Non-Denominational Winter Holiday (NDWH)

This is how I spent my NDWH four-day weekend with my new boyfriend. Needless to say, he can be a bit of a sourpuss.


Other highlights included an arctic exploration with my cousin who was visiting from potato land. I told her she was crazy to leave so much skin exposed in those arctic winds, but she wouldn't listen.


We also baked a NDWH dinner of sorts. Yes, we had stuffing, mashed potatoes, squash, and chicken. Here I am anxious to "dig in".


Some additional scenic arctic pictures for your enjoyment. We also played a few games, did a puzzle, ate some good eats at local restaurants, and (*gasp*) I shopped a little bit. Hopefully you and yours had a good NDWH too.

Giving Thanks

I'll post my Thanksgiving summary today so I can stay up-to-date on my holiday summaries seeing how Christmas is bearing down on us quickly. I went back home to ND for the aforementioned holiday. I won't go into a lot of specifics since they're mundane. Mostly I ate a ton of food (mmm....stuffing, squash, Pizza Ranch), saw some relatives and friends, played "chase me" and hide-and-seek with my nieces, rode in the combine for a bit, and did a little of this and a little of that. My nieces like to take pictures, so I thought I'd post a chronicle on "how the world looks to someone less than three feet tall".

Said nieces who are less than three feet tall (and cute as buttons if I do say so myself).

Only YOU can prevent forest fires. Or is it Uncle Sam wants YOU?

"Big Alice". We're not being mean about her size. There is a "Little Alice" too. You don't want to get the two confused.

Hello, Grandpa.

Greetings, Grandma.

"My, what long arms you have."
"The better to pick you up with, my dear."

An adult took this one. The proper way to lift a piano without injuring your back.

Long Distance

Today we have a philosophical question to ponder. Here's the scenario: suppose you lived in the same town as someone and dated them for a good-sized chunk of time, say a year. Then, one of you moved several hours away for employment reasons. You tried to maintain the relationship, but you broke up and got back together several times over the course of about a year when you lived apart. Then, for other employment reasons, you once again live in the same town. What's the percentage of likelihood that the relationship will last for real now that you live near each other again? Is it a bad sign that you had trouble maintaining a long distance relationship?

Coming up....probably a belated Thanksgiving summary and more bathroom behavior stuff. Stay tuned.

Remembered thought from yesterday: You know you have had too much of the six sigma Kool-Aid when you see "The Biggest Loser" on TV at the Y and wonder if they've done a measurement system evaluation on the scale they use on the show.

Random

I saw a bumper sticker today that said "My kid has more chromosomes than yours", and then there was some small text underneath it that I couldn't read. I think this is maybe referring to down syndrome? But why do they say chromosomes? Don't they only have one additional chromosome? Maybe you could say chromosomes if you consider that every cell has an extra chromosome time a bazillion cells.... A more fun theory is that their kid is a different species and not human. I don't know how that's possible, but it would be interesting to see. Adopting a pet doesn't count.

I had another profound thought, but it escapes me at the moment. That's all for tonight, folks.

Prison: Week 3

My faithful readers may have noticed a dry spell the last week or so. My not-so-faithful readers probably didn't notice any difference. It was that time of the month again - time to go to prison for a week. It actually was relatively "easy". We only worked half days - you know, we didn't work past 10:00 P.M. I even had time to play a game of pool.

It was kind of interesting because there was another class at the training facility that was doing the balsa wood airplane experiment we did the previous week. They were in the "sissy" version of the training for people from the business side of things (marketing, procurement, human resources, etc.) instead of engineering. It was fun to watch somebody else struggle with trying to figure out how to fly those planes. We could feel their pain. I think the funniest part was watching someone "step off" the distance the plane flew when there was a 1'x1' grid right there on the floor to do the measurements. We got to watch them launch their planes this morning too. I think engineers do have a tendency to be a bit arrogant about their superior problem solving skills. Of course, that's because our skills are better.... ;-)

Tips

Here's a couple for ya:
1. Do not take a full dose of Nyquil if you expect to be coherent an hour later.
2. Don't leave your cell phone in vibrate mode if you're going to use it
as an alarm clock.

You Don't Always Die From Tobacco

BIL-Dan was telling me about this when I was home over Thankgiving, so I went and found it on YouTube. I haven't decided yet on what format my Thanksgiving post should take, so maybe I'll just not talk about that at all unless I get sudden inspiration. That's all for today, folks.