2005 Year in Review

Would you look at this - it's almost 2006. Oh how the year slips by so quickly. I've been thinking of the good and challenging moments of my year to review for this post, and it took a look back through the blog to remind myself just what all I've been up to in the past 365 days. And during that, I decided to put up my blog's greatest hits again over there on the sidebar.

Anyway, 2005. What a year. Some highlights in no particular order:
-Took a college meteorology course and got an A.

-Visited 13 states for work - some more than once. (Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Texas, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New Hampshire, Ohio, Indiana, West Virginia, D.C., and New York)

-Became artistic director of the improv troupe I'm in. We're now becoming a recognizable name in the city and are being booked for many shows. Our quality has improved significantly and I'm learning how to be a better teacher and director.

-Had several invasive tests to figure out what's wrong with my stomach. Why is that a highlight - especially if they didn't figure it out? I don't know. I guess it let me know that I do tend to hold my stress in my innards. That's what I'm blaming it on now. I think I'm learning how to cope with it better.

-Taught basic computer courses to senior citizens.

-Saw two Cincinnati Bengals games in person, and watched them make the playoffs for the first time in 15 years.

-Entered into the third year of marriage with the best woman in the whole world.

Hmm, I know there are other highlights, but I can't think of them at this moment. I'm sure I'll think of more as the day goes by. I'll add them as they're thought of.

In any case, Happy New Year, folks. I hope it's a good year for everyone.

Merry Christmas!

Hope everyone is having a great holiday and that you get everything you want!

For photos of the Amy and H-ather Christmas extravaganza, click here. I recommend viewing them as a slideshow for full enjoyment.

Happy holidays, everyone!

Mmmm Hmmm

And obviously I have to put this up here. I've been so wrapped up in the joy that I forget to do it until now.

WHO effing DEY!

(if you're still looking for Christmas gift ideas for me, there ya go).

High School High

Editor's Note: I have the package revenge idea narrowed down, will post results soon

Okay, I've seen this on a few other blogs and found it really interesting. I'm answering it now mostly because I'd like to see how some of you folks respond to the questions. Plus, come on - don't you all want to hear how nerdy I was in high school? What? You already guessed as much? Nice.

Take this survey about your High School memories.

1) Where did you graduate from and what year?
Vandalia Butler High School, 1996 (Vandalia, Ohio)

2) Did you have school pride?
I suppose so. I liked making fun of the school, but I had fun cheering on our teams too.

3) Was your Prom a night to remember?
If by "a night to remember" you mean "both Proms included a gay date whom I had a blast with because they actually danced", then yes. I loved both my proms. Never went with a significant other, just guys I knew that would have fun with.

4) What was your favorite song you danced to the night of Prom?
I don't know - probably Baby Got Back or something else with a fun beat.

5) Do you own all 4 yearbooks?
Oh yes.

6) Do you remember the First CD you ever bought?
Counting Crows, "August and Everything After."

7)What was your favorite Movie in High School?
Close tie between "Wayne's World" and "Tommy Boy."

8.)What was your number one choice of College in HS?
Butler University, but then I switched to loving Ohio University. I'm happy with the choice I made.

9) What radio station(s) did you jam out to in highschool?
Z93 and 103.9, the alternative station.

10) Were you involved in any organizations or clubs?
Oh my god, yes. Everything. I was an extra-curricular nerd. Band, Spanish Club, Drama Club, National Honor Society, the Cross County Team, Muse Machine (nerdy arts club). I'm sure there were more, but that's all I can think of right now. Band took up the majority of my time.

11)What were your favorite classes in High School?
English and Spanish. I also took the radio and tv production classes, which were very fun.

12) Who was your big crush in Highschool?
Joanna.

13) Would you say you've changed a lot since high school?
Yes and no. I'm still the same easy-going person with a sense of humor who tries to get along with everyone, yet the major internal emotional struggles of my high school days are long behind me. I think I'm much, much more mature and comfortable with myself now than I was in high school.

14) What do you miss the most about it?
Seeing the close friends whom I've mostly lost touch with now. Other than that, not much.

15) Your worst memory of HS?
Too deep for this blog. Sorry, folks.

16) Did you have a car?
Yup. For a while it was this awesome '85 Ford Ranger that had power NOTHING on it. It was a sticks-shift and had a mismatch hood and fender because my brother wrecked it. I loved that truck. Then dad bought a new truck for himself and let me use his old car - an '95 Toyota Celica GT. I also loved that car and was teary when he finally sold it.

17) What were your school colors?
Purple and Gold.

18) Who were your favorite teachers?
Ah, so many. I loved my Spanish teacher. She was weird, but made the class fun usually. I also loved two of my English teachers who really encouraged my writing and made me so much better by challenging me. And the drama teacher was awesome too. The asst. band director also was a favorite of mine.

19) Did you own a cell phone in highschool?
Are you kidding? If that had actually been possible, it would've been one of those 20lb ones that you had to carry a suitcase around with. Hell no.

20) Did you leave campus for lunch?
Nope, we weren't allowed to. And because I was a goody-two-shoes, I never did.

