Author: The Jody

I think this is going to be the 10th Christmas in a row that Santa doesn’t bring me a garage. I’m starting to really dislike the guy. I mean, I only ask for one thing, right? A garage. It doesn’t even have to be that big and fancy. I’ll take a plain one. I’ll even handle painting the inside and putting up shelves and hooks so we’ll have a formal place to hang up our shovels (snow and the other kind. Dirt?) and our power tools that we don’t really use as much as we should, which you can tell by looking at the shrubs in front of the house.

So I don’t think Santa is bringing a garage because he probably already would have had to start working on it, don’t you think? It’s only a few days until Christmas (Junior can do the math, so he has reminded me about 700 times that it’s only three more days – see, public schools work!) and I think they’d have to put in some kind of foundation. I’m resigned to looking out the window on Saturday morning and seeing my driveway. Resigned, but not happy about it.

Okay, sorry for the interruption. Moving servers is a bigger pain in the nether-region than I anticipated (due to my stupidly trying to upgrade some software at the same time) but I think I’ve got it all set. My email was a bit off yesterday and this morning, but I have a work-around in place. Whew! Remind me to not do that again, okay?

What else, then?

Oh, right. I need to update my Christmas music page – it just isn’t high on the list of priorities if you can imagine that. The thing is, I haven’t purchased much in the way of holiday music this year. I had a couple of items in my Amazon basket, but when push came to shove, I didn’t end up buying them. I did pick up two CDs, though, and will give you a brief review because you mean that much to me. I want to help you with your CD buying, you know.

Barenaked for the Holidays – A+

Just fantastic, really. And it even contains three Hanukkah songs, two of which are just beautiful, and a version of I Have a Little Dreidel that had the kids clapping their hands and singing along. The one sore spot for me is the remake of Do They Know It’s Christmas. Do not mess with the all-star 80s version, gentlemen. The best part of that song is switching singing styles between Boy George and Bono, and we were forced to fake that when we tried to sing along with you. Really, did this song need a remake? No.

Radio Disney Jingle Jams – C-

I’m just not crazy about it. I’m sure there are tweens out there who think this is the greatest Christmas CD ever, but I remember thinking that about the Partridge Family Christmas album. We were both wrong.

The ones I want but didn’t yet buy:

Chris Isaak Christmas – I’ve heard nothing but good things about this.

A John Waters Christmas – yes, that John Waters. No, he doesn’t sing, he just picked all the offbeat (and some disturbing, I hear) songs.

Okay, the DNS servers need to talk to each other to get you guys pointed to this new server. I feel like a character in Horton Hears a Who. You know, the people who yell because nobody believes they exist: “We are here we are here we are HERE!”

Today school was cancelled due to snow. It wasn’t much, so I’m not exactly sure why they cancelled, but actually, it worked out for me because Junior developed a cold or something over the weekend and I didn’t want to keep him home because he’s already missed too much school. This way I could keep him home and snuggle up with him (did I mention he passed it along to me?) and it wouldn’t count! Weee!

In other news, a friend of ours from the place where we eat breakfast on Sundays gave us a little box of treats and I just now discovered that her peanut butter fudge is EXACTLY like my grandmother’s used to be. Now I have to hunt her down and force her to give me the recipe. You see, Grandma B decided to never give anyone the recipe. Or she’d leave out key ingredients. I don’t know why she wanted to take the recipe to the grave, but she got her wish.

On that happy note…could it be any COLDER out there?

Would you rather win a Best of Blog award or a few “Buy one get one free” coupons for margerine? Right.

I did nominate my two favorites over at http://www.blogmechanics.com/bob/ for the Best of Blog awards. I would love to be as good and as funny as my favorites. Maybe if I put a little more effort into it. A little more “elbow grease” (What the hell is that?) to channel my dad circa 1977.

Okay deep breaths. Mr. Dump is out looking for a Christmas present for me, with a whole 6 days to spare! Do I have a wonderful guy or what?!

Yesterday there was a fine dusting of snow and frost on everything. I don’t even think it was a measurable amount of snow. So the general consensus was “ah, that’s nothing” and none of the roads were treated. Big mistake. You see, it was cold out…very cold. So that stuff wasn’t melting and evaporating. It was melting and freezing. Instant ice! It took Mr. Dump over THREE HOURS to drive from Leominster to Framingham. He missed his 8:30am root canal appointment because he didn’t get to Framingham until after TEN AM! I am going to be so upset if this means the appointments (I think there are three remaining) float over into 2005 and the dental insurance makes us pay the 2004 deductible AND the 2005 deductible. I would seriously pick a fight with them over that, that this is all “one” thing and should be treated as such. I’m not paying 1500 in deductibles just because the treatment requires a week between appointments.

Anyway, I only mention Mr. Dump’s commute because in my infinite wisdom, I planned to work at home yesterday. I had the furnace cleaned, saw Junior in his school play, and had a follow-up doctor appointment. I like to jam as much into a single day as possible, to get it all over with at once. I did sneak in a stop at the grocery store to pick up as much stuff as possible to get through until after Christmas – you know, the things we need every day, like juice boxes, stuff for school lunches, little bags of cotton candy. No wait, those are for Christmas presents.

Anyway, I would have lost those three hours of work and pay if I’d tried to drive in (we go the same way at different times because I have school bus duty at 7:45 and he’s already at work by then, usually) and thus not been paid for them. To hell with that! I’m not losing money because someone decided not to throw some salt down.