One Arm Wing Steve...

...was delicious!

Steve In The Bread Pan, Pickin' Out Dough...

Through a chain of events far too convoluted to recount here, I went from having Thanksgiving dinner at my Mom's house, to having it at my girlfriend's house with her family, to having it at my house with just me & her (which is just fine by me). We did the shopping for the dinner on Sunday and while we were putting the groceries away, she told me that we had to name the turkey. "What?" I asked. "You have to name the turkey before you cook it," she said. "Isn't that a bit macabre?" I asked. She assured me that it wasn't - it was a long-standing tradition in her family, and I better shut up and stop teasing her if I knew what was good for me (she might have implied that last part). "Fine", I told her, "I christen this turkey "Steve"". She told me that wasn't a proper name for a turkey, and I informed her that it was my turkey, I bought it, and since naming a dead bird carcass was approaching the high side of crazy anyways, it's name was Steve. "Fine", she sighed. She emailed me today and reminded me to take Steve out of the freezer, so I put him in the fridge to thaw before I went to class. I told one of my co-workers that I had Steve chillin' in the fridge (pun intended) so we would be ready to put him in the oven on Thursday. I guess since at least three of my co-workers are named Steve, the odd looks I received are understandable. Ah well, my brain is fried from building four custom databases and three Novell servers in a week, so I'm looking forward to eating Steve with all the trimmings. Have a good Thanksgiving, everybody...

Aint' No Smoggy Smoke On Rocky Top

Got my 35mm pics from vacation developed, and I had a few that I was pretty pleased with - I finally got to experiment with the 16mm lens I bought a while back, now I just have to learn to keep my damn hands out of the frame. It's interesting that even though digital cameras can rival the quality of film nowadays, the pictures I shoot with my 35mm camera have a distinctly different "feel" to them - I think it's because with my digital camera & a 1GB memory card I can store well over a thousand pictures, so I shoot pretty indiscriminately - this results in pictures that have much more of a "snapshot" quality (which isn't necessarily a bad thing). I think that this actually makes me a better shooter when I do use film, as I am much more deliberate with lens choice, composition, etc., when I finally do drag out the 35mm rig. I am seriously considering a digital SLR in the not-too-distant future, since they are rapidly approaching the "not-entirely-ridiculous" price range, and I won't have to get rid of all my glass. I wonder how it will affect my photography...

Breathe, Breathe In The Air

Hey everybody, back from vacation. Sure is pretty in the mountains this time of year. I was going to do a write up on the vacation with pics & such, but the girlfriend beat me to it - head over to her site if you want to read it (Caution: do not proceed if you harbor any delusions about my secret identity). I still have to get my 35mm film developed, and there's a photography contest that's run by the local entertainment newspaper coming up that I like to enter every year - I took some shots of waterfalls with my fish-eye lens that I think might be very, very cool if they came out. I will post some here as soon as I get them developed.

I spent several hundred dollars more than I intended to on vacation and there was an unexpected $700 bill waiting in my mailbox when I returned home (attorney fees from a matter that I thought was long resolved) so that's just great - looks like I'm going to have to suck up as much overtime as possible at work for a couple of months.

Shortly before I left, my doctor diagnosed me with sleep apnea - which makes sense, considering I haven't gotten a good night's sleep in about seventeen years. The cure involves learning to sleep with a mask attached to my face that is connected to a CPAP machine. This is a lot harder than it sounds - so far, the routine has been 1.) Get ready for bed, 2.) put on mask, 3.) lie awake for three hours, 4.) yank off mask in frustration and fall asleep, and 5.) wake up feeling like crap. Luckily there is a pretty active online community of people dealing with this, and apparently it's a pretty rough thing to get used to, so I don't feel too bad. My biggest worry was that it would freak out my girlfriend, but she's been really supportive about the whole thing (I think she prefers the mask to my snoring).

I need to winterize the bike and put it on the battery tender, don't want to have to drop another $100 on a battery again next year. Lots of people getting in the last rides of the year around here lately, hopefully this month will stay mild enough that I can do the same...