Well, Heidi and I went up to our little mountain town get away in eastern AZ over this weekend (not “the” weekend, but “our” weekend). It was nice to give ourselves a nice reminder about why we work so hard here in Shitsville. I got to do battle with the mountain while I was there, too! Oh what a blast! It was so nice to go during the week when nobody was on the mountain. We practically owned the mountain. I think I finally got the hang of steering! lol Though, you wouldn’t be able to tell by my last run down the mountain — that was gruesome.

Well, today we have a big party for all the January birthdays in the family. Everyone will come over to our place, and we’ll eat, drink, and be merry! Best of all, Heidi is making Sinigang! Yum!

Well, that’s all for now… I’m feeling a bit out of my groove this morning… Oh, and of course I smoked on the slopes, so time to reset my quit smoking counter. LOL…

Pretty much the same ol shit around these parts. Tomorrow Heidi and I will be going to Show Low to visit Greg and Bobbi. It’s been awhile, so we should have a very nice visit, and it’s always good to get away from this wretched town we live in. We get to see if that bitch realtor has put our land up for sale again (she thought it was a different plot). Imagine my surprise when I went to visit our land, and found a FOR SALE sign on it. I almost jumped through the phone and strangled the little twit when I called her. So when we left, her signs could be found in a large bush next to our land. Wench.

My Linux box is up and running now! Holy crap, let me tell you about the install from hell! It’s not that bad, it just takes forever and a day — and it doesn’t help when you screw up the first run. Anyway, I’m running Gentoo now. I know I’ve said it before, but I think this distro is final for me. At least for the near future. It is a truly outstanding distro. Not the same ol crap you’re used to with any other distro. This one is truly innovative, and really could do some market damage if it keeps growing. You can build your system from scratch (called Stage 1). In a nut shell, you compile your ENTIRE system from source code. Trust me, not as daunting as it sounds. But it does take forever! Their package management is nothing less than revolutionary, and their forums are actually helpful. Not outdated, empty, or filled with l337 freaks. I’ve not once seen the infamous ‘RTFM’ show up in there. Truly kind to noobs like me. If you like Linux, you owe it to yourself to check out Gentoo. I promise you wont be sorry.

Heidi’s coming off the meds that put her into menopause, although they are sticking around enough to hinder our “next try”. She’s on some pills now to help induce ovulation, but we’ll see how that goes. I feel so bad that she has to go through all this. I can’t wait to tell our kid, “Do you have ANY idea what your mother went through to have you?!” LOL! I think the next time we implant we are going to implant 4 or 5 embryos. Considering our batting average, it can only help.

Mom will be going for her scan soon to see if there is any cancer left after the removal of her thyroid and lymphnodes. I get to drive her home that day. Funny thing is, she cannot sit directly next to me in the car, because she will be leaking radiation!! She is quarantined for 3 days after the scan as well. Anyone have a lead suit I can borrow? :)

Lastly, I’ve quit smoking! Today is day 2! I quit about 5 days ago, but ended up smoking on Friday. It was a special occasion so get off my back. :) We went out with Cyn and Drew — just had to smoke, duh!

Take care out there!

Well, here we are in 2003. This demarkation of time is obviously of no meaning, for things still spin out of control and life has yet to calm. My great plans to quit smoking were not even a good joke. I’m still smoking. Ugh… My 4 day “weekend” was but a time to “catch-up”… Something’s terribly wrong with that in my opinion.

In general the holidays for us were quite nice — although very busy. We’re not in terrible debt over the expense of the commercialization of the holidays, and we had a very nice time spending the days with family. Though our family may not say we spent much time with them, in our thick of the woods, the time was much.

2003 will be the year we put the craziness of our life to rest. We have some pretty lofty goals that we have been unable to achieve in the past. Wtih any luck, and a bit of tenacity (one thing we are not short on), we’ll make our existence better this year. There are a lot of things working for us. My job at Spacely is quite nice these days. It’s good not to be in charge. Our house has not caved in, for a base of operations is important. We are both in good health, yet I continue to press my luck with the evil tobacco plant. Our computers are quite healthy now — Heidi now has the fastest machine in the lot of them. We spent a good time converting over the systems to operate under the new layout. I’m now stuck on a P2 400 until such time we can afford a better workstation. This machine has been converted to our resident server. Heidi is blazing trails on the G4 867! It’s a smokin machine, but I did have to step away from Apple, and venture into the Open Source Community — May the Source be with me.

In other news, mom is doing fine since her surgery and is recovering nicely. They found cancer in 9 of 20 lymphnodes they removed from her neck. The doctor says this is not significant in either direction. We must wait until the scan.

I hope 2003 is a good year for all of us. If your lives have been as nuts as ours in past years, you could use a year to reflect. :)