21) If so, where was your favorite place to go eat?
I'm so bland, my lunch everyday was a cheese sandwich. For four solid years. I don't think I ever strayed from my cheese sandwich.

22) Were you always late to class?
Never.

23) Did you ever have to stay for Saturday School?
Actually, I was well-behaved in high school. No detentions.

24) Did you ever Ditch?
Of course not. Again, I was a goody-goody.

25) When it comes time for the reunion will you be there?
I haven't decided yet. I didn't go to the five year. I'm not sure if I want to go to the ten year because for the most part, I've stayed in touch with the people I've wanted to.

Bah Humbug

You know, normally I think the best of people until they prove otherwise. And then again, some people prove themselves to be complete losers from the beginning. I've never met the people that I am speaking about right now, but I know which category they fall into: The Asshole Category.

When Amy and I returned home from house-hunting Saturday afternoon, we saw a shredded package near the mailboxes of our apartment building. I immediately worried, knowing that it had to be ours and that we once again had fallen victim to the asshole-mail-tamperer contingent. This past summer we'd mysteriously lost two packages off our front stoop.

So when we walked up to the package, my heart sank when I saw Amy's name on it. It was a Christmas gift that her aunt and uncle had sent us - and some asshole had ripped it open and taken who knows what from it.

There are two groups of people to strongly dislike in this situation. One group is obvious - the assholes who did the ripping open. The second group is the U.S. Post Office. You see, when we'd had that rash of package theft this past summer, we told them to never, ever leave something on our porch again. The USPS rep said they'd made the note in our file and that they'd leave a packing slip from then on out. Plus, I just started telling everyone to mail packages to my office rather than my apartment.

But, some USPS dolt didn't get the memo this time, and we're the ones who once again suffered because of it. And what will the USPS do about it? Nothing. They couldn't care less. It's not their fault we live by thieving assholes who tamper with someone's mail whenever a package is left out. I can't imagine what the assholes would do if they could get into our mailboxes (those lock, fortunately).

In any case, we surveyed the damage and it looks like all the thieves got this time was a set of gloves. You see, Amy's aunt and uncle send us matching gifts every year. It's very cute, and this year they'd send us a set of red gloves, hat and scarf and a set of blue gloves, hat and scarf. We thought it was okay to look since someone had already opened the gift for us. And humorously enough, the thieves stole the red pair of gloves.

I've glossed over the fact that a steady stream of obscenities left my mouth when we discovered the opened package. Longshoremen would've blushed. Amy was g-rated pissed.

And here's what R-rated and G-rated anger will do: we've decided to get revenge. These little punks are obviously going to rip into anything that gets left out there that resembles a Christmas gift......so why not leave them a gift of our own? How about a decoy package from us? Oh yes.

Now we just need to decide on the contents. Our first thought was to just weigh a box down with rocks, and then leave a note inside of it for them (Amy wants to write "Suckers!" on it, while I want to write out my steady stream of obscenities and gruesome threats). Then we thought of filling a box with flour and leaving it out with said note. Then I thought of leaving out a box full of "presents" from our cat Tuesday - but that made us worry that the perp would then leave those "presents" all over our front door.

And here's what we're down to now....Chocolates. But not your regular delicious chocolates. We'd get a regular box of chocolates, remove said chocolates, and replace them with the delicious chocolates that our friends at the Ex-Lax corporation provide. Sweet, delicious revenge.

But we're still open to other ideas, so fire away in the comments section. I'm sure we can find some way to get even with the thieving assholes.

Spam Subject Line of the Day

"Invade and embroider"

Beware, all foes! I shall conquer thy kingdom and fill it with my homemade handicrafted goods! Beware my thread count! I am a knitter of DOOM!

Cracka Elephant

Amy and went to a great Christmas party on Sunday where we were treated to a White Elephant gift exchange. I was nice and just gave away two really girly chick lit books that I knew I wouldn't like. Amy did better, she gave away these two ugly ass framed flower photos we had found next to the dumpster. We had picked them up (they were clean, so don't worry) so we could use the frames. But of course, months passed and we never did that - so why not let someone else enjoy the ugly flower photos?

The prize Amy and I ended up with is amazing (picture to the left). It's one of those hideous "plug it in and it lights up and a secret spinning wheel makes it look like the ocean is moving" pictures. Oddly enough, it quickly became a much coveted item for others to steal during the gift exchange rather than opening their own tacky gifts. But, Amy and I took the advice of friends and used our alliance to keep getting it back. When someone would steal Amy's Mona Lisa, Amy would steal my gift (which, humorously enough, was another light up picture), and then I'd steal back the Mona Lisa.

We were successful and ended up walking away with it. The present I unwrapped was even worse than the beach photo. It's this odd framed glowing fish picture with a working clock next to it and the word "innocent" on the top edge of the frame. It makes no sense whatsoever.

Other coveted gifts of the night included a stone frog candle holder, a Texas Hold'Em Poker Chip Set and a broken Chicago Bulls bobblehead. I'm happy with what we got.

We shall cherish it forever*.













* the next two weeks or so

Vanity?

