It's 2:08 AM and November just ended. I awoke unexpectedly in the middle of a dream. I don't typically remember my dreams, so it's kind of neat when I wake up in the middle of the night  during an interesting dream. This one started (to my knowledge) as a competition between my best friend and I. I don't know who my best friend is, but  I presume from the way that I treated him, it was my best friend from High School. Apparently, we had this on-going race to complete certain school assignments. As part of the assignment, we needed to go to the library to get something from a particular book. Part of the race, the most important part, was to get to that book first. We must have done this frequently, because as I was racing to the Library (strange as that may be to me in my real life) I was thinking of all the things I needed to accomplish in order to win this competition. When we got to the library we raced to the computers to start searching for the book in question.

    I had some sort of problem searching, or I wanted to get an edge on my friend, so I talked to the Librarian. She told me about some compatibility issues with my computer and the library network, blah blah blah... So I ended up at her house, don't ask me why, it's a dream thing. She continued explaining these network changes and we searched for the book in question, which automatically rang tech support for the Library. We saw this first hand, because the tech support guy for the library lived next door to the librarian. So, I followed the Tech Support guy back to the library, which is where things got really interesting.

    As I was cutting through the school to get to the library, I passed the Auditorium where a number of folks were singing songs and such. As part of the research, I think I was supposed to cross the Auditorium or something like that. But, instead of crossing through, I ended up part of the ensemble cast, singing Christmas Hymns next to Frank Oz, who, by the way does the voice of Yoda, and in years past, Miss Piggy, Fozzy Bear and a host of other memorable Muppets. So, in the middle of the singing, I get his attention and ask if he's Frank Oz. He gives me an annoyed look, which was fair, because I shouldn't have been talking to him while we were performing. As part of this Vaudeville like act we had to move around a lot, so I never had the chance to introduce myself and ask if he knew my Aunt, which he would have known. As I ran about, I woke up.

    OK, so now that I've written it down, it's not the most compelling bit of literature, but it's an oddity for me to remember my dreams. I'm not sure what it means, but I'm quite certain that you won't be able to derive anything from the dream that you couldn't derive from me awake.

    I think that I woke up because I was thirsty. Make that I AM thirsty. That's not typical of me. Perhaps I owe it to the change of seasons. Who knows? I've got a glass of water, a cat on my lap and a keyboard at my fingertips. What else do I need?

    How was everyone's Thanksgiving? Don't all answer at once, you wouldn't want to blow out my screen with your responses. Mine was good. I was very much looking forward to it.  The day didn't start off well though. For the first time in perhaps a month or so, Fritz peed and pooped in the house. In addition to being quite upset with him, I needed to go through the difficulty of cleaning up about a dozen different small stains. *Sigh* The carpet needs to be shot, put out of it's misery. The question remains... how long can I put up with it, before it drives me absolutely nuts.

    *Yawn* Back to bed. Will finish this later...

    Later comes later than most of us imagine. Fortunately, later was only 36 hours, or so. Hmm, where was I? I could elaborate more on Thanksgiving... I'll do that. I had the chance to play football with 4 of my nephews and my youngest niece. Fritz was out with us as well, and he played too. I think he scored 2 touchdowns. We were using a very small ball, and Fritz would bite on the end of it and then run with it. It was a little touch and go because he didn't want to give up the ball, and I didn't want any of my nieces and nephews bitten because Fritz was going after the ball. The ground in my Sister's back yard was littered with leaves, so it made football quite slippery. Every kid took a tumble from time to time, some of which produced tears, mostly of surprise. No one was injured and we got to play pile on whenever the ball stopped long enough to do so. I stayed until Friday and then I brought my brother's two youngest home with me. We went to spaceship McDonalds, but I wouldn't let them play in the enormous play place (Boo! Bad Uncle!!!). We were in a hurry, or at least, I was. I wanted to get back to my brother's house, so we could play X-Box! I brought the X-Box down to my sister's place and the kids had a lot of fun. The adults had more fun, but the kids will grow into it one day.

    The rest of the weekend was pretty much devoted to recovery. I was exhausted from staying up too late, and getting up too early. Sleeping on a futon is fine for a night, but that's only because I don't expect much sleeping when I'm on one. I'm not complaining, it's only a step down from a real bed, the real problem is that I don't have any doors to drown out the noise. I attempted to do some more work in my second bedroom, and after a couple of hours my arms were quite tired and my fingers waterlogged. I was using vinegar and water to remove the remaining glue from the walls and it's quite labor intensive. I'm going to use the Dif next on it to see how that does. I'm not sure which day I'll do that. Perhaps tomorrow, perhaps  the weekend. We'll see.

