It’s been snowing all day. They’re saying maybe as much as another eight inches by Monday morning.

Yesterday, I had to buy a new tire for the car. Then we went shopping at the mall… just getting into the mall took probably 15-20 minutes. It was very busy. But all my shopping is done, with the sole exception of buying gifts for Tasha, but I can’t very well do that with her being there. I’ll do that Monday or Tuesday. We finalized the Christmas plan and it looks a little bit like this; Wednesday night grab the dog and head east after work. We’ll probably get a hotel room and leave the dog with T’s mom. Then Christmas morning we’ll have breakfast with my folks and then dinner with Tasha’s people. After which I’ll head home so I can work on Friday. Tasha may or may not stay on that side of the state for the weekend. If she does I’ll head back out Saturday morning to be with her, but that’s undecided at this point.

Today I watched the Lions make history (0-14) and Tasha went shopping for my gift. I’ve got nothing else at this point. Later.

Good Saturday morning to you. Are you ready for Christmas? I’m not. But I imagine that I’ll be far more ready by the end of the day. Yep, you guessed it, I’m going to head out to the stores and malls on the last Saturday before Christmas… why, oh why do I do this to myself. It could all be avoided with just a little foresight. Ah well, I’m just going to look at it as if it were a tradition.

Really I don’t have much to get. My list is short; both of my sons, Tasha, a token for my folks, and something for my grandmother who’ll be here in Michigan this year. I’d already bought something for my boy, but I’ve since learned that I’ll have to take it back and get something else. What any of these gifts will be, I haven’t a clue.

We’ll be having a white Christmas this year, and then some. I think we got somewhere between 8 and 10 inches of snow yesterday. (It was a mess trying to drive around in that, seemed like nobody was plowing the roads.) And they’re calling for another 4 inches of snow tonight, with the possibility of another storm coming through early in the week. Did I mention that I’m not particularly fond of snow, cold, or winter? I’m not.

Well, I’m off to fix a flat tire and do some shopping. Later.

Tonight we joined the MAC (Michigan Athletic Club). It’s kind of my Christmas present to Tasha. We’ve got a dual purpose to this… firstly, we’re getting wildly out of shape and need to get some exercise. And secondly, we still don’t know anyone out here and with a little effort we should get to both meet some locals and have something to do that isn’t watching TV or playing video games. It’s a pretty impressive facility, actually, it’s three facilities located around Grand Rapids. All the usual stuff; tennis courts, raquet ball courts, weight machines, indoor track, pool, fitness classes, etc. etc. etc.. The price is a bit high, but not as much as we’re paying for cable TV. So I guess I’m looking at it as an investment in me, us, and our health. I’ll keep you posted on how it all works out.

So I went and bought Microsoft Expression Web 2 with the hope that I could use it to make an updated site. But it’s been sitting in the desk for a month and I have only made a basic template… and even that is built on the same old table design that I used before. I’m not exactly blazing a path toward having a fully realized site. Even this weblog is plain old vanilla default layout. I blame it all on a combination of the game City of Heroes and my being lazy as hell. All I can say is soon I’ll have something a little more personal.

Hell, at this point I haven’t even posted on my blogger site that I’ve gotten this back.

Also, I can’t use CorelDraw or CorelPaint for graphics because the version I have won’t play nicely with Vista. I may have to get my old machine back out just to make graphics… or I guess I could learn a new program.

eh… this is just a rambling mess of a post. I’ll do better next time. At least you know I’m still out here.

–Ronn