Christmas Time Already???

On Friday morning my kids were driving us crazy. But that's like saying Maryland is run by a band of wild condescending liberals - it's a given. So my wife made the kids a promise. If they clean their rooms and the play room we would put the Christmas tree up. And away they went.

Their rooms have never been cleaned so quickly. We should randomly tell them that we'll put up the Christmas tree throughout the year if it achieves our objectives.


When the inspection concluded and their rooms passed I started lugging the plastic crates of Christmas crap upstairs from the basement. Up went the authentic fake Christmas tree. Luckily this year I inserted most of the branches right-side up. Last year I put ALL of them on upside down and I wasn't made aware of this until I had hung the lights and tinsel.


It was a lot of fun watching my 15 month-old daughter watch us. It's the first Christmas that she remembers. Come to think of it, next year will also be the first Christmas she remembers. It's sort of like being an old person, but cute.


The process from start to finish took about 3 hours - about 2 hours and 59 minutes longer than it takes State Senate President Mike Miller to act like a bunghole during a caucus meeting.


We played Christmas music from Lite 101.9 all during the trimming. This would be the 4th week that they've been playing Christmas music. I heard Christmas music playing in Wal-Mart (apologies for shopping there) the day after Halloween. Nothing gets me in the mood for Thanksgiving more than some Christmas music.


The next day I called my brother to come over and help me put up the decorations outside. Unlike the majority of Americans, he enjoys being outside in the cold and hanging up Christmas lights. We spend a couple of hours untangling lights (piece of crap lights).


My brother is an electrician and fortunately for me he has an interest in testing burnt out light bulbs and electric lines. I had tossed 2 $2 lines to the side to be replaced. He spent about 1/2 an hour testing them and got them fixed. He saved me $4!!! So all is done.

Have you put up your Christmas decorations yet?

Omablogging Again ...

♫ Guess who's back, guess who's back, guess who's back, guess who's back
guess who's back, guess who's back, guess who's back ... ♫


Here’s what I’ve been up to…

Saturday: Drive, drive, drive, pee break, drive, drive, drive, lunch, drive, drive, pee break, drive, drive, drive, pee break, drive, drive, drive

Sunday: First we hit Offut Air Force Base …



Then Soaring Wings Vineyard in Springfield, Nebraska …



Monday: Met Al for lunch at Buffalo Wild Wings, Then we went to the Mini dealership so Judy could check them out. She decided against it. For now anyway. And then we hit the Cheesecake Factory, where I had a slice of Vanilla Bean Cheesecake.



Tuesday: Lunch was at Paradise Bakery. I had the club sandwich.

Alors nous avons fait des achats.


Wednesday: Lunch at Brazen Head Irish Pub. I had the Cottage Pie (basically a Shepard’s Pie).


Then Target, The Lithuanian Bakery, Williams-Sonoma and then we put up some of the outside Christmas Decorations at Kell’s house.


Thursday:


Friday: No getting up at 5 A.M. and going shopping for me or Mom, but everyone else did! Then a Scotch Tasting at the Dundee Dell …



Then, I finished off my week by having a great Filet Mignon at Johnny’s Italian Steakhouse. It was awesome!

Saturday: Drive in the sometimes heavy snow and bumper-to-bumper traffic for hours on end. I’ve never seen traffic like that on that drive. We also stopped at Osceola Cheese in Osceola, Missouri. Cool place.

Anyway, I finally got home and had some fried chicken from Wal-Mart and then went to bed!


Most of the evenings were spent just hanging out, watching movies and generally taking it easy. Another fun time in Omaha with the family!

How did your week go? Did I miss anything exciting? Any juicy gossip from the Bloggerhood that I need to know about?

Go Home Early!

Every year it's the same thing.

Wednesday at work started off the long weekend on a grumpy note. Every year I somehow seem to get the ha-ha beat-down. Normally the day before a holiday they let us go a couple of hours early. That's a great idea.

Here comes the beat-down part - my manager, no matter who it is, always takes off that day before the holiday, as does his manager. The message comes from above to let everyone go early. However, there's no one that represents me to get the message. Then, upon hearing us bitching and complaining another manager from another department will come around at 3:15 and tell us we can all go home early and that we should have left already. Yeah! I get to leave 45 minutes early!

So that's great. I should have left early. But here's the part that really gets me - I come to work at 7am. I leave at 4pm. We are supposed to work 8 hours with an hour lunch. Meanwhile, the majority of the clowns around me come in at 8, 8:30, 9am. So when they let us go at 3:15, I get to leave 45 minutes early while the other clowns get to leave 2-3 hours early. Argghh!!!

