So, I’m back at work today. It’s the second of January and the rest of the country has the day off. What’s most unpleasant about it is that all the college football that I thought was scheduled for 1/1/06 didn’t happen. They moved it to Monday to make room for the NFL, which has dibs on Sunday.

*sigh*

So I’m back in the office. It is very quiet. The time off was nice. We didn’t do much. I took Lucas Arts up on their offer of 10 days free on “Star Wars: Galaxies”. It is one of these massively multiplayer online games set in the star wars universe (as opposed to a fantasy-genre or a super hero genre like “City of Heroes”). Me and Ben played it off an on over the last couple of days to get a feel for it. It seems similar to Anarchy Online, which I didn’t play for long. Galaxies feels more complete and more thoroughly done. I enjoyed the little quests more. But I don’t think I liked it enough to spend $15 per month on it. What is that? Fifty cents a day? Hmm… maybe I would get $0.50 a day out of it for a couple of months, but probably not. Ben really likes it too so it wouldn’t be just me playing it. Naturally there’s a lot of reading in it and Ben is the only one who’s reading is advanced enough that he can play the game. He and Gabriel have been playing Runescape for quite a while and we’ve been paying the $5 a month for that. Maybe we’ll trade in his Runescape subscription for a Galaxies subscription.

My cough continues. I saw the doctor again last week. Actually it was a nurse practitioner, but she’s been very thorough in the past. In fact, she would like to rule out “Whooping Cough” as the source of my problem. So I donated some blood for testing. She also was concerned about the fluid in my left lung and asked for an x-ray. Then she gave me a broad spectrum anti-biotic because the erythromycin had been ineffective against the bug. She told me to call back on Wednesday to see what the results of the tests were. I’ve been on the new antibiotics for 3 days and don’t feel appreciably better. I am doing better today than a month ago, but I’m not as “better” as I would have expected.

The weather hasn’t been great but I’ve still taken Peterman for a lot of walks around town. He’s been a good companion for that – nobody else seems interested in going for walks. I guess that’s to be expected, though. The boys now have things that they would rather do than go for walks with their old man. Grace and Chloe are still interested even in running errands with me, but I have to confess that they require a level of effort the boys do not. It is just due to their age. When they get a little older they’ll be easier – and then they won’t want to go; just like the boys.

On the other hand I don’t let the boys stay home when I’m in the mood for company. On Friday I took them with me the Melrose Oriental Rug shop so we could drop off a carpet for cleaning, then to the hospital where I got an x-ray of my chest. Finally they got haircuts. I still make them come with me on errands. I don’t want them spending all their time on the computer/playstation. It snowed on Saturday night and on Sunday morning Grace needed someone to play in the snow with her. Since Ben had spent a couple of hours on the computer already and hadn’t seen daylight yet, I sent him outside to play with Grace for a while. He quickly acquiesced and didn’t argue. They spent about 45 minutes out there. I was quite pleased!

What did we do for New Years’ Eve? Nada. Get this: The TVLand channel (which only programs antique television shows) had four hours of “100 most unexpected moments in TV”. We watched all four hours. Honestly, it was ok – most of the moments really were unexpected and some were really funny. But it was just me and Liz and it was hardly a party. At midnight we toasted the new year with a glass of champagne and a kiss and shortly thereafter called it a night.

Parris, a friend of the family had dropped off a party-in-a-box for us. There were hats and horns and streamers. There were sparkly paper plates that said “Happy New Year 2006” etc. We ate our New Years Indian food off of them. The next morning I put a plate of lamb korma kashmiri in the microwave on one of these plates and started helping Ben with something while it warmed. Gabriel shrieked “FIRE!! THERE’S FIRE!!”. I assumed he meant that there was some arc-ing. Nope! There were flames all over my breakfast and the paper plate had caught fire in a spectacular fashion! It was small enough that I was able to blow out the flames, though. No damage was done or anything, but what a shocker!! I guess the sparkly flecks were metal and must have arc-ed within the plate and caught it on fire. Holy cow. Gabe saved the day!

Although the weather has been cold I’ve been getting anxious to get back on my bike. I know I have virtually the whole winter left to go, but I’m thinking I may round up some cold weather clothes and see if I can tolerate the cold weather on a bike. Due to The Cough (I’ve come to know the cough so well, that I felt I should capitalize it as a proper noun) I’ve been unable to get out for any exertion or exercise for months now and its starting to get on my nerves. Don’t get me wrong: loafing has its place and its merit, but I need a change of pace from sitting on my ass.

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