Christmas 2008

Dodge Handing Me a Gift
Originally uploaded by Jamie Howell

We had a very nice Christmas this year with my family at Mom's house. Mom made a delicious turkey dinner and after opening gifts we watched a couple movies while Mom made empanadas for a snack.

Dodge's parents sent us some very nice gifts. The cookie racks were very much needed and I have a new recipe I want to try in the dutch oven.

Photos from Christmas have been posted to my Flickr account! Take a look!

Pooping Toy Collection

Here is a photo of my growing "Pooping Toy" collection. Technically only 2 of these items are mine. Dodge is the proud owner of the reindeer and polar bear but he's really ok we me keeping our poop in a group at my desk at work.

It started three years ago when I got Matt's gift in the work gift exchange. A pooping santa and some other little gag gifts. Lovely. It was last year's Christmas that I got the pooping snowman from Matt to add to my collection. Very funny joke, Matt. How did you know I needed more pooping toys?

Also last year my sister, Christy, had purchased a pooping reindeer for Dodge. She was unaware of my other toys which made it even funnier. Our family is cursed to collect pooping items!

This year our work decided to skip the gift exchange. Matt was relieved because he didn't think he could find any more pooping toys for me. However, Christy did not disappoint us by finding Dodge a Poo-lar Bear. I'm keeping it in the packaging. I don't want to ruin it's value by playing with it.

I've brought all the pooing toys to work so they can all hang out happily on my toy shelf together. The santa and snowman candies are long gone but today I realized the reindeer still has some poop left in him. The brown jelly beans look very old and nasty (fossilized poo?) so I don't think I'll be tempted into eating it.

Baby Girl!

Baby Girl!
Originally uploaded by Jamie Howell

The second ultrasound was yesterday. Everything checked out well. Baby is very happy and healthy and everything looked very normal. Some things the sonographer couldn't check and so I will have to come in again next month for another look.

The little one wasn't exactly cooperative while we were trying to determine the gender. Their little legs were crossed and trying to block our view. The tech did say she believes it to be a little girl!

We're all very excited. Now we can focus on baby girl names. We will hold out on buying girl baby items until next month's ultrasound when we can verify the gender for certain.

Fun Gift!

We went to Ed and Misty's on Saturday and we had a little gift exchange. I got an origami calendar! Pretty neat, huh! Pictures of some of the folks (mostly people's adorable kids) can be found in my Flickr. It was nice to see Nathan and Kim all the way from Poland! Before he complains; yes I was happy to see you too, Alan.

I brought my new calendar to work because I thought Matt might enjoy doing the origami, too. He's out sick today but it starts in January anyway so it's no rush.

Since I did bring it to work and we're not here January 1st, I did the first origami to try it out. Check out my sweet dove! Yeah, I'm pretty much an origami master now.

My Kindle's Broked!

Dodge got me a Kindle for Christmas this year and yes I've already opened it. To be fair, he opened his first (I had bought him one, too). I only wanted mine after seeing him use his for a few days. I was trying to hold out for Christmas!

It's a really neat book reader. I purchased some books and can read any of them on the go without having to haul novels around with me. It's pretty spiffy!

The problem is that ever since registering it on Amazon, it has not connected back to Whispernet, the wireless connection through Sprint the device has. That means I can't browse the Amazon store or wirelessly purchase any other books with the device. I can buy ebooks online and transfer them to the kindle with a USB cable so I'm not completely unable to get books. However, part of the coolness of the book is being able to browse and get books on the fly without your computer.

I spent some time on the phone this morning with Amazon Kindle Support. The good news is that the guy on the phone really didn't know what to do with me. Makes it feel like this isn't a wide spread problem with the device. He had me try resetting it and verifying the registration of the device. He checked the signal for the Whispernet service in both my home and work locations and says that shouldn't be any problem. He tried for me to get the diagnostics from the kindle but the command he gave me brought up a blank page.

So we're going to have to exchange my kindle for a new one because the wireless device in this one is just plain broke. The bad news is that Amazon is completely sold out of kindles. He said they show the next shipment to arrive in March. March! Gah!

Since I can use the kindle still to read my books he said to just keep it for now and he'll hold off sending me the shipping lables until they have some in stock to swap with me. That way I can continue to use my kindle instead of just watching Dodge use his for 3 months.

Matt's Cube Decorating Plans

Matt's latest project is turning his little cubicle into a warm and inviting place to spend his eight hours a day.

He has started simply by purchasing a bear skin rug for the floor of his cube.

"The bear was actually much bigger, the hide just shrunk in the wash.", was what he told me when I asked him about it.

It has added a nice bit of character to his space. It's also convenient as it has a squeaker located in the head of the bear that we've been instructed to use as his new doorbell.

Matt's further cubicle enhancement project plans includes adding a small fireplace as well as getting a smoking jacket and pipe. Doesn't that sound nice!

Until he finishes his project he will just sit comfortably and enjoy the wonderful ambiance his new rug brings to his cube.

I Can Haz Signal!

Since I've moved to our current building, (ohhh maybe 5 or so years ago) I've had zero cell phone service while inside. I dunno. It's some sort of anti-cell-signal eater building.

It was annoying to try to train people to just call my work phone to reach me while at work. Some people felt awkward about calling my desk phone and I guess hearing my "professional" voice answer instead of just calling my cell. My brother has been an exceptionally slow study in this task. On the plus side, annoying sales calls or head hunter contacts automatically get shuffled to voicemail without me ever knowing they called.

I had pretty much resigned to my fate that my cell phone was darn near useless once I entered this building. It was irritating (especially when trying to post something about Matt) but it wasn't crushing my soul or anything. Besides I could still use it as an ipod for music so it wasn't a total waste to continue to carry it.

Last week I noticed a strange device on the ceiling here at work only about a cube away from mine. It looked like a small pop can sized traffic cone. It was all white and stuck to the ceiling upside down. I stared at it for a while. Asked Matt what it was. He stared too. No one was sure. We guessed maybe work was getting with the new century and giving us wi-fi. I picked up my iphone and searched for a signal with no luck. Shucks.

Today though I noticed that my cell phone actually buzzed when Ed sent me a text about this weekend. Activity from my phone at work? How odd! I checked it and wonder of wonders I had a full 5 bars of signal and connection to the Edge network!

It's a miracle and I'm very happy! Thank you work people that decided we needed this!

Skunked Again!

Today was a work Christmas Pot Luck / Party. It was a lot of fun with a ton of food and little fun games. This is a picture of some of the few items left after everyone had eaten. I didn't bring my phone with me to get a picture of it before hand.

They secretly stole some items from people's desks and we had to guess who's it was. I did horribly. There was a game of "Family Feud" where we had to guess some top answers from a survey that was handed out to everyone. My team lost big time. Then we did a story game passing presents around. Karen next to me got a gift certificate for a pizza from a local restaurant. The lady on the other side of me got a gas card. I open my envelop and found a piece of paper that said "Happy Holidays" on it. Bleh.

Now my belly is full and I still have a couple of hours of work left that I have to keep my eyes open. Lets hope I can do it!

Snow!

We woke up to quite a bit of snow this morning. Most if not all the local area schools were closed. Our street had a large tree down in the middle of the road for some reason as well. It must be a pretty heavy snow.

It's still snowing and according to the weather man this morning is likely to continue until this afternoon. The main roadways were pretty clear and I had no trouble getting to work though.