Memories of New Year's by the decade

40 years ago I was crawling on a floor somewhere in Highland Park, New Jersey. I don't recall that time. We were probably getting ready to move to Laurel, Maryland at that time.

30 years ago I was sad that the digital watch I got from Channukah '78 no longer had the same magic. It listed the time and the last two digits of the current year. Until we went into 1979 at 12:34pm, 56 seconds into the minute each day I looked down and saw this: 12:34:56 78. This was now gone from a daily activity.

20 years ago I was at the house of my friend Tony's girlfriend trying to fix her parent's bed. Do the math yourself as to what happened... As for my thoughts, I was dwelling on whether or not I would get to hook up again with the girl I met during the autumn.

10 years ago me and my wife celebrated the last New Year's of the second millenium, and started one more year at Aurora Highlands.

I wish we were having a holiday party at the gym

It feels wrong not having one this Friday.

:(

Danny's recipe for pumpkin pie

Inspired by Dave Barry

1. Go to a farmer's market and buy the most awesome pumpkin you can find. That means no blemishes, and perfectly round. It also needs to be big enough that you need two people to lift it up to put in your trunk. A good handle thingee on the top is also critically important.
   
2. Take it home and find the largest, sharpest cutting implement that you can find. Swords will do nicely. Slice off the top in a neat pattern by poking the blade through and then use a sawing motion that the sword was never designed for and try to avoid stabbing the floor your pumpkin is sitting on.
3. Pull out all the innards. Separate out the seeds, salt, and bake them since they are yummy that way. Take the rest of the innards, mix with cream, egg yolks, sugar, pumpkin spice, and vanilla and heat it up. Eventually it will turn into a custard that bears a faint resemblance to what you ate last year during the fall.
4. When no one else tries a bite, go in a sulk go to the super market and buy what people are expecting.
   

Flooding sucks

Rain. Mislabeled breaker that turned off our sump pump. Ankle deep water in my basement.

That was mother's day.

And I forgot to call my mom. She ain't happy.

The weekend

• Got into some bitter fights over the weekend with the wife and son. I made it clear after his last report card that he had to bring positive evidence from all his classes or each weekend he would be grounded. Also, he needed his chores done. Finally, she needs to stop buying him stuff when they go out, since his report card doesn't deserve it and he's old enough to get/keep a job. I didn't handle things well but we do need to have a solid front, and his grades, while not failing, can certainly improve.

• Our water heater didn't seem to be working well this morning. I checked with the kid about the shower he took last night and he said, "Yeah, it wasn't working so I didn't take one." Sigh. He ought to have told me. Then I could have checked to see if it was a fuse or something easy. Alas, I doubt that is the case, and I bet this will be yet another expense.

• It was a three day weekend so I worked my consulting gig all day on sunday. Then monday I worked some on that, some on the normal job, and did some cycling. It got rainy so I headed home.

• Watched Flags of our Fathers last night. A really awesome film about what war does to people and why symbols are so important. There are some horrifying bits during the war scenes on Iwo Jima. This one goes beyond political preferences, so every voting adult is safe to watch this film.

• Worked with the kid on learning Python, specifically using pygame. The book on it is really good, and he likes it a heck of a lot more than the Visual Basic and MoldFusion he's been exposed to before. Who can blame him?

Happy Thanksgiving!

I'm thankful for:

• My family
• My students
• Everyone who helped out when my bike got stolen
• Only two minor injuries this year
• My friends
• My family
• My crazy coworkers
• The trip to Italy
• My NASA customer
• Python
• The Plone and Zope communities
• Good training partners
• Good teachers