A day to dismember

So I finally took down my tree today. Since it was so big and now so dry and dead I decided not to bother trying to take it down whole and ended up cutting it into pieces so I can bag them and then dispose of them.

Last Thurdsay was the WPI IT Department's "Procrastinator's Holiday Party" which we ended up doing in January simply because people were far too busy to do it in December. It ended up being a smash hit and I got a lot of emails thanking me for hosting. It was a lot of fun and I'll probably end up offering up my place for next year as well. We'll just have to do it a bit sooner so my tree isn't practically dead for the party.

Read More

Cute baby

So I visited my sister and held the baby yesterday. She's so cute and adorable. I held her and she was small enough to hold in just one arm. It's so weird to have a niece. I'm not sure I'm quite ready to be an uncle. It just feels surreal.

Read More

It's official...

... I am now an uncle. Makayla Lee was born at 2:23 pm at Brockton Hospital today. 8 lbs and 18 inches. Mother, daughter and father are doing well. More information as I get it.

Read More

A whole lot goin on

Yeah, so the whole "everyone's getting married" thing still hasn't settled down much. I already have three scheduled for this year so far.

My brother's is in May and we're going to pick out Tuxes on Friday. The fun part is that we're going not just for sizing but to pick out the style and colors. As I've told my brother, this is one of the perks of having a gay brother; I get to help him make sure he looks good. I've also promised the fiancée that I'll make sure he looks good too. Now the big challenge is that my brother is not a dress up, formal clothes kind of guy. His idea of dressing up is a nice pair of courdoroy pants, a large sweater (which he looks like he's swimming in) and his t-shirt untucked underneath it. If you're lucky, he'll shave too. The thing is that I want my brother to look good since its his big day and I want him to hold his own against his beautiful bride-to-be, but at the same time I don't want him to look completely uncomfortable. My thought is that we'll go with something a bit edgy and modern for the tuxes. Very clean and simple looks. We'll see how it goes.

The next thing is that I get to help plan Cate's graduation party. You heard me right, Cate is gonna graduate this May. Maybe that's the reason for the odd weather. When Matt Crawford graduated it snowed in May. When Cate Carrigan graduates, it doesn't snow all winter? Hmm... I'll think on that. This should be fun. I'm meeting with her and Betty sometime in the next few weeks.

The final big thing is that one of my closest and dearest friends, Colin, is getting married in April. It should be a blast and I'm going down early to visit. Now I know I've mentioned he's getting married before but the new thing is that he's just asked me to be an usher, to which I couldn't be happier to say yes. Now a really fun trip is going to be even more fun and special.

As you can see I'm going to be in tuxes a lot this spring. Of course this means I have about 3 months to get in shape so I look good in said tuxes. Ahh, such work. :)

Read More

Now that was odd...

So the weirdest experience happened this morning. I was in bed and was in the process of waking up. I'd already hit snooze once so I was in that whole lightly sleeping stage. All of a sudden I heard a woman's voice very calmly and softly say "boo". It felt like someone had leaned over my ear and said it. It wasn't like someone trying to scare me, more like someone trying to wake me up. I woke up and there was no one in the room, nothing was out of place. It wasn't even the alarm since that went off about a minute later after I was wide awake. Also, this wasn't a dream since dreaming voices are kind of different. This one felt like I was actually hearing it. I could almost feel the breath on my ear. Very odd.

Read More

Dissappointed

Just a few last comments before I lie down for the evening.

Yes, I know about the fact that the anti-gay marriage amendment passed.

No, I'm not going to make a big post about it.

I think I've made myself very clear on this issue in the past. I'm saddened, and angry, and tired, and many other emotions right now, so lets just not go there... ok? Please?

Read More

A room with a view

Well, now that Blogger has updated its site, it has the opportunity to move things around and customize the blog fairly easily but.... (there's always a but...) you need to upgrade to a new design which means my current one won't work. Now of course I can go in and take one of the existing ones and tweak it (which is what I did when I moved to blogger) but honestly, I don't like any of the available designs and am a bit sick of the one I've got. The templates out on the web just aren't worthwhile plus the new version of Blogger hasn't been out long enough for people to make any good templates that are compatible with the new specs.

I want something nice and something new, but I have neither the time, nor the skill to do this myself. (Yes I know I could probably learn and given my technical abilities I could probably attain the skill to edit/create CSS templates but there's still the first issue, lack of time).

Does anyone know of any good resources for easily (read WYSIWYG) creating/customizing CSS templates? I deal with code enough on a daily basis, I don't want to deal with it for my journal.

Ok, folks. Help me to give The Crystal Cave a make-over. :)

Read More

Amusing...

My Peculiar Aristocratic Title is: Imperial Majesty Thomas the Winsome of Westley Waterless Get your Peculiar Aristocratic Title

Read More

Happy New Year

Hello 2007, good-bye 2006.

It was a fantastic party as usual. It's always fun to co-host something with Elliot and it was a pleasure being surrounded by old friends and new friends for the start of what I think will be a banner year.

Cleanup is mostly done at this point, and it actually went really quickly. The fun part is finding all the alcohol that people brought that I hadn't noticed, including several bottles of wine. :)

It's wierd being alone in the condo, especially with having all the furniture setup in the guest bedroom. Carlos left on Saturday and I ended up buying his desk, night stand and book shelf so I could advertise the room as furnished. For all the time I've been here except for about 2 days I've had a roommate and those days I was still in the process of moving in so they don't entirely count. I kinda like having the whole place to myself. If it didn't cost so much to do so, I'd probably fore-go getting a new roomie.

Well, tomorrow I go back to work. This vacation has been exactly what I needed. I barely checked my email the entire week. I didn't feel like I was getting behind on things. I actually, truly relaxed this week. Unfortunately, all good things come to an end and I have a very large list of things to get done at the beginning of this year so it'll be a while before I can slow down again.

I hope you all had a very happy new year's eve and I wish everyone a very happy new year to come.

Read More