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01.05.2010

Today would have been Mom's 63rd birthday.

Last year I wrote Mom a note and sent it up with a balloon. I liked the feeling of that, so I had planned another balloon for this year. I stopped by Party City once again and got another balloon. When I got home, I thought about writing a note but didn't. Then I went outside and let the balloon go.

As the balloon went up, East this year instead of West, I talked to Mom a little. I still miss her, I just don't feel it as much - that emptiness that she's not here. Since my last dream with Mom it seems I've reached that stage, whatever it may be called, to where the pain of her being gone doesn't creep up and catch me off guard. Originally I thought I would have been at that point a year ago, and now that I'm at that point it strikes me as a little odd. Not odd in a bad way, just me being overly analytical.

I mentioned to Gina over the weekend that we're about due a weekend getaway trip to Nashville since we hadn't been in a while. In fact, I don't remember us being since Mom died. Gina told me she hadn't wanted to mention going because she was afraid that it would stir up some bad memories. While I appreciate and understand that, I don't have any bad memories of Mom. I'm sure there are some lurking around, but I remember the good times and the happy times. Those are the kinds of stories I still tell about her.

Over Christmas I ventured to Florence to visit grandparents and got a small stack of old pictures. Some of Mom, some of me (I used to be a lot smaller evidently). Below is a pic from Christmas 1986. I'm not sure what Mom is telling MawMaw, but I don't think she's going to give in.

In case you're curious, the box in the lower left hand corner of the pop-up is The Gilligan's Island Game, which I mainly remember for the slot a - slot b board that you got to put together that made running through the island so much fun.

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More Resolves

01.01.2010

Last week Jerry and I got together and reviewed our lists of what we wanted to accomplish in 2010. It made me think about my 2009 list so I thought I would revisit it and see how goal oriented I was over the year.

Paint the room formerly full of junk
Thanks to handyman Mike and my checkbook, this was a no brainer!

Clean out the garage/Use the storage building
Although the junk in the garage seems to be cyclic, I did manage to clen it out enough I can once again park in the garage, while there's an ample amount of junk in the storage building.

Continue learning to use the Torque Game Engine (now in week 3!) and get the first version of my game together.
Over the past year a new, mostly revamped version of Torque has come out and I didn't make much progress. I'm going to have to say I didn't measure up on this one.

Make a flight simulator cockpit
My desire for this one was wanned, although I still think it would be cool. I spent the year collecting parts off and on. Still, I've got no cockpit to show for it at year's end.

Go to Jamaica. Hopefully come back, too.
I did BOTH of those!

So now we're at 2010. What do I want to put down to hold myself accountable for in 12 months?

• It's time to seriously lose some weight. I've oscillated within 20lbs over the past year, and I know I can lose weight if I just put my mind to it since I lost over 50lbs a few years back. I've been investigating different surgeries, but I still want to try to do it myself, damn it! This morning I weighed 395.8lbs. I'm going to see if I can make that "3" a "2" by next January.
• Ride the bike 60 miles. Melanie had talked about a 100KM bike ride in September. I'm going to do that.
• Finish my will. I should really wrap this one up in the next couple of days. At least I started it!
• Finish 2 more classes at school. I got an A in my accounting class. I'm registered for the next accounting class. To be honest, I don't want to take these classes, but career-wise it's a good move. I'd much rather be playing WoW.
• Replace kitchen counter top. This will be another Mike call, and it's the last of the home improvements that I know I want to do. There's 2 or 3 more, but they may be cost prohibitive.
• Remember that torque game? Get the 1st version done - you can walk around and interact with... something! Click on a door and if you have a key you can unlock it and it opens.

There's more that I want to do that I'm not putting up here. I've got to have some secrets. And things I can balk on.

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New Favorite Christmas Memory

12.31.2009

A couple of weeks ago when going over what everybody was wanting for Christmas, I told Gina to get Jacob a $10 LEGO. Jacob just had his 21st birthday, so of course I think he should have a toy. "Why don't you get it for him?" she asked me. "It's got to be from his Mom." "Well which LEGO?" should would ask. "It doesn't matter, just an inexpensive one." "Is this from me or Santa?" she asked when wrapping it. "It's a toy from his Mom, and you have to do this from now on."

One Christmas I especially remember was the year I stopped getting toys. It sucked. I got clothes, shoes, cologne, but nothing to play with. I excitedly lost sleep Christmas Eve wondering what cool toys I would get. Nada. Not long after I got my house (10 years ago?), Mom asked what I wanted for Christmas. I was off on my own and surely she expected some domestic want of mine, but I told her "I want a toy." She asked "What kind of toy?" to which I told her "It doesn't matter, as long as it comes from the toy department of some store." That year she got me a 12" Stone Cold Steve Austin in hunting garb which I had never seen and didn't know existed, and that made it even cooler that Mom had managed to not just get me a toy, but got me one that I wanted and didn't even know it.

