So, my wife has been making a Christmas gift for our various family members. I'm going to assume that they can't read my Slashdot journal, so I'll tell you -

It's a collection video tape of stuff that our young daughters have done - ya know vacations and such. Watching it has made me muse more about the rate at which children. It's amazing how quickly after having children, you find yourself spouting the aporhisms that your parents said. I've even got the "death look" for when I don't want to say no, but want them to stop what they are doing.

Ah, parenthood.

I've been recovering from a summer cold for the last few days, which sucks. Summer colds are the worst, IMHO, because you can see how nice it is outside, and you think that you should feel as nice - but then you just feel run down and achy. So, I've coughed up roughly 50 gallons of phlegm, but am finally starting to feel good again. Now, if my ears would just stop popping, I'd be back on track.

Yesterday, one of the circuits in my house had a short circuit. I called the electricians, they came out and fixed it. But it was definitely a scary feeling - the last time I had something like that happen, the house then burned down a week later. That was the house that I was living in with Dem Bones - not the one with Nate. Nate burned that one. But not really done. Just kinda surface burns. Anyway, I keep expecting the smoke detectors to go off. *sigh*

And in another sign of sibling resembalance, my brother, who's been hanging out with CowboyNeal lately, exhibits the same behavior I do when in Neal's backyard. Weeding. Ah, that's something from my father definitely. Heh.

So, some folks who are very close to me are going to be going to Marquette, Michigan in the next couple months. Marquette's a very nice town, located in the UP of Michigan. If you've heard the Gordon Lightfoot song "Edmund Fitzgerald" that happened in Lake Superior right off of Marquette. Small town, but very nice.

Anyway, I'm trying to rent a car for them, and called Alamo. I finally got through to a real person, and asked about renting a car in Marquette. There's silence, and she's typing away. Here's our conversation:

"I'm sorry, sir. We don't have a counter in Marquette - our closest counter is Monterey."

"Moneterey? California?"

"Yes, sir."

"Do you realize that's 2500 miles away from Marquette, Michigan? Are you telling me that you don't have a counter in, say, Denver, or Chicago?"

"Would you like to rent from Chicago, sir?"

"No! That's still 800 miles away. You do know that that isn't the closest counter - that's just next on your alphabetical list."

"No, sir, that's our closest counter."

"I guarantee it's not. You realize that the entire American Midwest and West are between there and Moneterey?"

*silence*

*click*

So, yeah, maybe I was an ass. But, c'mon - someone who has that little grasp of geography should be spanked severely. Or something.

So, the last day or so has been trying to make do with having Rakanishu, my Thinkpad T20 laptop, still away being fixed. Evidently, the main system board controller, or somesuch, on the board's power controller went blamo, and it was randomly power cycling itself. You can imagine how much Linux liked that.

While it's been gone, I've been using my old laptop, Hunter, which is a Sony Vaio Z505SX. It's one of those vaios that everybody was getting at one point in time - except people stopped getting them when they started breaking all the time. This machine is now almost two years old, and still seems to be hanging in there, but it's a bit rough. The hard drive has gotten noticeably louder, the keyboard has gotten stickier. So, I'm just waiting for the nice folks in IS to send back my old laptop.

I've started watching the original Dragon Ball series. I've been a fan of Dragon Ball Z, and it's fun to watch the original. The Japanese anime culture is one that amazes me - how many different storylines and such, and different developments exist within this realm. As my wife points out, tho', Dragon Ball, or really most anime, is just sort of watching a soap opera in a different form. I try to point out that Days Of Our Lives does not feature "Solar Flare and Run", but she doesn't see the glory of that.

So, Nate, (oostendo) for Christmas a couple years back, gave me a hardcover book that covers many of the single malt whiskey distilleries in Scotland and Ireland. It's a great little book, with good information about the distilleries, as well as some gorgeous pictures of the west country in Ireland, and Scottish Highlands. Bella, my 4 year old daughter found the book, and loves looking at the pictures.

The other night, during a massive thunderstorm, she got very scared of the thunder and lightning. In between her tears, she kept asking me to get her "The Bible". I brought her the NIV, thinking that would be sufficent. Nuh-uh.

She finally explained which book she meant - yes, you guessed it. My 4 year old's version of the Bible is the Handbook of Single Malt Whiskeys. She happily lasted through the rest of the thunderstorm, looking at the Bible. I'm not sure whether I'm proud or slightly disturbed.

We've moved to Banjo. I keep expecting the 4 Horsemen to ride across the sky.