Merry after Christmas!

Today was the best day. I got off work at 7 this morning and slept for like 14 hours. Not just sleep but sleeeeeep. You know the kind where it feels like you are still in the womb and there’s nothing in the world that would feel better and warmer against your skin than the blankets you’ve got on. If you are anything like me then normally the only time that the bed feels that good is when you have to get up and go to work or class or something in the next 4 minutes. Luckily today I felt it on the first day of my vacation and I took full advantage of it. I did have to get up and let the dog empty his water this afternoon but other than that he was perfectly happy to stay curled up with me in my cocoon.

I went to my parents house in Genoa yesterday to eat and whatnot. I was kind of out of it since I had to work 14 hours the night before, go home and shower and then drive up there, do all that then go back home and go back to work at 8 that night. I tried to catch some naps at work the night before and the night after but I never really have been able to sleep at work all that much other than dozing off for 20 minutes or so. I went up there and mom made a big ham dinner with all the fixings which was real good. I brought a bunch of leftovers home and should have brought more. The dog got a big ham bone to take home which he is currently working on in the kitchen. The only problem is keeping him in there with it until he gets all the loose meat and messy stuff off of it and it’s just a clean bone. If I don’t it’s only a matter of time until he has it on the new couch or in my bed. I’m looking at him now and he’s really making short work of it and I’m probably going to have to take it away soon or he’s going to make himself sick. Saw grandma and grandpa Waldman while I was there who I haven’t seen in a while as well as my parents and my brothers Pat and Adam. Everyone seems to be doing OK.

Everyone got their New Year’s resolutions ready to go? I’ve got mine, although I’m not really calling it a resolution. It’s more like a “January 1st is as good a time as any to start doing something since it makes it easy to remember how long it’s been since you’ve started” type of thing. I’ve been successful on my last 2 which was to get debt free and to quit smoking. I would have to say that the quitting smoking one was the harder of those two but I’ve finally gotten to the point where when I smell smoke I think it smells disgusting instead of wanting to stop and buy one for a dollar from whatever stranger was huddled in the doorway. When I’m drinking is a completely different story however. Then they smell soooooo good and I usually end up bumming 1 or 5. I’m OK with that I guess since I don’t drink all that much anymore. I usually make a deal with whatever smoker I’m bumming from that I give them enough money to buy another pack and they give me one when I ask for one and we both come out ahead. They have at least half a pack left over the next day and I don’t have any left over since it was their pack. Anyway this year my “January 1st is as good a time as any to start doing something since it makes it easy to remember how long it’s been since you’ve started” thing is going to be that I’m going to get back into shape. Just like the last ones, I have made some preliminary steps in the right direction by going and working out every once and a while but not enough to make it a real habit or to really do much good. I want to enter some more races this year since I had a lot of fun at the team triathlon even though I wasn’t nearly enough in shape to do all that well in it.

I miss my beard again. The damn thing gets so itchy and annoying, then I cut it all off and then bam! My face is all cold. Plus I saw Hoop at a meeting last week and his was so lumberjackingly awesome it made me jealous. It might have been that I was missing mine because I just cut it off the day before. Who knows.