Good Wayne

Slag

I've been all out of sorts since the Forum Fiasco two weeks ago. With it finally back, I feel like I've found my old, warm fuzzy sweater. I put a whole new site under puncducs.com, but it's still a work in progress, so there's not a lot there right now. And for now, the movement is glacial - but I think I'll probably put all my Lego stuff over there (not that there's a lot here).

===

We did a big Christmas shopping on Saturday. My mom came down to watch TheBoy because he's only good for about an hour when we go out. So we took advantage of the time and we're out for about 8 hours at the mall and the big stores around. It was probably only slightly more crowded than a normal Saturday, so I'd say we hit it just right.

We hit every store, I think. Besides the mall (where we were in Filines about eighty times) we hit all the big chains of Consumer Whorism. I actually like the set up down in Attleboro because the main road is only 2 lanes of traffic, but the bigger stores are in plazas that all have roads running around them. So you're only fighting traffic that's coming or going to about six or seven stores in that plaza.

The most running around we did was for DDR2 for Kelly. We wanted to get her the pack with the dance pad which we saw first at Target. But I'd rather get it at Best Buy to get my Reward points. Only they didn't have it. Then a trip to Circuit City showed they didn't have it either and we started to get panicky that if we didn't zip back to Target now, we would be out of luck.

But we're done with about 85% of our shopping. Which is awesome. Both of us were totally wiped by the end of the day. My calves are still achy. And we're doing that thing this year where we just buy the stuff we want (with the budget) and give it to the other to wrap. I'm too stressed to actually do much shopping for her anyway - and the Viking Lego sets are out and I don't want to miss them. :D

===

I'm back on the No-Red-Meat Wagon. It was about this time last year (actually I think it was January of this year) that I decided to try eating meat again. Frankly, I'm underwhelmed. Tine does make some great dishes, her goulash is freaking awesome. But I just can't shake the feeling that it's killing me. And that I somehow abandoned my principles after 15 years, whatever that might mean.

So I did it rather abruptly last week and that's caused some tension between us. She's mellowed out somewhat, but I know she's disappointed, but I can't really help it. I will miss that goulash though.

===

We finally broke down and bought another DVD player for the sunroom. The one I had in there was just not dealing with the Netflix DVDs very well. They come all scuffed up, but it's nothing terrible. Unless you're trying to use a player from early 1999. It just doesn't have the error-correction to handle them. It was a nice, bleeding-edge DVD player back in the day (because it cost a bundle) but its day has come and gone.

I think we got the new one for $50 at BJs. Not only does it handle the discs well, it has progressive scanning so now the movies fill the whole 55" screen on the sunroom tv. Freakin' Awesome. Now if I can just figure out why the surround sound isn't working correctly (another old tech).

===

Christmas decorations have been up for three weeks. Christmas music is being played at all possible opportunities. I'm totatlly going to be burned out, but I don't care. I've got so limited time to do anything this year.

===

What happened to Steve?

===

I'll try to get some 4S stuff up this week. I can probably double up on the episodes, like I said (I might cut them across two different days in the week). Keep your fingers crossed. Hopefully, I won't be too much of a slacker with my blog over the next couple of weeks.

Last week we made a big vat of Goulash that was kickass. If you haven't discovered it yet, seek out the Morningstar Ground Crumble in the vegetarian section of the frozen foods area in your local grocery prefecture. The stuff is basically vegetarian ground beef - and it is fantastic. Perfect texture, perfect flavor, and we've had nothing but perfect luck with it. Shephard's Pie, Meatloaf, Goulash, Tacos ... the stuff's so versatile, you'll feel guilty eating it. Promise.