DarqByte

I’ve been in a bloggy mood lately, so here we go with another round of updates in my mundane life. Maybe I’ll post something other than “here’s what happened!” soon, but who knows. Occasionally I like to have posts like my PHP Soap Timeout post, so maybe I’ll come up with something awesome like that soon. But for now, all you get is life updates.

Arizona

I didn’t mention this before here on my blog, although I did mention it on Twitter and Facebook, but I decided to head down to Arizona for my grandparents’ Christmas Eve party. My grandfather had some health issues this year and I didn’t want to miss a guaranteed time when I’d be able to see him around Christmas. I don’t know how much time he has left with us, be it a few months or fifteen more years (I hope it’s even longer than this!).

In any case, Laura was unable to accompany me on the trip. I took off a half-day on Christmas Eve to make the drive down after I got off of work on the 23rd. My work only had a half-day scheduled for the 24th, so I only had to take off 4 hours. My Dad met me here at work when I got off at 4 and we set off for the Phoenix/Mesa area, replete with gifts and items we’d need to survive the harsh Arizona desert… Rather, clothes and toiletries.

We decided to pit-stop in Boulder City to say hello to Laura. She wasn’t expecting us to drop by before we got out of town, but BC is literally on the route to Phoenix from Vegas, and the diversion from the US-93 to her office isn’t very far. She was happy to see us and we chatted for a bit before finally heading out.

The drive was mostly uneventful. We got held up at the dam for awhile because there were quite a few people driving out south on US-93 and there are security checks at the dam. It took us about 20-25 minutes to get through the checkpoint, then we were off to the races. We didn’t end up behind very many slow people.

There was a point in Wickenburg where US-93 ends and that section was totally rebuilt and included two traffic circles. My Dad was leading the way and hadn’t encountered the rebuild before, so there was a little stopped-in-the-circle action before he figured out what direction was what. Apparently, he also needed to fill up in Wickenburg and he’s got a Chevron card, so he was originally going to stop and get gas there. Unfortunately, his regular Chevron had become a Shell station, so he ended up skipping it. Once we were on the AZ-74, he called me up to use my GPS or iPhone to find the nearest Chevron. We ended up hitting up a Chevron at our connection point from the AZ-74 to the I-17.

The rest of the drive was all highways inside the metro area basically until we got to my grandparents’ place. Once we got there, we unloaded a few things, talked with my grandma for a bit, then headed to bed.

Note: I just noticed I’m already over 500 words. I have three topics to cover and I’m only about 1/4 through the first topic… Are you ready for a much longer read?? I sure am!

The next day was obviously eventful as it was Christmas Eve! The day of the party, the day I’d finally get to see a lot of my Dad’s side of the family that I never get to see. The morning started off slow, with my Dad, my grandma, my cousin Cody and myself all talking about stuff and whatnot. Cody’s still pretty young so I guess he didn’t talk much, rather than act like a kid, but hey. I ended up playing a game of Stratego with him, and he’s pretty good. I haven’t really ever played before and he had some good tactics.

My cousin Dani showed up a bit after noon. She’s turning 18 on New Year’s Eve this year, and holy crap she got tall. Not quite as tall as me, but taller than Laura. We didn’t have a whole lot going on at the time because my Dad was puttering around on his laptop and my grandma was cooking up food for the party that evening. She suggested for Dani and I to go catch a movie, so we did. Ended up seeing The Blind Side. Good flick, I particularly enjoyed it.

Even though I had my iPhone and the GPS in the Prius, I decided to just follow Dani to her place so I could see her parents earlier than they would have made it to the party. Mark & Ricki, I hadn’t seen them in quite some time either, so it was really nice to see them. Mark’s lost quite a bit of weight, I’ve never seen him as light as he is now. I’m not sure how much, but I’m fairly certain it’s around 50 pounds.

Oh, did I forget to mention my grandma also lost over 50 pounds? She’s looking much better too. What is it with all of the weight loss in my family? Apparently my Dad is the only one gaining weight, haha. Love ya Dad.

So I helped them load up gifts and whatnot and we drove on back to my grandparents’ place. My grandfather was finally home from work when we got back, so I caught up with him for awhile. It was really good to, since he was the primary reason I decided to take this trip in the first place and miss Christmas Eve with Laura and potentially screw up time with her on Christmas.

My uncle Brad was also finally there, so we got to trade shots and banter around a bit. It was fun, he always is. He’s one of the four of us look-alikes: My grandfather, my Dad, Brad and me. I dare say I’m the best looking of the group!

The look-alikes! From left: Me, my grandfather, my Dad, Brad. Lower-right, my cousin Cody managed to get part of himself in the photo.

