1. T-day was great, both at my dad's and my mom's. My nephews are awesome, my mom's dog is totally insane, and I ate lots of really really good food. One thing, though - my nephew Victor is madly obsessed with SpongeBob Squarepants - well, to be more specific, he's obsessed with this SpongeBob alarm clock that he got for Hannukah, which went off at 3:47AM Friday night/Saturday morning when I was sleeping in the living room, and which I could not figure out how to turn off, and it kept repeating its little song, over and over, louder and louder, until I nearly threw it down the stairs. Fortunately, Victor woke up at around 8AM and came upstairs and started to play with it, over and over again. I hate SpongeBob Squarepants now.
2. Instant recipe for depression: watch the New York Giants.
3. Instant recipe for recovering from depression: hang out on Latrell's yacht and play Splinter Cell with girlfriend.
3a. Splinter Cell is so great that I'm not gonna need to buy any more Xbox games for quite a while. And I only play it when Kath's around, so I'm not rushing through it. I've got so many other games to deal with when it's over: Medal of Honor, Shenmue II, Hitman 2, WSB2K3, etc. ad infinitum.
4. "American Gods" was great.
5. Just returned from the bookstore, where I bought Eco's "The Name of the Rose" (which I'm currently reading) and "Baudolino", and a nice edition of Card's "Ender's Game", which I've been meaning to read for a few years.
6. I played the David Cross album for a wide cross-section of my family; their opinions are as follows:
7. I like root beer.
8. One of
9. I don't know if I mentioned this already or not, but I finally watched "Attack of the Clones" a few weeks ago, and I thought it was pretty weak. The DVD is so crystal clear that you have no idea if anything on the screen is real. Kath and I watched the special documentaries on the LOTR DVD and then watched the "From Puppets to Pixels" feature on the "Attack of the Clones" DVD in the same afternoon; it was heartbreaking to see Lucas "directing" a digital Yoda, especially after watching someone painstakingly make a button for a chest that was buried under papers in the corner in some hobbit-hole that might not even have been on screen. George - please stop - at least until you start hiring people who aren't absolutely terrified to say "No".
10. Work sucks!