Watt's Up Musings of an original geek

Although I’ve been married many years I typically have let my spouse buy most if not all of the holiday presents. However this year I’ve been taking a more active role. I helped Kathy with Katie’s, did Matthew’s with his help and did Justin’s all by myself. It’s not just the main presents, but I’ve been buying stocking stuffers too. Maybe I’m doing it to get into the holiday spirit. Or maybe it’s just something to do while I’m on vacation to keep busy. But in any case I’ve been enjoying myself. Hopefully my efforts will be worth it. Only time will tell. I hope so.

Well my sweetheart has been putting on holiday parties. So I’ve was assigned jobs and one is putting up the house lighting.

So I’m sitting in my bedroom in Austin, TX, and my oldest son, Justin, phones me on his cell phone. He’s driving in San Francisco, CA half a continent away and asks me if I’m near the computer. I say hold on, put the phone down, walk over to the game room, sit down at the computer, and pick up another phone. Justin asks if I can look up the address on the internet of a restaurant he’s looking for. I “google” his request, find it immediately and tell him the address and phone number. Sheesh, welcome to the modern world of instant communications with quick access to massive amounts of information – unbelievable!

We had a small “just-our-family” Thanksgiving. Katie is now home from college for the holiday. Matthew came in for the day. Justin was enjoying Thanksgiving with friends in California. Matthew and I ran the local 5 mile Turkey Trot together around the University of Texas campus. Afterwards we drove around Austin getting weird pictures for a course project.

While we were out Kathy started turkey and the fixin’s. For us the fixin’s included sausage stuffing, cranberry mold, sweet potatoes, mash potatoes, and corn. We had a late afternoon dinner and then went together to see the movie “Rent” which we enjoyed. Afterwards we had our dessert of homemade apple pie (by yours truely). A nice day.

Another weekend here and gone, another time to fill in… On Saturday I did my long run, went to work and got notification going, saw two movies – Zathura and Pride and Prejudice, cleaned the master bathroom, vacuumed the upstairs, went food shopping, made Sunday night dinner of Swiss Steak, and finally made Oatmeal Raisin cookies (but forgot the flour – oops; yet they’re still tasty).

So what do they look like now. Well here they are. In order from left to right: Matthew, Katie, and Justin. Matching the pictures to the post below, the first is Matthew, then two of Katie and finally Justin. Sweet!

My middle son asked me for some old pictures of him in halloween costumes. So I dug through hundreds of old photos finding what he was looking for. While I was doing this I came across a cute one that I sent to him. Sometimes when the children were young the house would get unusually quiet and we would know that something was going on. In this case he had attacked the toilet paper in the front lavatory. So we got the camera and caught him in the act. Ahhh, it’s those eyes that says “who me” – yeah right. It made me giggle…

Then there some photos of his younger sister only a few weeks old. She was early, lost weight the first few weeks, and she got very scrawny. It worried me greatly.Then a few months later she had filled out. Look at those eyes. They have that diva look. Again it made me giggle…Where have my babies gone. They’ve grown up as wonderful people!

Update: My oldest son (see comments below) sent this to me. It seems that unrolling toilet paper is a hereditary trait, and we just had to catch him in the act. Can you again see the surprise “who me” in the look too.

Each weekday I look forward to the weekend, but when the weekend gets here I have to work at keeping busy and not getting bored. The big thing this weekend was the 10 mile race and I was happy with the results. Other than grocery shopping, I saw two movies: A History of Violence on Saturday and Dreamer on Sunday. The History movie was fine and had the most graphic gun shot wounds which made the audience gasp (is this a change in violence portrayal?). I saw the Dreamer movie with Kathy and it was quite good – an upbeat tear jerker. Now the weekend is over and I’m sad that it’s over, but then again I’m now looking forward to work tomorrow. And so it begins again…

Today was busier that usual. I had the IBM Uptown 10K race today and had to get up at 6AM. Then the race began at 8 AM which took about an hour. Got home, got a shower, and headed out again. This time I went to lunch at Chuys on Barton Springs downtown for a chicken burrito, and then over to Auditorium Shores for the “Lance Thanks Austin” free concert with Sheryl Crow starting at 4 PM.

Deborah Cannon AMERICAN-STATESMANFinished at about 7 PM. Got home at 7:30 PM and realized I had no food for the week so out again to HEB for groceries. Finally I’m home and vegging-out. Whew! I almost feel like one of my children and all that they are doing these days from the free Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festival in Golden Gate Park, to New Orleans vs Buffalo NFL game at the Alamodome in San Antonio.

Sorry for being away for a while. My sweetie pie is away in Maine with her mother and the house is very quiet, but I kind of like it that way for a little while. I don’t know if I’ll be posting very frequently. I’m busy at work and don’t seem to have much to say. Some people have more of a need to stand on their soapbox, but somehow that’s never been my thing.