Tomorrow is a new year.

Tomrrow is just another day.

All righty, then.

Glad I said that.

Heidi and I hit the Hurricanes game last night and watched the fourth win of the Peter Lavilolette era… coincidentally, it was a 2-1 win, like the other three. The Hurricanes controlled the intensity of the game from start to finish, and Buffalo’s goal took advantage of the one real lapse in play, in the first period. We were pleased.

Plus, we got to be there as Ron Francis passed Marcel Dionne for fourth on the all-time scoring list. That was pretty damn awesome. He also passed Stan Mikita on the goals list. It’s so cool being at games where he hits these landmarks.

John Buccigross writes what he would do if he were GM… and he and I think alike– the Canes just need one more scoring forward. And it would be awesome if it were Miroslav Satan. I’m a fan of the Miro. Of course, I would also be pretty happy to bring in Joe Juneau, but I don’t think that would help the team so much. I just really like Joe Juneau.

I so rarely link to anything that Heidi is more likely to blog than I am, but she sent this link a little while ago with the disclaimer that “it may only be funny to immigration nerds though.”

How Is Santa Claus Coming To Town? from The Immigration Portal

Here’s a really sad commentary on the TSA and their powers in the post-9/11 landscape. (courtesy the doctor) I find it exceedingly disturbing that a beta fish would cause so much uproar. A beta fish! I can only hope that when this young woman returns home, she won’t have the same problem.

The saddest part of all of this is that she’s probably now on an FBI watchlist.

Not much takes away the impetus to blog like a vacation. I spent a lot of time over the past week in my house, in my pajama pants, reading comic books, drawing, farting around looking at websites that had no new content because, dammit, it was Christmas. Anthony and I worked on Episode -2, which went fairly well for a crowd of 24.

But most of all, I spent a lot of time by myself, just doing mindless things. It was nice. I came back to work today feeling pretty refreshed. The sense of urgency about LEARN that just sort of disappeared in mid-November is back, at least a little bit. I spent a lot of time in December just thinking about DSI, and I’m feeling really, really good about that, too.

I just hate how everything is consumed by Christmas in December. It seems like the Univsersity sort of shuts down, you spend more time talking about Christmas than you do actually doing something meaningful with the time you have. No one is in the office– as you try to get things accomplished, you find yourself doing them alone. (There’s something to be said for that, but I also get depressed when everyone else is gone and I’m at work trudging away. Lame, I know.)

So, December ends soon, and I’ll spend the first few workdays of January at home (I never work on my birthday) and in the mountains doing a training. And then it’ll be solidly 2004, and that, friends, is kind of exciting.

Kirk was relieved of his little friends on Monday, but within a day, he was done being irritable and was a happy kitten again. Heidi and I have a hard time taking the kitties to the vet because we hate to hear them cry so badly!

Anthony and I have spent some more time rehearsing for Episode -2, which I am damn excited about at this point. Should be hella fun.

I had a dream last night where I was in a ship of some sorts– a large one– and as we cruised through Tennessee and Kentucky, the water level of the river kept getting lower and lower, until the ship was basically plowing slowly through dry ground. We talked to some Kentucky kids, who had built shacks in the empty river, and told us they did not believe it would fill back up. We plowed on further somehow, until we entered a region where there was a full city built above the empty river. The catacombs were wooden planks, largely, much like an old mine. At some point, the catacombs began turning into something more akin to a finished hallway, with some rooms, closets, bathrooms, off to the side. We continued to plow through with the ship, which was not tearing up the flooring, until the ground began to rise, and finally the ship had to stop. We got out and went upstairs.

The town was beautiful, if a little colonial, and we spoke to a man who told us that the river had flown through there but when it finally dried out, the people built some structures in the underground where the river had flowed. The stairs had been where the river finally went underground, and they had built a courthouse about 100 feet from those stairs, a monument to their city. So we went into the courthouse to look at it, and slowly, water began to bubble up around the floor, rising slowly. People cheered; the river might be coming back! Recognizing that we would soon be able to move the ship again, I ran back into the catacombs, figuring I would stop in the bathroom on the way. Water began to trickle down there with me. When I got into the bathroom, it was just a little puddle, by the time I finished, it was knee-high and I was in danger of being swept downstream and unable to return to the ship. I managed to get back, and once aboard, we plowed up those stairs, destroying the ceilings that led up. At the top, the courthouse was being washed away, so we waited a minute for it to break apart and motored on, finally back in water.

I’m a sucker for cat-related links. Especially when they play xylophones. Courtesy Linden’s blog.

Sketch for Paul, one of the Guitarist Wanted brothers.

Ah, who am I kidding… Guitarist Wanted is just a poke at Porter…

Collaborative entry from me and Ladybug:

We woke up. It’s Christmas Eve. We were anxious for Pop and Taylor to arrive. Once they got here, we loaded up their car with gifts and took everyone and everything to Ruth’s house, where the whole Efird family and two Efird friends were waiting.

Big lunch.

Then, presents. The hit of the present-opening was the giant Hulk hands that we got for Taylor– foam hands that, when banged together or appropriately jostled, say, “Arrrr! Hulk smash!” (Heidi also liked getting a digital camera. We got a kickass picture of me with the Hulk hands on holding a teddy bear, which will appear here soon. She says it’s better than getting my technology hand-me-downs; I counter by saying that my hand-me-downs are better than nothing, so she should be nice. She counters by saying, “I am nice” in a sweet girly voice. She is correct.)

