I got sick of my DVD player not being able to play DVD+R, DVD+RW, etc, so I went out and bought a new Wal-Mart special for < $40. The player claims to be a "CyberHome" DVD player. It's been working great except for one little minor problem. It uses some of the same IR codes as my stereo. So, when I press "enter" on the DVD remote, my stereo powers off. When I press "Fast Forward", it sets the stereo's sleep timer. I've found about 3 conflicts thus far.
Has anyone else out there had problems with this sort of madness? I've thought about returning the DVD player, but my stereo is aging and is already starting to break down. I guess I'll just have to mull over this one for a while.
Wow! It's been busy! I can't believe I haven't blogged for two weeks. Really, it only seems like it's been a week. Well, enough about that....
My family came up to visit for Christmas. They stayed for about a week. We had a great time! It was the first time Lisa and I were responsible for hosting the Christmas celebration. Wow! It was quite a bit of work, but well worth it. I got about six hours of sleep a night for about 5 nights in a row. I wanted to stay up until 2:00 AM with all the night owls, but had to get up at 8:00 AM with Emily.
Within the first day, Emily had everyone's name down cold. In particular, she loved shouting "Grandmommy." My theory about that is Emily loved it because my mom would react with unbridled excitement. So, Emily would say "Grandmommy" and my mom would shriek, so Emily would shriek "Grandmommy" and so on. It made for great family entertainment.
On Thursday--the day before Christmas eve--we baked Christmas sugar cookies and decorated them. This is a longstanding Neumann family tradition. It's something I enjoy doing, although I always think it's going to take less time than it really does.
On Christmas eve, Lisa baked a delicious Italian meal--a longstanding Guido family tradition. We hustled off to the Christmas eve service at church. Then we came back and spent several hours singing Christmas carols. Peter played keyboard and I played guitar until my fingers went numb and stopped working. It was great to slow down the busy season, enjoy the ambiance, and reflect on the meaning of Christmas. Christmas carols have profound lyrics and I'm continually amazed how the authors can pack so much meaning in so few verses.
On Christmas day, the gift exchange was an Emily gift fest with other people thrown in. My mom, Lisa and I went a little nuts with gifts for Emily. We ended up keeping back three presents for Emily because she had so many. She'll like them just as much on her birthday. ;-)
Lisa gave me Mario Party 6, so Christina, Linda, Lisa and I had fun playing the game for hours. All I can say is addictive mini-games...addictive mini-games...addictive mini-games....
My family stayed a couple days after Christmas. We just lounged around, hung out, went on walks, played games, ate good food, and relaxed. I guess it was recuperation for hectic pace until that point.
All-in-all it was great to have my family up for Christmas. Things went swimmingly well. We enjoyed hosting them for a memorable Christmas celebration.
Yesterday evening Lisa and I had our first Christmas party ever. It's was a fun event. We had 4 other couples over (with their kids) for a grand total of 10 adults and 7.5 kids. Our house was really hopping. None of the kids had a serious meltdown and the adults had a great time sitting around chatting.
So as the party was winding down, some of us got the bright idea of watching "Oceans 11" that night and seeing "Oceans 12" the next day. So, after staying up to 1:30 AM last night, watching "Oceans 11", we all got together this afternoon and evening to see the "Oceans 12" and have dinner (sans kids). It was a blast. It felt like I was in college.
All-in-all, I realized spontaneous fun is something to be treasured and sleep is something you can catch up on. Speaking of which, I'm off to bed....
Nate Jones informed me that my blog (and his consequently) was filling up with comment spam. I had never even heard of comment spam until Joey Lawrance told me that he put up a blog at OSU and it had comment spam within a day. I'm working on soving the problem for once and for all by installing a pluging that uses image detection to differentiate between humans and bots. I guess we'll see how that goes.
Yup. I'm back at this blogging thing again. Look for me to post something or other a couple times a week. I quit blogging when I thought no one was reading it. Then after several people assured me they were reading and encouraged me to start, I resolved to start anew.
Well...that was a month ago. Rememember to never try and start a new habit when you are super busy! Now that the fall term is over, I have some time to reinvigorate my blogging habit over the holidays. :-)