Hello good times, here I am. . .

welcome home your baby lamb!
Open wide them' golden doors and set my chair down next to yours!

Nothing is more frustrating than doing things that should be garaunteed to make you happy, but don't. I had tried everything. . . lots of sleep (try fifteen hours at a clip), lots of food, lots of do-nothing but cross-stitch or read "Black Hawk Down" time--and still I felt like total crap. I wasn't even excited by the prospect of shopping AND a muppets christmas special on Friday. And as you may have noticed, it frustrated the hell out of me.

I guess the rest of me came back from vacation, or else perhaps getting back to taking a vitamin with dinner did wonders. . . . what I mean to say is. . . WOOO!! Or rather, sort of woo. No need to get manic after being depressive ;)

Today was the big moving day for my Aunt Sylvia, who is leaving Chicago for Florida. To empty out the house, she was sending a truckload of stuff to the house, including a 60" projection screen TV. Holy shit, I have NEVER seen such a big TV. But it is important to mention that all the kids had to be over at the house at 8AM to "help out"--I'm sure you can imagine how thrilled we all were to be up at 7:30AM on a holiday break. When we got there, Grandpa was frantic, but the movers had everything under control. After they left, we fell upon the boxes like they were spoils of war. Found all sorts of good stuff, like. .A FAX MACHINE in a dresser drawer, Motorola stock in a coat pocket, and of course the massive 6-speaker surround sound system that came with the TV.

"If one of these speakers blows, we'll have to sell the car to replace it" said Dad. Apparently these were a very expensive brand of speakers from Switzerland or something--the kind of thing someone who has plenty of money to blow buys. This is how the other half lives--just giving away a set of speakers that probably cost more than our car, several times over. Grandpa was VERY excited, and so am I. .. I can't wait to hear how they sound (I'm a speaker buff, and it is one of my goals in life to own surround-sound speakers).

I got to sit down with Grandpa and apologize for forgetting to tell him I got engaged. He doesn't have e-mail, and I am an airhead at times. Blame it on whichever side of the family you like. Talking to grandpa is like swimming through a sea of miscellaneous information to reach various islands of pertinent information. We started talking about Dave, and careers, and from there he began talking about his education in the Air force during WWII and then all the different folks in his squad, and then about guys who didn't care for their athlete's foot and left trails of bloody footprints all over the barracks, and then to the fact that all rich guys and black guys in his squad had syphillus. And that is just one, very abridged version of a typical conversation with Grandpa. He also tells me I'll graduate from Stanford and be asked to join the White House staff, and I'll be running for Vice President in a couple years.

Well, it's good that he let me know :)

Ok, off to play house with all the family gone! and maybe make dinner!