The boys went out to play football, and I managed to bruise my finger and pick up all the dog poop in the neighborhood on the bottom of my shoe. We came back in, and Richie taught Taylor to play his new Magic cards (huzzah– score one for geeking out the little brother, who also got Justice League action figures and some comic books, which makes all of his presents totally geek-related).

After Derek and his family departed, we played Cranium against Ruth and Pop. I lost, for the first time ever, entirely because I was unable to recognize “Love Shack” from the two notes Heidi was able to recall. (Heidi claims to have done the whole chorus, and Richie was able to get it from that; I maintain that she did the whole chorus in two notes and Richie is obviously insane.) Heidi had a good day guessing, at one point identifying the “Great Wall of Germany.” To her credit, it was only about three more seconds before she said “Berlin Wall.” Side note: Heidi has been both places and knows the difference between the two. She later claimed that she said that just to amuse me. I was not amused.

Pop and T left at 6, we took off shortly thereafter, came home, and watched “Reservoir Dogs,” which was my loot from an early present exchange. It’s inching towards midnight, and we’re gonna stay up and exhange presents after midnight, which, when you think about it, is pretty ludicrous. But we like each other, so that’s what we’re gonna do, and we’re pretty happy about it.

Oh yeah, baby, you better step up your level of alertness. The US government is smokescreening the fact that US troops didn’t actually capture Saddam by trying to scare us!

Good thing Silflay Hraka knows the truth about terrorist activity.

DSI sure was lucky this weekend… we got special visitors! Young William Cochran was in town, and he came out to rock the Inside Improv with us, which was the source of endless excitement for me. Why, you might ask? Because Young William is one of the finest improvisers ever!

So, I was perfectly happy with the upcoming weekend, and then we found out that the IRC’s benorbeen, Ben Hauck, would also be in town. Naturally, since Ben is the biggest poster on the IRC by about 5,000 posts, I was insanely curious to see how he’d improvise. It was a house team mixup, so I put us together, and boom.

benandben

It’s hard to knock a show where you have the Green Goblin, necrophelia, a recurring polar bear, a man-boy-dog, a Corvette made of pink legos, and an orgy at Susan B. Anthony’s house.

Of course, Tony’s Diplomat took the suggestion of “BJ” literally, and we got to see Bill Cochran getting drunk and giving it up to Eric Drowatzky, and Bill Cochran getting drunk and blowing up the world before Miller Time.

All in all, it was a fine night for some improv.

Jennings, benorbeen and I play rock, paper, scissors. We all threw rock.

I also got to talk on the phone with the IRC’s aimeethepoet, who is Ben’s girlfriend. They’ve had a very public romance, so I was dying to ask about a million questions about it, but I never got around to the gossip-mongering that Heidi accuses me of.

After the show, about 25 of us ended up at Ham’s. We have something really special here in Chapel Hill; I am consistently reminded of how lucky I am to be part of something that is growing, evolving, and making so many people happy.

From a long-dead website.

Jess gave me a cat calendar. Yeee!

After more than a week of wondering if there would be enough people to sign up for it, the Weblogger Meetup happened in Chapel Hill last night. My fears that we would meet, talk about blogs for half an hour, and retire bored were completely unfounded.

In attendance: Henry, who runs his own company and has recently arrived in the area by way of a number of years in Hungary; Todd, a conservative who has been involved in blog-like systems since the days of BBS; Heidi, who is totally hot and enjoyed the meeting more than I thought she would; and me.

We met at Strong’s– no real way to identify each other. Todd and Henry knew each other, and we overheard the word meetup and joined in. After half an hour, we moved the meeting to Linda’s so that we might have beer and some cheese fries.

Topics of conversation were far-reaching: the derivation of Hungarian language, power laws and why Instapundit is so huge, why Todd’s wife won’t read his blog, the international population at UNC-CH, the incongruities of DHS and its many bureaus of something-or-other, why blogs will replace newspapers, and why no one is really tempted to give Meetup any money, despite the fact that we all enjoyed the blog meetup.

Next meeting is January 21, so as it turns out, I will be there. Heidi and I return on the 18th. Solid.

http://flash.bushrecall.org/

So who is Sauron? Cheney?

Well, I can now safely protest when Heidi asks me why I do the irrational things that I do… I can blame her for being too hot. Yup, this new study claims that men who are aroused make stupid choices. I’m waiting for the follow-up studies that claim men also make bad decisions when:

• hungry
• drunk
• nagged
• faced with the possibility of spending significant time with a dreaded family member
• in a locker room
• finding Valentine’s Day gifts
• hunting
• teaching womens’ studies
• they think they are plunging to their deaths in an airplane but are, in fact, just experiencing turbulence
• celebrating touchdowns in the NFL
• asked to go dancing with their girlfriends
• housework is involved
• asked to name children

Thought I’d add a wee bit of color.

This from Zack Bly. Totally hot. Click to enlarge.

Oh man, how wonderful is this? I just found out that UNC has a subscription to the Safari bookshelf that O’Reilly books puts online, so as long as I am on campus and using a UNC IP address, I can log in for free to all of those awesome books.

It doesn’t really do me a hell of a lot of good with the Linux projects that I was planning to work on, since I’m gonna do all that jazz at home, but it’s hella cool.

What America needs now… is a secretary of soul! A foreign minister of funk!