Never Gonna

Not sure why, but this makes me smile.

Proof That God Loves Us

I just got an email from BevMo stating that I had spent over $250 there over the course of, well, forever.  As a thanks for turning over my hard-earned cash for beer-y goodness, they are giving me 5% off my next purchase.

Is that very much? Not really.  Will I use it? You bet!  Will it get me to return to BevMo more often for my alcoholic purchases?  That was never a question, but it did get me to write this post and spread the news that BevMo is, in fact, a nice place to shop for beer.

It also helps that they have really good beer/wine/liquor, better than average prices, and their employees know a thing or two about the stuff.

Verizon League Unlimited

This could be handy for those of us addicted to text messages to people outside the Verzion network. Or who use more than 5GB of data every month (not likely, I use it all the time and barely reach 1GB, but I’m also not tethering to a computer).

The good news: one year agreements are allowed and you can change as a current customer with no penalty, or so it seems. Can it be that Verizon woke up and realized that making customers happy keeps them as customers? End Times Spoiler: Businesses treating customers like people is the 14th sign of the apocalypse. Next up in line, burritos cause an increase in sexiness for geeks everywhere.

Warning: Single’s Lives are in Danger

I heard an advert on the radio today for a news broadcast promising to help me, as a single person, “survive Valentine’s Day.”

When did this day become lethal to single people?  Had I known my life would be in danger, I would have tried harder to get a date by now.

Life with HD

For my annual gift to myself that I get with my tax refund (once I know I’m getting a refund and how much that refund will be), I purchased an HDTV.  It’s a Vizio, 42″ LCD from their “high-end” line of GV models.  1080p, too, which is very nice.

Since I got the TV Saturday, I’ve watched NASCAR, the Grammy Awards, and Terminator: The Sarah Conner Chronicles (arguably one of the best action shows I’ve seen in a while) as well as played numerous games of Halo, Zelda, and Super Mario Galaxy and hooked my PC up to the TV to create a one-stop shop of digital goodness in my living room.  Once I’m confident that the PC will fit well in the living room, the CRT monitor in my room will go away and then it’s time to decide what to do with the desk it’s currently resting upon in jealous indignation of a flat 42″ screen 20 feet away.

For those who haven’t seen a television show in HD, the difference really is night and day.  Just switching between the normal and HD broadcast of Terminator showed a huge difference.  And if you watched the Grammy Awards in Standard Definition, you missed the fact that Jason Bateman and the Foo Fighters were surrounded with tiny gnats outside of the Staples Center.  Important?  No.  But you get an idea of how much detail is added in HD, too.

To sum up, I’m very pleased with my purchase.  Movie nights are forthcoming.

On Mortality

I watched Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade tonight with some good friends of mine (movies with people you love is always a good thing, right?).  When we reached the scene near the end where the old guy dies horribly by drinking from the “wrong” grail, I remarked that my mom had said, “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust” when we first watched this movie.  That scene gave me nightmares, not because of the scene itself but because after hearing my mother say that, I realized my own mortality for the first time I can remember.  That’s what death is in all it’s ugliness and horror.

My mom, as anyone who has met her would agree, is a kind soul and didn’t say these  words to scare me and probably didn’t even conceive that I would freak out a bit after hearing them in that context.  So I don’t want to paint her as a horrible person who scares children.  But ahouseholdkate and eclectic nerdery both agreed that I needed to post this story, particularly as it is Lent and this is a time we can use to reflect on mortality.

So when did you first realize that you would one day die?  How did it happen?  Has it happened yet?

Bad Connection

Missed our connection in Dallas. Problems started in Miami where people kept trying to trade seats before take off and the very helpful American Airlines attendants assisted while it delayed us 30 minutes (AA flight 401 on 1/30 out of Miami).

Landed only ten minutes late (kudos to the pilot) in terminal D of DFW. Unfortunately, everyone decided to leave the plane even if they didn’t have connections, so it took another ten just to exit. Another ten or fifteen to Skylink to terminal A where our connecting flight didn’t wait for us. The nice lady there bookd us on the next flight two hours later, so we’ll get home tonight, at least.

First missed connection. I’m told my luggage will be in Ontario on the original flight or my actual flight, though. I’m going to expres my disappointment with AmericanAirlines, though. They should have had people seated, not assistin them in changing around so much that we were delayed. Partcularly when the switching could have happened during the three hour flight. Great service there. The needs of the few outweigh the needs of the national flight schedule (a bit overdramatic, but there you go).

Safe and Sound

I’ve arrived in Miami safely for my business trip.  The flights were smooth and the connection was made easily.  My first experience getting a connecting flight also didn’t end with losing my luggage, so that was nice.

Thanks to everyone who texted me, emailed, left comments, sent a facebook message, or contacted me in other ways.  It was really a treat to land, turn on my phone, and find several emails and messages come in right then wishing me well.