    I had an optometrist appointment this morning, which I missed because I was in a meeting and couldn't escape. Which was fine actually because all I really needed to do was to talk to my optometrist. I'm really happy with the contacts. I was even able to wear them for 12 hours and it didn't feel like it. My old contacts were bothersome from the beginning. These have been much better. I was going to wear them to church yesterday, and I put one of them in, and then I couldn't find the second one. I looked all around and I couldn't find it. I was quite perplexed by it, and gave up looking and wore the glasses. Later that evening, I found the contact on the floor and it was as hard as a rock. I had never seen a contact lens dry out before. I put it back into the solution last night, and today it looks fine. Strangest thing. I'm not going to wear that pair again, but it was nice to know that all will not be lost if I lose one temporarily. As it turns out, I'll be getting disposable contact lens. They are about $10 a pair, and they last for a month or two. If I'm able to wear them for two months, it will cost me $120 a year. Not too shabby. My original pair cost me $190. Obviously the disposable will be more expensive, because I have to renew them, but I like the idea of having a fresh pair.

    Fritz is on my lap, and wouldn't you know it, I want to get up and change the CD. Hey, what do you know! He heard something suspicious and jumped off. ESP I believe.

    I'm listening to a group called VAST (Visual Audio Sensory Theater), which is really one guy named Jon Crosby. This is his debut album and it came out in 1998. What's strange to me is that I bought this album at least 2 years ago, perhaps more and I didn't listen to it. I bought it, because a friend of mine in Colorado recommended it to me. I paid $6 for it when I was living in Albany and I thought, yuck and put it away. Sometime in the last several weeks I put in the CD player for some reason and now I have a hard time putting it down. Primarily because I'm trying to figure out where he's going with some of his lyrics. When he recorded this album he was only 21 or 22. His second album came out in 2000, which I think I'll pick up soon. The first album is a mixture of gothic, synthesizers, classical and chants with an industrial bent. So, in some ways it's evocative of Nine Inch Nails and it definitely reminds of you Depeche Mode as well. I was reading an interview with Jon Crosby and he mentioned that he grew up listening to U2, Depeche Mode and The Cure. Ding! Me thinks that this guy and I might get along well. Back to the lyrics. A number of songs have a strong Christian overtone / Catholic guilt thing going on. It's hidden beneath the heavy music and sometimes depressing approach to vocals, but it's there if you listen and some of it's quite powerful. I've always been attracted to those bands who struggled between the world and God and were willing to sing about it. Too many bands are unwilling to tackle issues of faith, or lack thereof, except when they come out bashing God. Don't get me wrong, this album is not a Christian album per se. I wouldn't want you to be surprised if you pick it up and discover curse words in one of the songs, and think that I've fallen off of the sanity truck. I would rather deal with the real doubts that people have with God, than the uncomfortable silence when religion is brought up. Come to think of it, it might just be my perception, as I'm not all that comfortable talking about religion unless I know that my audience is. So, maybe it's just me. In any case, I need to wrap this up, so I'll just put the chorus in there. You really have to hear the whole song to get it. The lyrics are not as evocative as the way he sings it. Warning, this music isn't for all tastes.

    This diary entry has taken a long time to complete. I started it back on the 6th of the month. Well, let me say that I began the changes to the diary on the 6th, but have been too busy and have gone through too many bad design decisions before finally settling on this one. Actually the most time was devoted toward redoing the bookmarks and hyperlinks for the calendar that you inevitably went through prior to arriving here. I've wanted to do the calendar for over a year, but I put it off, like so many of the other things on this web site. Please let me know if this makes it harder to read than before. Give yourself a few moments to become acclimated, then fire away if it gives you a headache or any other malady.

    Look up and you'll notice one addition or change that I'll try to keep up with. I've added a title to each of the entries for December. This idea was stolen from my buddy Don whom I've linked to before. He hasn't updated his diary since July, so I'm stealing one of his ideas and putting it into more frequent rotation. The title will be whatever I choose it to be. I can't say that it will necessarily describe the passage, or be a quote from it, but more often than not, it will be. For this span in time,  I can think of a number of winning titles to put upon this one, but alas, I'm going to stick to the first one that I picked back on the 6th of December.

