None of my shit ever gets old.

WIFEZILLA: Hey, who played Principal Moss on King of the Hill?

TACO: Huh?

WIFEZILLA: The voice actor who does Principal Moss on King of the Hill. I recognize him from somewhere.

TACO: Hang on, I'll look him up.

WIFEZILLA: Has he done any other voice acting?

TACO: Oh! He was Principal Moss on King of the Hill!

WIFEZILLA: You know, none of your shit ever gets old.

There's a giant doing cartwheels.

Took this photo from my front porch this morning. It fails utterly to capture what I really saw.

Incoming Movie Binge

I love the after-Christmas DVD sales. In addition to a couple of just-'cause gifts for other people, I snagged season 2 of Big Bang Theory, season 1 of True Blood, and season 5 of The Office for myself this week, at a mere $17 a pop. I finally broke down and decided to buy Wet tonight, and that trip to Best Buy yielded copies of 9, District 9, and Paranormal Activity.

I think my DVD dry spell may be over. I might even get around to watching Tropic Thunder, finally, Coyote.

Been about a month since I sent out my last short story submissions. No word yet. The wa-yay-ting is the hardest part.

Got a gorgeous wooden brain teaser puzzle set for Christmas this year. Due to a misunderstanding over something I said last night, wifezilla let kidzookie play with it today. It's now in pieces I'll never figure out how to reassemble, and worthless for display. So now it's in the trash. Le sigh. Win some, lose some.

Mailed out a couple of late Christmas gifts at lunch today. Yes, I'm well aware that you hate Christmas. Call it a Happy Today gift if you must.

Made up my mind to be Mellow Taco at work today. Went much more smoothly than it has when I've been my usual charming self. Guess I'll have to keep it up. I think it may actually keep me from having a heart attack in the long run.

Off to drink beer and watch 9. Yay.

Vampirism in the Modern World

Do vampire activists worry about peak hemoglobin?

Wherein Kidzookie Discovers Monty Python

We had the big family shindig for Christmas tonight. One of our traditions is to play that old holiday game where everyone brings a fairly inexpensive gift, and everyone has the opportunity to pick an unopened gift or steal someone else's. Great fun.

This year, someone brought the Rabbit of Caerbannog. My son went nuts for the thing. I was already out of the game, having won a $10 lottery ticket. Wifezilla fought valiantly for the stuffed animal, but was unable to secure it (side note: having failed to acquire the rabbit, she wisely went for the kill on the growler of beer, which she later traded to my cousin for the snuggie he won. I call it a bad trade, but she's been wanting a snuggie).

The boy was pretty upset to see the rabbit elude his grasp, but we promised to let him spend some of his Christmas money on one. I promptly searched for one, found the very one he'd liked so much... and it's out of stock.

However!

I also found this one, which is quite possibly the best toy evar.

Wifezilla is awesome.

We traded stories about our days when I got home from work. My story was pretty boring.

Wifezilla, on the other hand, regaled me with the tale of her shopping trip. She parked and was getting Girlzookie out of the car when she noticed two children in the car parked next to her. Alone. One was an infant in a car seat, and the other was a toddler.

She was concerned, was our heroine, so she stood around for about a bit to see if Lousymom showed back up. When 15 minutes failed to produce Lousymom, Wifezilla called the highway patrol, who advised her to call 911. She promptly did so, and left them her name and number.

They dispatched a cop, and Wifezilla didn't hang around for the fireworks once he showed up. He did call her a bit later to thank her for the report. Not only were the children left alone in the car, but it turns out the doors were all left unlocked as well. He apparently managed to track the mother down in a nearby restaurant, and yelled at Lousymom until she cried. While no charges were pressed, it apparently does go on her permanent record, so to speak. I'm not sure what that means exactly, but I readily admit to some significant schadenfreude where the crying is concerned.

I wish I could buy the cop a beer. Instead, when I buy Wifezilla a beer for being awesome, I guess we'll raise the first glasses to him.

Zee Germans, Tommy.

Long day.

They had the grand opening of the office today. The governor came out for it. The news crews came out, but it was a pretty small event, so I don't know that it'll actually show up on any news outlets. If it does, keep an eye out for me and marvel at how I behaved myself.

Been doing financial investment training courses. Jeebus. How is some of this shit legal? I start the actual classroom training tomorrow. Maybe I can ask them then.

The prereq courses I've been taking have been online ones the company put together. They're very typical of corporate training courses. Their attempts to be politically correct wind up being hilarious. The fictional investor whose story we followed today was Ralph Menses. I shit you not. I'm not mature enough to do this shit.

Company dinner at The Pit to celebrate the opening tonight. Great fun but also somewhat odd. Several times I introduced myself with just my first name only to be met with an epiphanic, "Oh, you're [insert my whole name]." My friends made jokes about my reputation preceding me. I wonder if I should be concerned.

People there are super nice. Met an Indian guy who is one of the funniest fuckers I've ever met, and I know all three of you who will read this, so that's saying something. Also, god damn, zee germans can throw down.

And now to bed with me. I am le tired and I have an early day tomorrow. Whee.

We had children so we could torment them.

KIDZOOKIE: Mom won't let me watch Aqua Teen Hunger Force.

TACO: K.

KIDZOOKIE: It's really funny. There's a milkshake guy.

TACO: Does he bring all the boys to the yard?

KIDZOOKIE: What?

TACO: Are they like, "It's better than yours?"

WIFEZILLA: [yelling from the next room] Damn right, it's better than yours!

Jeez It, the Cops!

I'm proud of that little scientific mind.

KIDZOOKIE: Hey, dad.

TACO: Yeah, buddy, what's up?

KIDZOOKIE: Is Santa real?

TACO: Sure he is. Why?

KIDZOOKIE: Well, I mean, magic isn't real, so how in the world would reindeer fly?

TACO: I dunno.

KIDZOOKIE: I think you and mom just buy a bunch of presents, and then on Christmas Eve, you check on us to see if we're really asleep. Then if we are, you put the presents under the tree and label them from Santa so we'll think that he put them there.

TACO: You think so?

KIDZOOKIE: Well, come on. It makes a lot more sense.

Things that are awesome because they happened to someone else.

My wife had to explain to my son what a vasectomy is tonight. It wasn't me. And that makes it awesome.

To hold my tongue speaks of quiet reservation.

Progress was made on the security for my little side project. Got the authentication stuff set up, so the site can now authenticate users and grant or reject access based on the users' granted rights. Sweet. Next up is encrypting the password. Yay.

My joints have been in really shitty shape for the past week or so. This week has featured a new treat in that my hands have been so painful that I haven't played guitar in days. I tried to play WoW last night but my hands hurt too much for that, too. Getting old is for the birds.

The pain in my joints eased up a bit today since I have naproxen again. I seem to be developing another ear infection to replace the pain though. Whee. I just fucking love the shape of my ear canals.

Big reveal went pretty well. The boss and I discussed my taking a new job, and he was pretty gracious about it. I felt kinda bad for him, because he came back from vacation sick as hell and had to have that conversation with me. He was supposed to talk to his boss about it and then get back to me and send an email out to the rest of the team. The email didn't seem to go out today, so I spoke with my team lead this afternoon just to make sure he was up to speed for any project planning he was doing. So... new job. Wow.

Pretty sure wifezilla's completely hooked on Buffy now. I've been given orders that I'm not to get ahead of her in the series. Excellent.

Done ruined that boy.

I came home today to a gift from my son wrapped up and waiting in my favorite chair. I opened it to find this piece of beauty, and it is indeed fucking awesome. I can't really go through it till I finish burning through the DVDs, but holy shit does it rock.