Miami is probably a beautiful city, but I haven’t seen it in the light yet, so I’ll let you know.  But Dallas/Fort Worth is freaking brown, flat, and dry looking.  And thank God for the Skyline there or else we would never have made the connecting flight going from Terminal A to Terminal D in thirty minutes.

UPDATE: It’s morning here now (4:30 back home) and the sun is rising over the ocean.  Freaking me out a bit, actually.  But the city looks gorgeous.  Turns out that my hotel room looks out right over the water towards Miami Beach (which is across an inlet from me to the left, to the right is open ocean).  And to anyone back West who is wondering, the Atlantic looks very much like the Pacific, just spanning the wrong horizon.  I’m definitely a West Coast guy today and Tolkien had it right when he put Mordor in the East.

The New Year and Why Did 2007 Suck So Much?

It’s 2008. I think. The calendar on my computer says so, but the Mayan culture will probably beg to differ.

What I noticed this new year was the number of people who were so thankful that the calendar turned over again because last year sucked. The number of “Happy New Year’s” that were followed with a “Let’s not do 2007 again, huh?” or something along those lines were astounding. For a few of my friends, it really, legitimately sucked. Death and major injury seemed to be a tragic theme in the lives of people I know. They are, naturally, exempt from this diatribe since they can say 2007 sucked with integrity that no one would ever question.

I also am not saying that whoever says 2007 sucked doesn’t have integrity, my diatribe is of another sort. It’s worth noting that the people I know who had the worst years are also the ones who have never said openly, at least to me or in my presence, that 2007 was a horrible year. Oh, an I’ll probably use the word “suck” quite a lot. I’ve had a beer tonight. Extensive vocabulary is no longer required. The topic came to me this morning during the Rose Parade though, for reasons that defy the normal rules of logic and sanity, so the beer wasn’t inspiration, either, and that seems important to note.

2007 was probably hard for a lot of people that didn’t experience death and major injury. I had my own moments and everyone has many days that just don’t go well, jobs that are far from fun every day of the year, perfect relationships with all other humans on the planet, etc. What bothers me about the number of people who are thankful for a new start are the number of them that assume that everyone else’s 2007 sucked, too.

I think it’s normal to take our own emotional, spiritual, and intellectual experiences and assume that everyone else feels the same way or would if they were in our shoes. We only have one frame of reference for those experiences: our own. It still seems strange that, despite the large number of people that have had good years and have shared their joy with their friends, the new year is still a time of thankfulness that that’s all over and done with and we can start fresh again at last. Christmas is over, the shopping is done, time to get ready for the debt we may have incurred, plan the New Year’s party, execute the New Year’s party, and finally rest and thank God that’s over with.

When did the default experience of the holiday season that is December become a thing to get past and finished with? I think we all had a good time celebrating as much as we could, but the biggest topic of conversation was how much people couldn’t wait to get to January (I admit, I said that myself more than once). Hello? The credit card bills will come in January. Surely at the very least, we don’t want to rush to that point, right? At best, isn’t the season supposed to be about something great and wonderful? That being God ditching His seat at the high point of the cosmos to go through the wonderful process that is birth and all that follows, like puberty and death, depending on your religious persuasion. Seriously, who volunteers for that if they don’t have to? That’s huge! How we can give a rat’s ass about whether “the party” went well or the effect of capitalism on the holiday when there’s that to ponder and contend with? I don’t do that very well myself, but still. Seems like we can be a bit more positive about the whole season at least, right? Why such a rush to get past a time to celebrate such a momentous, odd, and generally insane thing for an All-Powerful being to do?

2008 is a fresh start and I welcome it. Not because 2007 was all that bad (mine was pretty damn good, I’ll have another one of those, thank you). It’s a chance to continue and repeat the good things and grow from the tragic ones. Looking back on the year before should be about deciding what to take forward, not just what to leave behind. I suppose that’s a task for every day. It’s nice to have a new start to make it a bit easier, though.

Finally Christmas

It’s finally Christmas.  Not to say that I’ve been waiting impatiently for the day, but it finally feels like a holiday now.  Feast of Lights started it for me, but the Christmas Eve service tonight really sent the idea home.  Nothing super-unusual about the service this year, it was much the same as past years in many ways.  But it finally felt like a Holy Day rather than just some days off, and that’s a lot for me.

The season has been otherwise dry in terms of the “holiday spirit” this year. I’ve had a lot of good times with friends, but I’m happy to say that this isn’t unusual in my life.  It isn’t like I have bad times with my friends the other 11 months of the year.  And so there isn’t much to differentiate Christmas from the rest.  Maybe that’s a good thing.  The monks at Valyermo know something of routine and if they’ve been doing it for hundreds of years (in their order, not necessarily at Valyermo), that says something.  But it also seems like there should be something this time of year that is different.

I’m not quite sure what that something is, but it showed up tonight and I’m glad it did.