From there the party really started. My cousin Matthew and his wife Danielle showed up, and even he’s lost weight! 60 pounds! He officially weighs less than me, the first time in our lives that had ever happened. Unbelievable. He really looks different, being that light. He’s thinking of entering the police force in Phoenix or, if that doesn’t work out, he’ll see if the military will give him a job. I’d rather him be in the police force myself.

I apologize to the rest of the party attendants, but my short-term memory can be bad and in this case, I can’t remember who all else was there! I suck, I know. Oh, my great-grandma Sigourney was there as well. She’s still going strong, I can’t believe it. She’s in her 80s.

The white elephant gift exchange went well, I ended up walking away with three items. I originally nabbed this storage net you can mount to a wall. At one point during the exchange I mentioned that Laura would like this nice carafe that was out there. My aunt Ricki is the one who originally bought it, and she nabbed it at the end with the expressed purpose of getting it for me. She’s awesome. My grandma also had an ice cream bowl & toppings set she opened that never got stolen, and she let me have it because she knew Laura and I would like it and she wouldn’t use it. Interesting stuff. A few other small gifts were passed out and the party ended.

One thing I did discover during the party — my cousin Dani is a nut. She fits in with this family well. Dani and I have been messaging back and forth in Facebook for awhile now and I never realized just how much like the rest of us crazy people in my family she’s like.

Actually, she was my first recruit into getting my family to call me Robert, and she never slipped up once while I was down there. When I was younger, I went by Bob (and even further back, Bobby) and I’ve long been trying to get my family to make the switch and call me by what I want to be called, Robert (even Rob works, although I never introduce myself as Rob… still get called Rob more than Robert…). My aunt Ricki made an effort, so that was cool. My Dad was also making an effort.

Interestingly, my grandma had always wanted my older sister Katie and me to call her Gran. I had no idea until she mentioned it to me during the trip. Thus, I am now calling her Gran.

I got up at 3:30am Vegas time on Christmas and left at about 4:20am Vegas time. Arizona doesn’t participate in daylight savings time, so they share the Pacific time zone during the summer, and during the winger they share the Mountain time zone. So they were ahead at this point. I filled up my car to the brim with more gas before getting out of town, and I was off!

The drive up was again, relatively uneventful, but as I got closer and closer to Vegas I felt the pressure of making sure I got into town in time to shave, change and get to mass in a presentable manner. I was unkempt and didn’t have a change of good clothes with me, so I was trying to avoid driving straight to mass. So I sped, as we did speed going down to Arizona.

At one point, the US-93 was switching between a single road with a dividing line between north and south lanes and having a median between the two. During one stretch of the median, suddenly there was a car coming head-on at me! Thankfully, I was still barely inside a two-lane stretch so there was room around him, but if I had been about ten seconds further ahead, we would have met in a very narrow one-lane spot… Doofus. Needs to learn how to drive.

Getting through the dam at this point was a breeze. I ended up getting home at 9am with basically 30 minutes to shave & change and get out the door. I went a little longer than I wanted, leaving the house at 9:40, but I still got to mass with about 10 minutes to spare. Thus, Christmas had truly begun for me!

Ah, but wait! A note on miles-per-gallon for the trip for the Prius before I start section 2 for Christmas. Going down to Arizona I got about 48 MPG. Pretty good for highway driving in a Prius, it made me happy! But that should have been an omen. It turns out most of the driving down to Arizona is literally down. Downhill, that is. Driving back to Vegas is pretty much all uphill. I effectively got 36 MPG going back to Vegas, which is abysmal for a Prius. I actually had to fill the tank in Kingman to make it all the way back. It sucked.

Christmas

Note: over 1,800 words so far! Wow… Long.

Mass was good. It was a nice Christmas Mass. I got to sit next to Ron & Priscilla, Laura’s stepdad and mom. Laura sang cantor at Mass as she always does and had an excellent solo near the end. It actually elicited applause from the congregation, which isn’t really supposed to happen. Haha.

Laura and I headed back home after Mass to collect the gifts we needed to track back on over to the Waltons’ place and to change into non-Mass clothes. So we did all that and headed back out.

Opening gifts was fun. Laura got to open her new Amazon Kindle from me, which I wrapped in triplicate — I wrapped the Kindle and its cover, put it in a box, heavily taped that box and wrapped it, then put that box in another, heavily taped and wrapped again. It was pretty funny, if I do say so myself.

