I had a pretty nice Thanksgiving. I went up to my sister's in Omaha. I left Thursday morning and drove 3 hours to get there. The drive was much nicer in my car than it used to be in the Tracker. The cruise control works, there is less wind noise, and I don't get blown all over the road. Dinner was great--my brother-in-law smoked the turkey and my sister made some excellent side dishes. I think she went a little overboard on the marshmallows in the sweet potatoes. She also made pumpkin pie from real pumpkin with ice cream in it. It was very smooth.

Friday morning--not real early mind you--we went to Furniture Mart to see what specials they had. I ended up buying a toaster oven for $15. It normally runs about $40. My sister bought one as well. She bought a lot of stuff. I actually ended up buying a new dining room table. It is not an expensive one, but with the table fully extended it measures 54" x 54". I think the square table is kind of cool. I also got 4 chairs and a bench seat. I have some friends that come over every year and make a gingerbread house and open gifts--and they keep having kids. My current table only seats 4 comfortably and when having bee squeezing 3 adults and 2 kids around it. This year there will be an additional kid and their baby will bring it to 4 kids when she gets old enough to sit at the table. It doesn't get delivered for another week, but I am kind of excited.

I have been buying quite a few Christmas presents already. I already purchased and wrapped the gifts for my sister's kids and left them there when I went up for Thanksgiving. I have bought most of the gifts for my friend's family. I have half of my niece's family. I know what I want to get my nephew's family and then I have 2 nephews and 3 niece's left. I have the gift for the sister I am supposed to buy for this year. My parents are the hard ones. One of my other sister's husband suggested we paint Mom and Dad's house. They have a brick house, but the trim and the accents need to be painted. I had several of my sisters call me about it. Everyone is a little uneasy about it. I need to call my little brother and ask him what he thinks. He lives closer to them and has seen the house recently. My sister who lives in town with my parents said that the last time it was painted, they did not remove the gutters and so when the gutters came down the wood was basically bare. I am still not sure why they took the gutters down. Anyhow, they are my dilemma.

I am actually looking forward to Christmas this year. I need to book my flights, but I am going to my parents as usual, but instead of just the one sister being there, my sister in Georgia and her family should be there as well as my little brother. My baby sister and her family will be there on Christmas day. Since there will be 5 of us there, that is more than half. I am just not sure when my little brother's daughter will be there. She is spending a good bit of the holiday with her mother. It would be more exciting if more of my nephews and nieces could be there with their families, but the youngest nephew will be there and that will be a lot of fun.

The weather is getting cold and we even got a dusting of snow this evening. I had originally planned to drive the Tracker in weather like this, but I let a friend borrow it because he is having problems with his truck. I am just not sure that I would actually want to drive it. With the Tracker being so light, it gets blown all over the road in inclement weather. Also, the top is loose so there is a lot of wind noise and you actually get a draught. I just don't really want to drive my car in the salt, plus it has 4 wheel drive.

I need to get some work done. Things at work seem to be moving along as planned, but I have to keep on top of everything.

It has been a while since I have posted anything because my computer keeps giving me an error every time the browser tries to open a new window. It really sucks. I try every now and again to post something and when it doesn't work, I just stop.

We have been playing a lot of Fluxx, some Gloom and some Bang. I really enjoy playing games. This past week end I went to some of my dance friends house for a dirty shirt party. The idea was to wear a dirty shirt--either literally or figuratively. There were quite a few very interesting shirts. Mine basically was an advertisement for Derty Hoes--Every Man Needs a Derty Hoe. Anyhow, we played Skip-Bo and Catch Phrase. Catch Phrase is a really good party game because it can be played with just about any number of people and it is just a lot of fun. You split up into two teams and you sit in a circle with every other person being on the same team. One player looks at the word on the disk and tries to get one of their team members to guess the word. Once the word is correctly guessed, the disk is passed to the next player who clicks to the next word and tries to get their team to guess the word. There is a timer and when the timer buzzes the team not holding the disk gets a point and has the option to guess the current word. If they guess correctly, they will get a second point. The first team to get to a specified number of points wins. I don't remember the number of points you need to have. We generally play girls against the guys when we play. Everybody had a great time with it on Saturday.

With the holidays coming up, I have been trying to determine what to get the multitude of people for Christmas. Meanwhile everyone keeps asking me what I want for Christmas. I really want a plasma TV with built in DVD player for the basement to replace the TV that went out, but I would never expect anyone to spend that kind of money. It seems like everything I need, I just go get and most of the things I want are much better remaining things to want instead of things to have. A friend of mine did not understand that until he thought about his wife and how she likes the idea of getting things, but doesn't really appreciate having them. I think there is a lot that I like the idea of having, but if I actually had any of them they would just sit somewhere unappreciated.

As for what to get people, I have a closet full of Darth Taters and Spud Troopers for some of my nephews and great nephews. Unfortunately, they are too young for all the Legos in the closet. I don't know why I buy all these things. I have tubs of Legos and I have a lot of the Star Wars Legos. When they first came out, I thought it would smart to buy duplicate copies of the sets and save them for later and sell them to collectors. I am no longer betting on the collector market, but I have a bunch of stuff just taking up space. I figure eventually I will be able to give them as gifts.

Anyhow, I hope everybody has a happy and safe Thanksgiving.

I did not go to the World Wide Dungeons and Dragons Game Day. Instead I go together with my gaming friends and we played our current campaign on Saturday. Evidently the official WWDNDGD stuff did not arrive at my friend's mom's store in Manhattan, so he stayed in town and we gamed at his house. I feel kind of bad. I had somewhat harassed the local game store owner (Table Top Games) about having some sort of activity that day--and then I didn't go. It was nice to play the other game though. We actually seemed to make a lot of progress. My character leveled up and he is now a multi-classed Rogue/Fighter.

Speaking of games, we finally played Gloom by Atlas Games--they also make Lunch Money. I really enjoyed the game. I had bought from the local gaming store before Halloween at the same time I bought Fluxx by Looney Labs. We had been playing Fluxx a lot lately. It is a very fast paced and simple game. It is also a lot of fun. Gloom actually fits my mood a little better. The goal of the game is to get the least pathos points on your dead family members when any player loses the last member of their family. You play modifiers with either negative or positive pathos points on family members, you can play events to do special things, or you can have your family member have an untimely death. The text on the cards is funny and it is so cool that the cards are transparent.

I was so excited when I got home tonight, my copy of the Firefly soundtrack had arrived from Amazon.com. Unfortunately I need to be heading to bed, so I didn't play it yet. I plan to listen to it tomorrow on the way to work.

You can't take the sky from me.

For some reason I feel the need to post on the blog here, even though there really isn't anything to say. I only had one dance lesson tonight because my instructor wasn't feeling well. She did mention that she wants me to see the judge this week, which means she wants me to buy more lessons. I already bought some this year and I told her I wasn't buying any more. She knows I mean it when I say I won't buy any more, but she hopes that I won't be able to say that to her manager who actually handles all that part.

I am somewhat excited that this weekend is World Wide D&D Game day. Of course, I think I have said that already. I am still trying to decide if I will go to Manhattan, KS with some friends or if I will stay in town and go to my local game store. If I don't go to Manhattan, it will save me a lot of time and I get to do things on my schedule. I just need to decide before Saturday.