    It's Christmas time and my shopping is 95% complete. I still have to buy a gift for someone among the adults (who can in fact read this diary) So ixne on the resentpe. Man, I can't believe spell checker doesn't allow Pig Latin! I'm also glad that I'm nearly finished. All that's left is the wrapping paper. Speaking of which, I helped wrap presents for complete strangers yesterday. This was a church sponsored event where we went out to the mall and set up a few tables inside Sears and then invited people to our table to have their presents wrapped free. Many people tried to give us donations, but the whole point of this operation was to do something for the community and if they were curious as to what kind of church causes people to wrap presents for complete strangers, we give them an invitation. It was actually a lot more fun than I expected. I was really nervous on the first one. As an experiment, ask someone to watch you while you do anything. It throws you off at first. You get used to it after a little bit of time, but it's still kind of weird. We signed up for 3 weeks worth of this, so I'm going to head back to the mall again next weekend.

    My Office Christmas party is on Friday evening and I'm going solo this year. I asked a friend, but she had other commitments to keep on that date. I also considered asking someone else that I don't know very well, but that I'm already a little fond of. Mercifully, I was spared a possibly embarrassing situation, when I inadvertently bumped into her at a local Target, and after calling her name to get her attention, she turned, smiled, and said with eyebrows furrowed, "You're Tim, right?" I knew then, that the fondness was only one way, so perhaps it wasn't time to get dressed up to the 8's (It's semi-formal, so it doesn't require 9's). Being fond of someone is kind of neat. Being fond, is a little like developing a fancy for someone. Some would even describe it as being interested in someone. The good thing about being fond of, developing a fancy for, or being interested in, is that it's usually a response that is created from ignorance. Well, that may not be true, but it is for me. I don't know her very well, so I'm merely fond of her. I merely have an interest in getting to know if I would in fact fancy her company more often. The upside to fond, is that you haven't really made any investments yet, so you can let go if you need be and fall back to a safer position. I wish I could do that from the very start and then just have my interest flipped on, but I'm too aware of those who attract my attention and it's harder for me to act naturally when I feel wholly unnatural in their presence. Normally, I wouldn't be this specific about a prospective woman, but the Target story just couldn't be kept under wraps. The timing couldn't have been finer and it played out like one of those John Hughes films that I like so much. Of course,  I was initially bruised (my ego was at any rate) but it quickly bounced back as soon as I had a chance to think about it.

    Ahh, It's getting late and I need to publish this thing. But I can't until I explain today's title. The title for today is in honor of a friend of mine who's birthday was on December 5th, but I didn't have her E-mail address. She called me on my birthday and I told her that if she wanted well wishes on her birthday, then she needed to e-mail me. She did not. I talked to a mutual friend of ours who believed that he had the correct e-mail address. I sent an e-mail wishing her a happy birthday and received the message "Undeliverable: Happy Birthday!!!" So, if you are out there and actually have the time to look through the diary, then let it be known that I did in fact attempt to wish you a happy birthday.

    Happy Music. I'm attempting to put on happy music so that I'll be compelled to write. I've been putting this off for a number of reasons. I've been exceedingly busy during this Christmas season and this web site has been close to the bottom in terms of urgency. I do want to get out the diary changes before the new year, but I doubt that I'll have the time over the next two days to get all of the things from my head to the page. I would like to convert the entire diary over to this new format, but it will require me to go through history and put together a nice little calendar for each of the last two years. I don't understand why I feel busier now than when I lived in Albany. Back in Albany I was able to spend hours and hours working on this section and that section for the website. Now, I'm wholly disinterested in much of it. Let me rephrase that. I'm wholly disinterested in the work involved. I'm a bit of a twit when it comes to working on things that I already know how to do. I get bored and want to create new things, the only problem is that sometimes I'm easily discouraged by new things, so I can't win with myself, unless I fight through either of my tendencies. It all sounds very fragile doesn't it? The balance, I mean. It's tricky business to slap labels upon myself as I almost always find a contrary action to dispute the label I've thrown upon myself.

    My eyes are so very tired. I had a  break from the contacts for about a week, and I wore them to work today and by the end of the day I wanted to go to sleep. I've popped the contacts out and switched back to the glasses. My eyes are still tired, but I don't have an overwhelming desire to rub them. I also think I might be coming down with a small cold (hoping it's small and not large) but I'm fighting back with some OJ and some rest this evening, if I can spare it.