I had a pretty good haul myself. Got this new component shelf I was wanting for the bedroom so we could put an “entertainment center” in there with the TV I scored from work for $50. Laura got me this awesome new Harmony remote to replace the one downstairs and move the existing one to the bedroom. I need to customize the new one with a background image and a new font theme. Hells to the yeah! Other goodies came my way, such as a Bionicle Lego set, Left 4 Dead 2, The Hangover and more. I also got this nice cube of photos from Katie and my other Parkers up in upstate New York, which was totally awesome. I love hand-made gifts.

We transitioned to dinner, which was excellent as always. Unfortunately, the Waltons don’t get the NFL Network, so I kept up with the Titans-Chargers game online via the NFL’s website. Unfortunately for the Titans and their playoff hopes, it wasn’t a very merry Christmas and they got handled, so no playoffs this year. Maybe next year, we’ll see.

Speaking of Christmas sports, the UNLV Runnin’ Rebels had a basketball game against USC. Unfortunately for them as well, they lost, bringing their non-conference record to 12-2. That’s a pretty good record and I think they’ll make some noise in the Mountain West Conference this season. I think, unless they totally implode, they’ll make the NCAA tournament this year, making it three times in four years. Getting back to where the program needs to be!

After dinner we just sat and talked and watched TV. Ron and Laura read books from their Kindles and Julia worked on her Christmas gift to her boyfriend Alex. Laura and I got sleepy, so we headed home to get some sleep.

Cleaning

We didn’t end up going to bed right away. Our house was an absolute disaster at this point. Neither of us had any time to keep things clean and neat while we were both getting Christmas gifts ready for people and I was prepping to head out to Arizona, so the place was very messy. I ended up doing a little tidying up and organizing and breaking down boxes while Laura read a bit more on her Kindle. Then we headed to bed.

The 26th wasn’t a day for straight cleaning. I still did a bit here and there throughout the day, but we had a lot going on that didn’t involve cleaning. Laura had breakfast with her friend David, we both had lunch with some of my old friends from high school and we had dinner with her parents at White Chocolate Grill. Tasty goodness, I had this great penne alfredo. Afterwards, we came home and I hooked up our new bedroom “entertainment center.” It contains the TV I bought from work, as well as a Blu-Ray player and DirecTV HD receiver I got from Best Buy (using gift cards from both the Tuckers and Waltons) while Laura was having breakfast with David. To mount the component shelf on the wall, I used this new DeWalt 14.4V drill I got with a Lowe’s gift card my Dad got for me. The drill was very nice, but some of the studs in my house are so difficult to screw into that I actually have to use slightly shorter screws…

I got all that setup and reconfigured our old Harmony remote from downstairs for the new system upstairs, and voila! I’m particularly happy about the Blu-Ray player, as it can connect to Netflix, Pandora and YouTube. So we can now also watch Netflix streaming in the bedroom off of the Blu-Ray player, while downstairs we do that using the Xbox 360. We can’t use Pandora downstairs, so that’s a plus. Although I’m sure I could find a way to stream Pandora downstairs if I wanted to, maybe via a laptop or something. Maybe I will…

Thus, the 27th! Cleaning day! Collected all of our trash, including the now-empty boxes from our new components and gifts. Broke down the rest of our Amazon boxes and stored those and the packing materials away. Cleaned off the living room and dining room tables, put all of our new gifts away, stored our wrapping materials (well, what’s left of them). Cleaned some straggler dishes, put the previously-clean ones sitting int he dishwasher away. Tidied up the bedroom slightly, but there are still some straggler clothes in there. Did cable management on the new “entertainment center” in the bedroom. Took the closet door off (we’re replacing it with a curtain, it got in the way of some racks of clothes and was more of a bother than anything useful). Cleaned up and organized both the library and loft. The library had my bin of cables and technology parts strewn about because I needed to find cables for the components in the bedroom, so that was a chore. Vacuumed downstairs and upstairs, dealt with piles of mail, dealt with piles of stuff to shred.

We still haven’t gotten the empty boxes and non-food trash bags out of the house. Our trash days are Tuesday and Friday and our trash bins were already 100% full, so there’s nowhere outside to put the new trash. We’re taking it to the curb tonight, thankfully.

Hmm… Anything else? Might be, but trust me, that list I just gave you took quite a long time to do. We ended up having people over in the evening, so we were happy we got all of that squared away. We still need to do hard floor cleaning and some dusting and have a new, smaller stack of things to shred, but other than that I think our house actually looks good again.

Anything else you want to know about my four-day weekend? Oh, I’m pending some more CD/DVD/BD jewel cases because we’re really low and I’ve got paintable cable covers for the bedroom coming soon so that’ll look better. Phew. And I need to cut down our coaxial satellite cable, because it’s too long and it’ll look bad because I can’t figure out how to make it look goo otherwise.

