Rat thoughts

Good King Wenceslas looked out, on the Feast of Stephen,
When the snow lay round about, deep and crisp and even;
Brightly shone the moon that night, tho' the frost was cruel,
When a poor man came in sight, gath'ring winter fuel.

"Hither, page, and stand by me, if thou know'st it, telling,
Yonder peasant, who is he? Where and what his dwelling?"
"Sire, he lives a good league hence, underneath the mountain;
Right against the forest fence, by Saint Agnes' fountain."

"Bring me flesh, and bring me wine, bring me pine logs hither:
Thou and I shall see him dine, when we bear them thither. "
Page and monarch, forth they went, forth they went together;
Through the rude wind's wild lament and the bitter weather.

"Sire, the night is darker now, and the wind blows stronger;
Fails my heart, I know not how; I can go no longer. "
"Mark my footsteps, my good page. Tread thou in them boldly
Thou shalt find the winter's rage freeze thy blood less coldly. "

In his master's steps he trod, where the snow lay dinted;
Heat was in the very sod which the Saint had printed.
Therefore, Christian men, be sure, wealth or rank possessing,
Ye who now will bless the poor, shall yourselves find blessing.

animale  and I have been together for just a few days shy of 11-1/2 years.  We've lived together for about 5 of those years and we were pretty much married in all but name.  Although I'd originally wanted to get married in my home state of California, when they passed Prop 8 and Iowa started allowing gay marriage, we decided to get married there.  We got our license back in November, but various events kept delaying the ceremony.  Part of it was that Animale wanted a date that he would be able to remember easily.  1/1/11 was a holiday, so that didn't work, we weren't able to schedule anything for 1/11/11, and I didn't want to wait until 11/11/11 (which would have been a cool number), but we finally settled on 2/2/11, which also happens to be Groundhog Day, the only rodent-related holiday on the calendar.  And 22 is divisible by 11!*

At some point in the future we may have a big public wedding at a con or something, but for now, we had a little ceremony at the Magistrate's office in Glenwood, Iowa.  Everyone there was really nice and enthusiastic, not the slightest hint of prejudice or homophobia.

We exchanged wedding bands made of tungsten carbide, a relatively new jewelry material.  Tungsten carbide is an extremely hard substance, a 9 on the Mohs scale, as hard as corundum.  The ring is a dark metallic color and is polished to a near mirror finish.



*Bob's Burgers reference

[Poll #1508068]

Give someone special a gift that keeps on giving.

I was in town this afternoon to do the weekly grocery shopping.  I also wanted to go to Foot Locker in the mall to price out some golf shoes, since I have a 25% off coupon.  But when I got there, the parking lot was almost completely full!  I didn't feel like fighting the crowds, so I left.  Costco's parking lot was fuller than usual too.  And there was a lot more traffic than usual on the road on the way home.  I keep hearing all these dire predictions about the upcoming Christmas shopping season, but if the malls are full 2 weeks BEFORE Thanksgiving, this looks more like boom than bust.

They've started running Christmas commercials on TV, and there are decorations and stuff up around the malls.  Costco has had Christmas stuff since September and Wal*Mart was playing Christmas music before Halloween! 

I've heard of keeping the Christmas spirit all year long, but this is getting ridiculous.

Reindeer face!



It was actually pretty hard to get a decent picture of the reindeer.  They were behind a fence and wouldn't really hold still for long, except when eating.  Apparently reindeer really like Wal*Mart brand vanilla wafers.


Everyone else was taking pictures of their kids with the reindeer, while I was trying to take macrophotographs of their feet.  (The reindeer's feet, that is, not the kid's.)



Reindeer snoot!  She was really interested in my camera at that moment.



Upside-down Christmas tree at a local Menard's (hardware store chain).

Day four of the flu. It's mostly gone, except I feel like there's something in my lungs, but I can't seem to cough it up. And the coughing is making my throat sore. I've still got a bit of a fever, between 100 and 101, and I feel a bit run down.

While today was a holiday for most people, it wasn't for me, I had to go to work. Fortunately, about half the people at work decided to take the day off, so there was little for me to do all day. I got into work early, so I was able to leave early.

The K&N filter on my car was getting a bit nasty, but the process of washing, drying, and reoiling is very time consuming, and I can't drive the car without an air filter, so I just bought a replacement filter and installed it today. I'll clean the old one, so when the new one gets dirty, I'll oil up the old one and swap them again. The old one took about 2 years to get dirty, so together, these two filters should last well into the 22nd century.

My car reached exactly 78,000 miles as I pulled into the driveway.

I need new tires. The old ones are getting rather worn, down to 1/16" of tread left. The problem is this car takes an unusual size, P255/50R17. I'm thinking of switching to a tire with a smaller sidewall, 255/40R17. This size is easier to find, there's more variety available, they're cheaper, the shorter sidewalls make for better maneuverability, and the smaller tire diameter will have the effect of increasing the differential ratio, giving me faster accelleration. The only downsides I can find so far is that it will throw off the speedometer (which can be fixed by reprogramming the engine computer), the smaller tires might look slightly odd (they're about 2 inches smaller in diameter), and the ride won't be quite as smooth (less cushioning).

Tomorrow I have to drive to Temecula to do some maintanence on the computers at our remote office. Fortunately the drive is against the normal flow of rush hour traffic, so it's a trip I don't mind. It's a fairly scenic drive, I usually get to sneak out of work a bit early, and Temecula has one of the last Long John Silver's in the area. Plus I get reimbursed for the mileage. Yay!

I normally don't watch House, but everyone was talking about it, so I watched this episode. Weird. Very, very, very weird.

Finally managed to win a Vadem Clio on eBay. I've been needing to buy one for work to do some testing. Unfortunately, it's the C-1000 model, not the better C-1050. I can't believe just how expensive these damn things are.

One of my all-time favorite Christmas programs was on tonight, 'Twas the Night Before Christmas. Lousy bastards at ABC Family cut out Father Mouse singing "Give Your Heart a Try"