We were over at some friends house the other day and I was playing with the kids…just tossing ’em into the air. Standard stuff. Then I had Truman and Emma (their daughter) hug each other and I scooped ’em up and threw ’em in the air. Pretty cool picture….
So Pete and I went out for our traditional New Year’s Day surf this morning. And, as we’ve become accustomed to, the waves sucked. The surf report called for a 10′ swell from the NW, but the tide was dropping at 8:00am when we arrived at Pacific City, and the ocean looked like a frothy mess of whitewater. But we paddled out anyway, because sitting onshore looking at the ocean would have been an even worse way to start the new year.
My paddling muscles have apparently atrophied, so I stayed inside again and caught a couple of reforms. Pete made it outside once, got a nice right, then wasn’t able to get outside again, despite trying three times. He finally threw in the towel and paddled in. I followed suit.
We grabbed a nice breakfast at the Grateful Bread and headed home. Gotta love PNW surfing in the wintertime. 🙂
Got my first check from Google for ad sales on Slacker Manager. Cool. I thought there would be more fanfare, somehow. At least some glitter on the check or something. But no. Just a plain old check. But it didn’t bounce, so I’m not complaining. 🙂
Merry Christmas, everyone!
Truman’s in bed, listening for the sound of Santa’s sleigh landing on our roof. We’ve left out cookies and milk for his dining pleasure. Tomorrow should be a lot of fun when Tru wakes up! 🙂
This evening we went to my mom’s house and did our traditional dinner of steak sandwiches and potato soup. Good stuff! Then we all exchanged and opened presents. Tru got some sweet swag, but the two things he loved the most were a shark and a train. Imagine that.
After all that, we went to a candlelight service at Ron and Erinn’s church. Very nice and the kids were generally well behaved. Nobody’s hair caught on fire, but Tru did get some hot wax on his hand. I heard him whimpering and he was trying very hard not to drop his candle. I took his candle and blew it out and he looked up at me and said, “I got fired!”
I liked this little joke:
A scientist approached God and said “Listen, we’ve decided we no longer need you. Nowadays we can clone people, transplant hearts and do all kinds of things that were once considered miraculous.”
God patiently heard him out and then said “All right. To see whether or not you still need me, why don’t we have a man making contest?”
“Okay, great!” the scientist said.
“Now we’re going to do this just like I did back in the olde days with Adam” God said.
“That’s fine” replied the scientist and bent to scoop up a handful of dirt.
“Whoa!” God said shaking his head in disapproval. “Not so fast pal. You get your own dirt.”
Went surfing Sunday morning. My friend Pete had called late Saturday evening, so I didn’t call him back. Rather, I just gambled that he’d be at the beach when I showed up early in the morning. He wasn’t, but he pulled in a few minutes later.
We watched the waves for a while. The clean-up sets were pretty big, but had really nice shape. Problem was the super-strong offshore wind. Not many people were getting rides because the wind was blowing spray and sand into their faces when they tried to drop in.
I’d hauled along a couple of books and a laptop to do some writing, in the event I didn’t/couldn’t paddle out. Which is what it looked like to me. But as usual, Pete’s enthusiasm shamed me into wiggling into my wetsuit in the front seat of my car and paddling out with him. It’d been about three weeks since Pete had been out, but it had been at least three months for me. On top of that, I haven’t been working out, other than the occasional game of raquetball in the morning. So I had no paddling muscles and no cardio endurance. But I did have years of experience telling me that I was in no shape to take multiple spin cycles on the paddle out. So I let Pete paddle outside and catch the bigger stuff. I stayed on the inside and caught the reform anklebiters. Even so, my shoulders are super-tired today. The result is that I tell myself that I gotta start working out again. But the truth is, I just need to surf more. Nothing builds surfing muscles like surfing. Plus, it’s good for my soul.
Today is Amy’s 36th birthday (gasp!)… I know! I don’t think she looks 36 either! Send her a little note wishing her well. She’s at Amy dot Lutz at the gmail dot com. She’d love a little consolation today. 🙂
Happy birthday, sweetie!
I’m stuck in Vegas all week. Yuck. I don’t like Vegas. Too plastic, too shiny. Too many sad people, too many broken people, too many people trying to fill a hole that can’t be filled with money, sex, food, power, whatever. Too many lost and wandering souls in Vegas, staring slackjawed at the blinking lights.
The only redeeming quality of Vegas is Red Rocks. And I won’t be able to make it out there on this trip.
On the other hand, I did have a very nice $50 steak dinner last night, so why am I complaining? 🙂
Man, I have been neglectful (is that a word?) over here. Slacker Manager has been sucking in all my attention lately. Speaking of which, it’s going pretty well. Thanks for asking. I’m getting about 300 visitors per day and nearly double that in page views. And, as of a moment ago, 75 people were subscribed to the RSS feed. I don’t know 75 people. That’s kinda freaky. Makes me wonder what the second month will be like.
Well, those belts never really lit a fire under anyone, but my watch sure did! Straight into the adoption fund, I think. Well, maybe a few bucks will go into the tattoo fund. Heh heh.
I posted that watch last night and this morning a dude emailed me privately asking to buy it offline for $450. I probably would’ve done it, but he’d already placed a bid on ebay and I couldn’t turn off the auction. Well maybe I could have–I didn’t really take the time to figure it out. If there hadn’t been a bid, I probably would have taken his offer. Glad I didn’t. 🙂