Hmm… I do still have a Home Depot card to use…

Over 3,000 words! WTF!

Boy howdy… Laura and I have all sorts of fun planned. It’s just the latest in a long string of busy-ness that her and I have gotten ourselves involved into. The last two weeks have been very busy at home, in addition to being very mentally draining for me at work as opposed to how things normally are.

In any case, tonight Laura’s got a bridal shower she’s going to. I’m holding my first team meeting for my work’s Corporate Challenge soccer team while she’s at that.

Tomorrow we are likely heading up to Utah to watch my sister-in-law’s softball games in St. George. Then we’re cutting back home to Vegas to catch a birthday party for one of Laura’s friends. Sunday we’ve got church and Laura has a voice lesson, and I think something else is going on later Sunday evening.

Who knows when we’re going to have time to do things we need to do, like;

1. Grocery shopping (hopefully Sunday?)
2. Go on a date (we try to go on a date once a week)
3. Laundry (I’m nearly out)
4. Relax (what the hell is that word doing here? I haven’t really gotten to know that word in… at least two weeks)
5. Look at coach lights (we need some)
6. Look at bar lights (we want some)

Let’s not forget that while we’re in town we’re also looking after her parents’ dogs. Oy! No rest for the weary.

I just want to take this opportunity to thank all of my friends and family for, well, being friends & family.

My wife, Laura, is totally awesome. She loves me as much as I could ask for, at least I think she does. I’m totally in love with her. She puts up with all my garbage BS and loves me despite my being a total nerd and having photo shoots like this one. We’re actually having another tonight for my new facial hair style for March (I already made an iPhone photo on it but am tweaking it for the shoot). She even finds my goofiness attractive, which is quite odd if you ask me, but a total bonus.

The rest of my family is great too. I get along better now with my older sister Katie than I ever did and we don’t see each other near enough. My Mom and Dad, despite being divorced, are still decent friends with each other mostly because of me, and I know they love and care for me, and I get along with them very well. My extended family, sorry I can’t list you all, are all totally awesome too. I get along with almost all of you, save for some that have distanced themselves on purpose.

And then there’s my friends. I’ve got so many friends that I can’t even count them all. Despite losing some from time to time, I tend to increase in friend count by accumulating more and more. The most recent additions to my friendom, Andrew & Amber Morrow and Steven Behnke, are all totally great people that I mesh pretty well with. Damian, Ryan and Will are longtime good friends that I don’t see often enough. Actually, I have so many friends and so little time that I really barely get to see them at all.

Sorry if you didn’t get a mention in this post. No hard feelings really, I’m just highlighting a few. Who knows, maybe you’ll get a shoutout sometime in the near future! Because you all rock!

Now for some lunch.

Ever feel like you’ve had a lost weekend? That’s what this weekend felt like… And if you’re wondering what I mean by a lost weekend, it’s a weekend where you felt like you were going to get quite a lot done in some form or other, but it just didn’t happen for some other reason.

For example, this weekend Laura was sick, so we didn’t get as much done around the house as I’d anticipated… Well, I shouldn’t say that. We did get a little bit done around the house. Did some small cleaning here and there. I also ran by my Dad’s place to get some things squared away that he and I have been needing to work on.

Also, progressed further towards HD satellite, hurrah! Hopefully we’ll be running HD satellite in time for the Super Bowl, which will be totally awesome. Unfortunately, the Titans won’t be playing in it, but I’ll survive.

So yeah, had a lost weekend… Now I get to do other crap during the week, like continue to f**k around with Findlay Toyota… The longer this goes on, the longer my letter to them becomes.

I promised I’d post about our new cat, Samantha, so here I am!

Last weekend, Laura and I had to go to Petsmart to get dog food, cat food and cat litter. We were also hoping to find one of those new nail grinder-type things for “cutting” your dog’s & cat’s nails. So we get there and do most of the shopping, with my Mom in tow.

We ended up in the back of the store and they had dogs from the Heaven Can Wait sanctuary there. There was a really, really pretty chocolate lab puppy there that if we had the room, time and money, we may have very well have taken that puppy home. My Mom sure wanted her.

We ended up going to look at the cats since we generally always do that when we’re at Petsmart. My Mom “egged us on” a bit by saying we should go in and meet some of the cats. So we did, and we met this really affectionate fluffy black cat, 8 months old, called Skippie/Skipper (not sure on the name, it was different in different places the cat was mentioned). We met her and she was really affectionate. Purred like crazy, climbed all over you and just wanted to have everything to do with whoever was paying attention to her.

