Nerds!

I think my mom is trying to get my kid beat up....

Speaking of nerds, this is what Michele got me for Christmas, minus the 10' screen, the steering wheel plus pedals, the kitchen rack, and the bucket seat out of a '90 911 Targa. Clearly she doesn't want me leaving the house, ever.

Fucking Holidays

No, I don't have a problem with Christmas itself, not like the family Thanksgivings of my childhood. It's just that my diet went to shit over the last week or so.

That's not the kind of progress that I was wanting. That's all behind me now and I'm all business, no fucking joke. I've been invited to join Ballard's Biggest Loser(I know, we don't even live in Ballard), organized by Rob, fancy uber scale by Paul. Fifty dollar buy in and winner takes all, three months time and loss gauged by percentage. Of course, that means I'm likely to be the one needing to lose the most. On the plus side, I've got a strong feeling that I'm the only one really committed so I guess I can go ahead and start spending that money now, right?

Privacy

So, over the years that I've had this blog going(and the other blog) I've been reasonably careful to protect my identity.  Last names, addresses, places of employment, and the like all carefully left out.  Not that I'm really concerned and I assume that by now most everyone that reads this blog knows exactly who I am in real life and none of the above is much of a secret anyway.  I've should also say that I self censor a fair amount(I know that's hard to believe) to avoid upsetting the delicate sensibilities of my family, friends, or work related connections.  With all that in mind, I fucked up.  One little slip on the other blog(since fixed) led a potential employer of my wife right there.  About once a month I take a glace at the Google Analytics data produced by the two sites just out of curiosity and I noticed hits at the other blog from one of the places Michele had recently contacted about a job.  I checked search criteria and sure enough, her full name coupled with her professional title entered into a specific search engine(there's people out there not using Google?) takes you right to the other blog.

At any rate, I'm not really concerned about it.  I find everything Michele has written there to be quite lovely, and since they didn't follow any linking to this site, they don't yet know about the more embarrassing part of the little life we've got carved out.  Me.

Charts!

I love charts, all things nerdy really.  My diet seems to be holding, longer than any past diet at this point, and I credit that to technology, nerdlynes, and charts.

This is the trajectory my weight has taken over the last month, actual weight removed to save myself the embarrassment, but I expect that someday early next year Wii Sean will be able to drop "morbidly" from his subscript.

The Picture May Be Blurry...

...but the message is clear.  Don't roll the stops in front of the cops.

Thanksgiving! Again!

A s a kid, Thanksgiving for me used to mean bad food, a whole lot of extended family, and sleeping in the storage cellar at a borrowed beach house. Seriously.

We used to gather at my grandparents house on the Oregon coast, all 20 or 30 of us(I honestly don't really know the count and can't be troubled for it right now). My grandmother would throw together the WORST Thanksgiving dinner know to man, think 20 lb turkey in the microwave for 2 hours and vegetables that aren't done unless they're gray. Not nearly enough room in the house for everyone and definitely not enough service, nuked turkey doesn't eat well on it's own, try getting into it with a plastic knife. Also, you're surrounded by a whole bunch of family that you love dearly individually but together it's one big ass clusterfuck. At the end of it all you still don't know what of the five borrowed beach houses you're stuck in and what cousin or sibling you've got to share a twin bed with. What it all boils down to is that Thanksgiving during my childhood sucked. It was never my favorite holiday, and one I never looked forward to.

As I recall, we almost didn't go to Thanksgiving with Paul and Sean two years ago, Michele's not big on new people and I almost got sucked into a family event(again, we love them, but not on Thanksgiving). Holy hell am I glad we went. Thanksgiving has been my favorite holiday since. Amazing, knock you on your ass food, good drinks, and great people. It's the highlight of my gastronomical year, and this year was no different.

Chipotle meatballs, of course.

It's amazing the amount of prep that goes into getting the boy to the party and ensuring that he doesn't get drunk while Michele does. We were successful at that by the way.

The boy was the source of much amusement and surprisingly well behaved all evening.

Here's to next year!

*I would be remiss if I didn't mention that we've had a few pretty damn good Thanksgivings along the way but none quite compare to the last three, which is the whole point.

Housekeeping

I just found out the RSS feed for The Misadventures of S & M hasn't been working for the last two(!) years. It is now fixed and that's where Michele and I have been posting boy related things. If you're not interested in the boy, well, I'm not even going to tell you what you can do if you're not interested in the boy, it's a little blue, even for me. Seriously though, if you've been reading through a feed reader, it should be fixed now.