    Christmas was good. I think that my presents to my nieces and nephews went well. I believe that I might have made my siblings a bit uncomfortable with my generosity, but I think they will adjust to it. In many ways I'm following the lead of my Uncle Bobby who would seek out extremely cool gifts for us each year and I imagine that they weren't cheap. He didn't get married until later in life, so he would often travel down to Virginia for Christmas. I remember the wonder of it all when I received one of those gifts and I remember it fondly. For once a year to get what your heart desires can't be all that bad, particularly when you are a child and your desires are still somewhat simple. Besides, it's fun to buy off their love. ;-) You gotta know that I'm kidding on that last statement.

    I spent this Christmas with my sister and her family and it was good. I don't get enough opportunities to visit with them and to get to know my nephews on that side. Each time that we get together it's better than the last. As the boys get older, my sister gets a little more sane and the boys are easier and easier to relate to. To recap, my sister has 4 boys under the age of 7. Three of the four boys talk, and the youngest at 15 months is walking about and quite capable of letting you know what he wants. The boy's other uncle bought them sock and bop boxing gloves which are inflatable gloves that allow you to beat on someone without actually hurting them. It was my favorite toy. We had two pairs and we were able to divide them among 3 boys and myself and I allowed them to try to beat up on me. The really fun part for me was that as long as you hit the glove of the boy that were punching, you could punch pretty much as hard as you wanted. Glove on glove, hurts no one and it allows you to burn off some of that testosterone that us males carry around like unspent cash.

    I was able to bring my puppy dog down my sister's house and he did very well there. My sister was surprisingly cool about the amount of freedom that Fritz was enjoying while I was there in their house. I think that having 4 children has helped her to not suffer the small stuff as she might have in the past. Fritz was a hit with the boys. They were initially frightened a bit, but by the time I left they were cautiously approaching Fritz to pet him. My youngest nephew had no fear of Fritz even after Fritz barked at him. My youngest nephew doesn't exactly know how to treat the dog, but he loves him! On a couple of occasions, he must have pulled on something or scratched something that Fritz did not prefer to be pulled or scratched. Because of that, Fritz yelped.

    My neighbors have been out gooding me. I meant to send them a Christmas Card with a little token of my appreciation for all that they have done for me this year, and they turn around and get gifts for the dog, the cat and me! I don't deserve these gifts, I have not made their lives better. We don't really hang out, all the interaction we have revolves around our pets. We don't really have a friendship beyond that. I would like to, but it hasn't really gelled in that way. They have another young couple living with them, so I believe that they are quite content in their social lives and I hate feeling like a 3rd wheel, so it's the way it is. I don't have a problem with it, but they are being too nice. Honestly, I'm thankful for all of their help and I'm touched that thought enough of me to get me something. Mostly, my ego is bruised because I'm not thinking in those terms as often as I should. I should be looking for ways to serve them, regardless of whether or not they have done anything for me. I don't like keeping score, but that's much easier for me to do when I'm winning.

    Speaking of Christmas cards, I'm not getting them out this year. I'm sorry. I bought them too late, and I simply ran out of time. Next year, I promise that I'll send them out. I actually have some decent cards, but I figure it's too late now to write them out and thank people for sending me a card this year. Fritz is barking right now, probably at another dog in the neighborhood. Honey is taking a cat nap on my couch. The presents that my neighbors got for my cat are a hit with my dog. They got this ball that Fritz adores. He loves chasing it around. I'm going to have to buy him a tennis ball. Honey likes batting the ball too, but all too often Fritz has it in his mouth.

    The new year is almost here and it occurs to me that I will be 30 in 2003. I'm disturbed by this fact. On my way up, I never wanted to be dismissed because I was too young to understand. Now I don't want to be dismissed because I'm too old to understand. I know, I shouldn't be disturbed by it, but I am. 30 seemed so old a couple of years ago, even as many of my friends are older than I am. To be honest, I think I'm most worried about whether or not I can attract the younger ladies. Women will hate that I might look toward someone a few years younger than me, but when I was a few years younger, I often dated those who were my age now. So turnabout is fair play. Well, if I don't talk to you again. Have a safe and happy New Year. I think I'll be inside working on some sort of virtual project, with a beer in my hand.