After sitting in there with her for about 10 minutes, I could tell Laura really wanted her. We looked over at my Mom and she gave us this whole “get the cat” look. We decided to go ahead and get the paperwork started on her and went outside to talk to my Mom and think it over.

Long story short, we decided to get her, and also got some more things she’d need, like kitty food, a scratching post, a litter box, etc. Laura was initially a little hesitant about getting her because we already have Dusty and he’s 20 years old. But in the end, we decided it would be alright.

We decided in the car on the way back to our place to call her Samantha. My Mom is the one that came up with it. She just blurted it out and Laura and I suddenly couldn’t think of a better name.

Heaven Can Wait said that she’d been having some eye issues and indeed she was. When I took her to the veterinarian the day after, they confirmed as such as gave us some eye ointment to give to her for it to clear up. I think it has finally, as she’s not winking any more and you can see her eyes fully now. We were initially worried about Dusty picking it up and it becoming a complication, so we sequestered her in the extra bedroom my Mom was staying in until it cleared up.

My Mom commented after the first night she was in that room that she is really, really affectionate. Licks your face, climbs on you, nips at your nose & ears, purrs like crazy, rinse and repeat. The second night she had to keep the cat in the bathroom because she couldn’t sleep that first night.

She get along with Dusty rather quickly. He even seems to have taken enough of a liking to her to not impose his dominance very much. It’s pretty awesome, Laura was worried about how Dusty would take us having another cat.

Pepper & Samantha, on the other hand, is another story. Pepper, just like when she met Dusty, was very interested in her. Wanted to meet the cat, smell her, etc. Samantha was very worried about his bigger, excited dog, naturally, so she still hasn’t really warmed up to her. She’s not as hesitant to walk past her as she initially was, but she’s still wary.

Anyway, I should probably wrap this up so I can give her the attention she’s meowing at me for.

Sorry I haven’t written in awhile. My Mom was in town for a little over a week and my Linux computer’s been disabled, so I’ve been busy. But here I am!

So in reference to my Mom being in town, it was awesome. I haven’t gotten to see her as much as I’d have liked, so it was really nice to spend some time with her. Thanks to her, chaos did erupt in our household. She suggested for us to get a new water softener the weekend she was here, and we also got a new addition to our family: our new black fluffy cat Samantha. I’ll get to her in a later post.

We ate out, we hung out and watched movies, it was really great. It sucked having to take her to the airport on Wednesday morning, where her flight left at 6am no less. I slept in my car at my work’s parking lot from 4:30-6:45 because it wasn’t viable to go home. 1/2 hour each way whereas work is about 5-10 minutes from the airport. You do the math: more sleep.

I promise I’ll get to the Halloween pics sometime soon, really.

Oh, a couple more things. I’m finally on Twitter, but I have my account configured to only alloy people I know to follow my updates. Hop on there and look for me! That, and I heard Wal-Mart is having some huge, absolutely huge Black Friday deals. Two of them that I’d love to do: a 50″ Samsung plasma HDTV for under $800 and a Magnavox Blu-Ray player for under $130. Crazy! An HD setup for less than $1,000? The only thing missing from that combination, really, is an audio receiver that can handle HD signals. Oy! I want $1K now.

I’m going to see if I can integrate a Twitter updater here into WP…

And I want to post about Obama soon…

And my Linux computer woes… Man… I’ve got a lot to talk about soon.

[Update]

Scratch that, my Twitter is publicly viewable instead… And you’ll see my tweets on the side of my blog now.

So my mother is coming to town to visit. It’ll be the first time she’ll get to see our new house and meet our dog, so I’m pretty excited. I haven’t gotten to see her since our wedding, so that’ll be nice. It’s been a year.

Laura’s actually pretty excited too, which is totally awesome. We’re trying to figure out where we’ll go to eat while she’s in town and what food to cook here at home. I’ve already decided I have to make Italian Delight while she’s here. She’s the master of that dish and I have to make it for her to gauge where I am in my development of it.

She’s actually flying in on Election Day, so I hope she’ll either vote early or vote before her plane takes off. I think I’m voting early myself, since I’ve got to pick her up from the airport. But I may have a chance to vote on Election Day itself, so I think I’d like to.

So she’ll be staying here despite both Laura and I having to work during the week. But that’s ok. She can spend time with the dog and not clean our house. I know she’ll want to and probably will anyway, but I’ll make my point very clear that I don’t want her expending energy cleaning my house while she’s on vacation here.

I’ve also got to figure out how to offer her transportation. She said she doesn’t care if she’s got a car while she’s here for the times when it’ll be just her at the house, but just the same I want to try and leave my car here for her to use. We’ll see.