Debbie, my current Evil Stepmother, gets me wrestling figures every Christmas. She worries about which to get in case she gets one I already have. I tell her it doesn't matter but she still worries. It's not the actual toy that counts, it's the inner child in me that enjoys just getting a toy. I know it comes across as silly, but there's a big chunk of me that will never grow up and this is my way of sharing it with people.

Christmas night came at Gina's and everybody started to get their presents. Everybody took their turn opening gifts and Jacob was up. Being 21 he's suddenly turned domestic and wanted housewares. He was opening pots, pans, cookie sheets, house shoes, clothes. He got to a small box and as he ripped the bottom of the paper off the box rattled. He froze, tilted his head, and suddenly said "It's a LEGO" from recognizing the sound. He ripped off the rest of the wrapping and saw that it was indeed a LEGO (the details of what type escape me) and we all laughed that he knew what it was from the sound, and he got a kick out of getting LEGOs like he did when he was little.

And I hope he gets that feeling for the next 50 years.

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CEVA

12.26.2009

One of my xmas presents to myself is a new bed frame. I've been sleeping atop the basic metal frame since getting the super comfortable bed years ago. As part of being more grown up it would be nice to have a real headboard/footboard, maybe even something that doesn't slide around the floor a little when I toss and turn throughout the night. As such, I found one I liked on Amazon and promptly ordered it Dec 13th. Amazon tracking had the bed scheduled to arrive Dec 23rd, so I would have my new bed frame by Christmas! Or so I thought.

The bed was being delivered through CEVA, yet another courier I've never heard of that would have to figure out where I lived. I checked the tracking and everything seemed to be on track come Dec 21st.

That was the tracking status Dec 21st. The bed had made it to Atlanta, 3 hours away. Looking up the tracking info on the CEVA site, they actually had it scheduled for delivery Dec 22nd. I expectantly waited for the bed to show up on the 22nd. And 23rd. And 24th. By dinner time on the 24th, when everyone except convenience stores have pretty much closed up shop, I decided to ask Mr Amazon what was going on. I could find no way to contact CEVA in Atlanta outside of signing up to become some type of customer, which in essence I thought I already was since I was waiting on them to deliver my crap!

Christmas afternoon I got a nice reply from Mr Amazon telling me (1) Mr Amazon was sorry for the inconvenience, (2) CEVA is a threshold delivery service which will deliver my parcel to my door but I'm responsible for construction, and (3) the number for the Atlanta office is 404-968-1200. That, dear internet reader, is customer service. I got everything I wanted from Mr Amazon.

It was about this time that I thought CEVA may have tried to call me, and I wasn't sure what phone number I had on file at Amazon. I went and checked my account and found my old phone number, the one I haven't had in 2 years, was still marked as active. If CEVA had tried to call, they wouldn't have gotten me. Slowly this was all starting to make more sense as to why my bed had been sitting in Atlanta for 4 days. Today I called the number Amazon had sent and got a friendly enough guy in Atlanta. I told him I wanted to check on my package and gave him my tracking number. After about a minute he told me that my package was still on the truck and would be transferred to Birmingham Sunday night. Once it got to Birmingham it would switch to another (local) carrier which would bring it to my house. The local carrier would call me to schedule a time to bring it.

I didn't blurt anything out, but it's still on the truck? And it was going to be on the truck for 2 more days before switching to another truck? I thought FedEx had problems when I had ordered my Accounting textbook, but they just delivered to the wrong address.

In the midst of all of this, I found out that my old phone number was the listed contact number for my package, so I got Mr Atlanta to update that for me. Now with any luck, I'll get a phone call to schedule delivery for my bed. I'm hoping this is just a late Christmas present and that it's not going to turn into a birthday present as it sits on a truck for another 2 months.

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Update!

I called back Tuesday morning after the status hadn't changed and was quickly put through to an "agent" to schedule my delivery for Wednesday between 12 and 4. At 5:30 the bed got here. Now to see if all the parts made it.

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I am a male adult!

12.22.2009

Monday there was a flurry of activity on my stoop. Within 20 minutes of each other I had a delivery from FedEx (not from Amazon), a delivery from UPS (from Amazon and Newegg), and a failed sales attempt by a little guy selling cleaning products which you could also drink (at least that was what I got from his little demonstration on the stoop).

After all of this was done, I went back to the interweb and looked at my Amazon account to see what else might be coming my way. I'll look at my account and open up the tracking tab to see where things are and when they'll arrive. Whenever I click on something that's been delivered, it usually has a message like "Left on porch" or "Left by door". Today, there was a different message.

Since I'm usually not home when things are delivered, the above option doesn't show up much. I'm just a little amazed that the tracking (and capturing of data) goes to the level of detail that it does. I'm all for that level of detail. That's just the right level of detail. "Delivered to overweight male adult that could really use a shower" would be too much detail.

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