While driving over to pick up Amy from work last night, I ended up behind a red VW Passat wagon. The vanity plate cracked me up - "VAMPIRE."

Aren't vampires supposed to be a little more undetectable than that? Do you really want to label yourself like that? You may as well just send your home address to Buffy. Or drive in a car full of mirrors.

But it gets better. As I drove past Count Dracula's family wagon, I noticed a handi-capped parking placard hanging from the rearview mirror. Come on, Nosferatu - are we supposed to be afraid of you? You're driving a labelled station wagon with a handicap placard. I expect a little better from our immortal undead blood drinking friends out there. Next thing I know you're going to call to reschedule your attack on me because your son's playdate fell through.

Christmas Spam!

The spam subject lines I see in my inbox each day are getting weirder. Today's is holiday related:

"Of tell the vegan reindeer"

What's better is that you can sing that to the tune of "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer."

Christmas music

Will someone please hunt down Wilson Phillips and smack them for creating that horrible Christmas song "Hey Santa"? Seriously, it's such a horrible earworm that all it takes is for me to hear a slightly similar note to get that steamingly craptacular Christmas song stuck in my head.

If you've never heard that song before, get down and praise Jesus (or Allah or Buddha or VoodooMan or whomever you believe in) for sparing you its destructive power.

In the interests of getting the song out of my head now, I will list some Christmas songs that I do enjoy.

1 - Oh Holy Night (by anyone who has a great set of singing lungs)
2 - The BNL and Sarah McLachlan version of "God Rest ye Merry Gentlemen/We Three Kings"
3 - Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree (Brenda Lee version)
4 - Blue Christmas (only if it's the Elvis version, of course)
5 - Any big chorus version of Carol of the Bells
6 - What are you doing New Year's Eve? (only by Rufus Wainwright, of course)
7 - All of the music from the Nutcracker
8 - I Saw Three Ships (Sufjan Stevens)
9 - Hark! The Herald Angels Sing (heh heh, rhyming 'come' with 'womb', heh heh)
10 - White Christmas (Bing and Frank both do good versions of this)
11 - The Christmas Song (Nat King Cole, obviously)
12 - Angels We Have Heard on High

I know there are many more, but I can't think of any more. There are also some that I don't want to admit because they're slightly embarrassing. I'll just say "Mariah Carey" and "Josh Groban."

Anway, add your own that you love or hate.

Who Dey!!

Oh yeah, go Bengals! We beat the Steelers yesterday to continue our first winning season since 1990. What a game, what a game...I think Amy was about ready to kill me. I was alternating between, "We're going to lose!" and "We're going to win!" statements all throughout the game, my boys finally did it.

We shut up those self-righteous Steeler fans who think they own our franchise. Hello 9-3! Hello playoffs! Hello to not being a joke anymore!

In other, non-Bengal news - if you'd like to see an excellent photo essay on my family's Thanksgiving dinner at our place this year, check out Eric's blog.

Tagged
I've been tagged by both Shannon and Amy to do this. Find the 5th sentence of your blog's 23rd post. So here we go:

"Cambridge has some strange people living there (myself included), so I didn't react much to this as he came closer."

This is from my June 24, 2003, post about some guy who verbally harassed Amy and I in Cambridge. Click here if you'd like to read the whole thing.

That was a fun task. I should peruse my archives more often. I need to put up my 'greatest hits' again at some point.

A happy holiday

For those of you who thought I died of food poisoning from defrosting the turkey in the bathtub, I'm fine. We're all still here. In fact, there's Amy and my dad ripping into the delicious turkey fresh from the oven.

We had a great time, lots of good food and more. I also saw the new Harry Potter movie - which was pretty good but way too long. Plus I could tell they were chopping out huge sections of the book. I know that makes sense when the book is 400+ pages long, but still, it was jumpy. And it just would not end. Maybe I wasn't in the right mood to see it.

The fam and I also hit up beautiful Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, for some sight-seeing on Saturday. What an awesome town! So full of history and I'm definitely going back when it's warmer weather. I went canoeing out there this past summer and had a ball.

In any case, can you believe it's December already? 25 more days til Christmas folks. Part of my Thanksgiving weekend also included picking out our first Christmas tree. Amy and I are staying home for Christmas, too, our first holiday on our own. I'm excited about that. So, we went to Target to find a nice fake tree that didn't look like someone glued thin green strips of plastic to a pole.

We found a beauty, and it's now up in the living room. We've been keeping a close eye on mischievous Tuesday the Cat, but so far she's only tried eating a branch or two. I'm sure she'll end up trying to climb it at some point, but she's been good so far. Although - last night I caught her sitting in the chair next to the tree just staring at it. I know she's up to something, planning her route to the summit of the tree.

Anyway, here's a glowing-eyed photo of our kitty exploring the new tree. She is trying to hide, but I don't think she's figured out yet that her coloring doesn't exactly make her camouflaged around evergreen trees.


You'll notice in this photo that Tuesday is licking her lips. That's because she just tried eating a branch. She has to taste-test everything we bring into the apartment.


Anywho, I had a nice holiday weekend. Hope everyone else did, too.