's beautiful.

Well, there's nothing else to report. We only worked half of a week this week, because our customers just weren't running. So we got in yesterday. But next Tuesday it's back to the usual grind, and God only knows when we'll see another week off. But for today, life is good and I'm not driving.