Weekend Roundup

Not much time to blog what's really on my mind tonight (and I'm alternating between writing and watching Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid on the Sleuth network - yes, Librarian, I missed recording Heroes again this week), so I thought I'd share a little update on the weekend's festivities:

• My birthday was great. After getting up to feed Lance, let him out to do his business and quickly post some pictures, I went back to bed. Friday was my day off (I work 9 x80 with every other Friday off). The family allowed me to sleep until 9:15am (a rarity around here). It worked to both our advantages as they wanted to finish wrapping my gifts and decorating cards. When Prudence woke me, I was in the middle of deep REM sleep. Didn't really know where I was. After a few minutes I recovered enough cognitive ability to drag myself out of bed and make it to the dining room table. Remember this nugget when you see my picture below. Prudence baked my favorite cake - a sour cream coffee cake. That was breakfast for us all. After a round of blowing out trick candles - The Boy and Em couldn't wait to see me blow them out - they gave me my gifts: Band on the Run by Paul McCartney & Wings from Em; A DVD recap of the 2006 World Series from The Boy; Don't Shoot Me I'm Only the Piano Player by Elton John from Panda; and Captain Fantastic & The Brown Dirt Cowboy by Elton John from Prudence. What a haul! Do I have the coolest family or what? After the kids did some school and went to gym & swim, we made the trek to Champaign for Zorbas! The weather was bitterly cold, but the gyros were hot and garlicky! We can't quite get the kids to try them. They eat a Chicago style all-beef hot dog on a pita, so we're working them up to gyros. The Boy even said he wanted Zorba's for his birthday, so we may be back in a month. Excellent.
• Saturday started out as a lazy day. Prudence and I alternated being up with the kids and dog and then back to bed. We didn't really get going until lunch. Then Prudence and Panda went shopping for ski/snow pants for Panda's first ski trip to Wisconsin next weekend. It'll be her first trip any significant distance from us without family. Naturally she's excited and we're a little nervous. But she'll be with a trusted group of people and 3 of her best friends. She'll be fine, but her mom will probably be a bundle of nerves. Anyway, with them shopping and a Saturday afternoon Denise the Menace marathon on Boomerang, I was set to do some blog customization. This place hasn't really felt like home since the move. Kinda like not having pictures on the walls. First, I was missing the Spaces banner DrCara worked up for me (Cara, we miss you!), so I needed to get that posted. Then there was the issue of fonts, colors and layout. Spent the better part of 2 hours making CSS/HTML changes to the template I'd chosen. Can you believe they didn't have styles for bulleted lists? I had to add the disc and circle statements all over the place. I'm still not completely happy with it, but I'd probably have to come up with my own template in order to be totally satisfied. That's too much work for now, so what you see here will probably still be here a year from now.
• Sunday brought church, adult bible fellowship, some maintenance work at the duplex, and of course the Super Bowl! Our church had planned to show the game on 2 screens using projectors from different parts of the building. Then we read about the church in Indianapolis that was banned from having a Super Bowl party. While we didn't really agree with the application of the ruling, we didn't want to be in violation of the copyright law. So Friday our minister rented a 50" TV and we changed the layout of our fellowship hall. It turned out pretty well, and 50-75 people had a great time watching the game. Lots of good food, fun, and fellowship. About 90% of the attendees were Bear fans, so a number of folks went home full but disappointed. Because I don't have a true allegiance to any NFL team, I was just looking for a good game. Won't say it was the best game played, but there were plenty of exciting moments in the first half, and my buddy Bill finally got a professional championship from one of his teams (sorry, Bill, but I probably won't be rooting for the Northsiders anytime soon).

That's it in a nutshell. Hopefully I'll be back later this week what I really should have blogged about. But I'll have slept since then, so don't bank on it. Until then, stay warm!