Halfbrown

… Girlfriend.

LOL! No, I’m not dreaming of a white girlfriend, but I saw Sting in concert during his Soul Cages tour and he had a black comedian come on between Concrete Blonde and himself, and that man was friggin’ hilarious (I wish I could remember his name). It was around Christmas time when the concert came to town, and the comedian starts singing the intro to White Christmas and instead of saying “Christmas” he says “Girlfriend” and the entire audience starts screaming laughing.

But that’s not what I’m here to tell you.

I’m here to say that for the first time in I don’t even know how many years, my area of Washington state had a real white Christmas yesterday. A surprise snowfall blanketed our little town in Christmas joy, and it helped make the day even more special. We get snow pretty much every year, but not in an abundance, and almost never on Christmas day, so it was a real treat for everyone.

In a previous post I wrote that I was going to update this site with archived posts from my old website, among other sources. Now after several weeks of re-building sites in Movable Type and Wordpress, extracting pertinent posts, and updating many outdated links, I am finally finished.

Wow, that was a big job.

At this point all I have left it to take my offline notes, journals, etc. and put them online. And that’s going to be a heck of a task, because at least with the online posts I was able to automate some of the updates. With the offline resources I’m going to have to do it all manually.

I’ve been blogging for over 6 years and in updating the old posts I can see a lot of changes in my life, and not the obvious ones like kids and houses. I see a change in my outlook on life. It’s a very positive change, and that’s a good thing. This past year I’ve done much more offline writing than online, especially since I was trying to deal with combining several websites into one: this one. Hopefully in the next few weeks I’ll get them all added to the blog.

I’m so busy during the course of a normal day that I tend to not post here, even if I want to. I need to stop that.

Instead of making excuses I’ll be taking pertinent posts from my offline journals, notes, etc. as well as my old website(s) and putting them here for posterity. It makes sense, since I am trying to consolidate things to only a few websites anyhow. So, any post you see on this site before this time/date is possibly from another site, an offline source, or just a backfill that I meant to post but never did.

Here’s this years batch of costumes… Cute Moo Cow, Cool Ghoul (ghost), and Thomas the Tank Engine.

When the sky’s are clear in the morning, this is what our breakfast nook looks like. It’s a great place to eat in the morning, even if you’re not a morning person (like me).

So the last few days haven’t exactly gone off as expected. I was hoping to be able to spend about 12-14 hours a day painting and getting things in the new house ready so we can move in nice and easy this weekend, but it looks like I’ve bitten off more than I can chew.

First off, there’s some unpainted wainscot in the room that Bryce will be in, and we’re not too wild about it in there. We decided to rip it out and just paint in the room, but there’s some issues with that. Primarily the holes made by the nails from the wainscoat itself, and then the deep blue color on the walls underneath the wood. So four coats of primer and two coats of paint later the room is finally ready… mostly. Evans room required 2 coats of primer on one wall and only one on the remainder. Sheesh!

So I’ve taken the remainder of the week off as well and will have to finish up what I can before we move the big stuff this weekend and begin the last stage of purging ourselves from our old home. And some time soon I should really try to get more than 4 hours of sleep in a day.

In the current state of the real estate market, selling a home is very easy… but buying a new one is another story altogether. We’ve been looking for about six weeks now and we’ve just now found a place that looks like it’s a go on all fronts. We’ve been pre-approved for the loan, which is usually what’s problematic for folks, but for us it’s finding the right place, with the right schools, the right interior and exterior size, etc. It’s not that we’re picky to the point of craziness, but rather that homes are being sold in less than 24 hours (like ours was) so finding the really good houses has been tough. Really tough.

Today is both sad and joyous because we’ve got a nice fat check in our hands (that’s already all but spent) since we closed on selling our home today; but it also means that we’re back to renting… renting the home we owned just 24 hours ago. It’s a very odd feeling.

I’ve got a new love in my life, and I’m not ashamed of it at all. It all started a few weeks ago because I’ve been frequenting Starbucks quite a bit lately, but for their iced tea, not coffee (shaken, lightly sweetened venti black tea, to be exact). Today Shawrk and I went to Starbucks for some beverage goodness when I decided to get a couple of their “Old Fashion” donuts. Great googaly moogaly they are tasty! And I don’t even like sweets and candies very much!

Taking a bite of that donut is like a sweet taste explosion in my mouth that hits all the right spots. It’s a whole sensory experience… the aroma of the cake-like body, the texture of the sugary topping, it’s all there in a 4-inch circle of pastry joy.

Sadly this means that I will over-indulge in this appetizing confection for a week or two and then get sick of them. Then after another month or two I’ll just partake in one every now and again… but for now, Oh! the heavenly flavor!

So we’re rushing to get out of the house to visit our friends Jennifer, Greg, and Cindy, and as usual we’re running behind. Greg plays guitar, as do I, and he asked me to bring my guitar so we could noodle around a bit. Sounds great, and just before we’re ready to head out I decide to put the diaper bag and guitar in the back of my Suzuki XL-7. Evan decides to come outside to watch me and leaves the door open… and Lily promptly bolts outside.

Let me explain something about Lily: she’s a whippet, and whippet’s are sighthounds, and they’re like the second fastest dog in the world. When I say Lily bolts out of the door, I literally mean she bolts out the door. At about thirty-ish miles per hour. There ain’t no way I’m catchin’ her without a large net or a tranquilizer gun.

This isn’t the first time Lily has escaped, but usually she runs around the yard a time or two and then lets us catch her. Not this time. This time she races around the neighborhood as I’m screaming her name at the top of my lungs like a nut-case and other neighbors begin to help by trying to corner her. Of course, she thinks it’s a game, so it eggs her on to start running faster and farther away. Then she runs out into the road, full-bore.

The first thing I think is that she’s gonna get clipped by a car and I’m going to have to walk back home with a dead dog in my arms and Evan’s gonna see it all. I get a little nauseous thinking about it as I’m chasing her, but maybe it’s not the thought of her being hit as much as I haven’t run like that since high school and my body is saying “Um, no!”. My hearts pounding, my hands are shaking, and thankfully no car is coming down the road as she slides into the left hand lane like a race car.

Finally either exhaustion or my incessant screaming of her name registers and she stops in the middle of the road. Of course by this time cars have reached her and are stopiing in the road… about six of them. Finally she comes to me and I pick her up in my arms so that she can’t run anymore and I wheeze my way back home.

By this point the entire neighborhood has either come outside or peeked their heads out of the window to see who the idiot screaming “Lily” was, and what’s happening. And of course the comments start coming as I’m heading home: “She ran fast!”, “You should put her on a leash.”, and “Is that a greyhound?”, and all those comments are doing is making me cranky.

By time I get back to our yard I find Evan standing in the middle of the lawn asking me if I’m OK. On one had I want to blame him for letting her out in the first place, but he’s not even four yet and won’t get it, and it was an honest accident. All I could do was to explain to him, yet again, how Lily will run away and if she gets into the road again she could get hurt.

She’s OK now, as are we all, and we made it to Greg and Cindy’s house to visit with them and Jennifer only being about 15 minutes late. And for us, that’s pretty normal.