Catching Up

This time of year is always hectic, not the least because of having to take down the christmas lights. I've gotten about 28,000 of them down, if not put away. Before I pack them up, I still have to check every string for burned-out lights, replacing any that aren't working.

I also have to fold up the the deer (which are nestled warmly in my garage while my car sits out in what has suddenly decided to be winter). I've got the artifical trees boxed up, and all the lights off everything but the house (which traditionally is the first to get decorated, and the last to be undecorated.

All my blogging time has been consumed by making comments at other sites, mostly in defence of Faisal Gill against what I believe are unfair rehashings of allegations that have been dismissed as groundless in their content and implications. I don't think the naysayers are going to cause any real harm -- in fact, I imagine when all is said and done Faisal will have the backing of most of the important people in the party, and little opposition related to the hysterical anti-muslim-association attacks by some.

I can only hope that the democrats would be stupid enough to dredge this up in the general election, as the Muslim community was reliably Democrat in the past election.

The rest of my time has been consumed by our new toy. Yes, I managed to get hold of one of those insidious Nintendo Wii machines, and I didn't even have to drink myself to death to do so.

I had a plan to pick one up after Christmas -- which involved taking a few minutes every morning to stop by Target on my way to work. Target opens at 8am, and unloads their trucks at 4am, so it seemed if I was there at 8 I'd be certain to get a Wii when the shipment came, since nobody KNEW what day it would be and nobody seemed to be taking the same approach.

Well, after 10 days of this, it dawned on me that this plan would only work if Target ever GOT a shipment. That same day, a friend of mine gave me a call at about 11am, telling me (while driving in his car to the store) that Toys R Us had 7 Wiis left in a shipment.

It took me about 10 minutes to drive to the store. I ran in and said "Nintendo Wii"? and a nice man said "I just bought the last one". But he was just kidding, and since I'm not James Webb I laughed with him. It turned out there were three left at that time, so I was able to walk out with a Wii of my own.

I'll say it's everything they said it was. I've been very sore the past few days. I did relent and it's sitting on my big-screen TV, but I'm very nervous. We haven't played any games except the one that came with the console, but the sports stuff IS a lot of fun, especially I think the bowling, which is much like real bowling in that you play one at a time, people cheer, and you can drop the ball behind you if you aren't careful.

I've fallen in love with a song from a singer I had not heard of before, but who has been around for a while -- Michelle Tumes. The song is "Domine". You can hear the entire song at her myspace account HERE.