Now, I realize there is plenty I could do about this. I could just leave at 2pm and hope they let us go early. I could tie my coworkers to their desk and not feel bad when I leave early and they can't because they're tied to said desk. This is actually my favorite option.

I could send out a fake email that says, "Our boss, Mr. Johnson, told me to tell everyone that we could leave 2 hours from the time you SHOULD be leaving today." The problem with that is Mr. Johnson would probably end up getting wind of the email. Not that Mr. Johnson would care too much. He's a pretty cool guy, but he has his bipolar moments and that could come back to haunt me.

My wife, the smart one, says that if I was as smart as her, I'd go in late like my fellow clowns and then leave at 2pm and hope for that early dismissal. I've only been working for company for nearly 12 years, so I'll probably figure it out eventually.

Pondering A Decision Here.

I’ve been a playwright for something like, umm, almost 40 years now. (But you know that. If you cross my blog path on any sort of regular basis, I talk about this stuff all the time.)

And – by my own standards – I’ve had a decent career. With the exception of one play (which I’ve never offered to anyone) all my work has been produced. Somewhere. I’ve had plays produced as far west as Palm Springs, California, as far east as Pittsburgh, and a whole bunch of places in between. The best compliment I received was in being informed that one of my plays had been pirated and produced without my knowledge in Cincinnati, Ohio. (Wow. Somebody thought enough of one of my plays to steal it. How ‘bout that?!)

I never had a play produced on or off Broadway. This was never something that held any interest to me at all. At a time when I needed it, I had an agent (in Florida!) and made a respectable second income.

I enjoy writing plays. I’ve had a smattering of experience as a drama critic, and recently I’ve co-authored a book, and even more tentatively I’ve submitted articles to a handful of magazines. And a dear and talented friend has made overtures about the two of us working together to write a movie. And I just might. (Other than this, she seems quite sane,)

But I’m most comfortable writing plays. A play is the only form of literature that does NOT go through an editor. I like that. I like placing words on paper and having someone immediately recite them back to me. I like giving a concept to a group of performers, and watching (sometimes in amazement) as that concept is expanded.

I’ve purposely avoided what most people would consider success in this career, because that usually means stress, deadlines, antagonism, and all the other pressures that appear to define and repress creativity by today’s standards.

And I was happy. Write a play, send it somewhere. That was the pattern. And I’ve been lucky. Word of mouth has meant that SOMETHING of mine has constantly been on somebody’s schedule ever since I started writing.

But lately I’ve been a member of a couple of writing groups, and several people I admire are in the process of taking, what for me, would have been the next step. I wished them well. I was still not convinced this could or should be the next step for me – if, indeed, I was even looking for a next step.

And yesterday, while I was trying to find the synopsis of a play I’d never heard of, I came across a website listing maybe a hundred agents specializing in playwrights. Intrigued, I discovered I more than qualify to be considered as a client.

So-o-o … suddenly … I’m considering sending something to a bunch of suit types. Do I really want to do this? I’ve given you all my reasons for NOT doing this in the past. What do you think? Should I pick an agent with many clients? Or should I pick an agent with only one or two clients? (My agent in Florida only had three clients, including myself. She worked like a mad woman on my behalf.)

I know, I know, ultimately it’s my decision. But this is a new think for me, and I’d appreciate some thoughts.


JB

And how was your day?

Real Niko Bellic Art

There’s a comparably new artistic style of image manipulation that’s called untooning. In essence untooning is when an artist uses one or several photographs of real people (mostly faces) and manipulates them in a way to give the effect of realism to a cartoonish character.

The most well known artist for such photo manipulations is an artist called pixeloo (Jax Pixeloo). He started to attract more attention after untooning GTA IV’s main character Niko Bellic for the Official Playstation Magazine. The artistic piece received great feedback and a lot of recognition.

Not everyone was amazed by pixeloo’s creation and one Brazilian artist, who also did similar pieces in the past, decided to make even more realistic portrait of an Eastern European war veteran. mataleoneRJ used eight photographs of different people to get the best possible result. The artist added wrinkles, extra details around the eyes and one or two scars to get the true gangster look.

Both artists achieved incredible results, and both pieces look superb.

Source: pixeloo.deviantart.com, mataleonerj.deviantart.com

turkey weekend.

I AM SO SAD MY BREAK IS ENDING SOON. :( I need more time. I have loads of hw to finish. I will never be caught up. I will try and hang by a thread until winter break. But I have accomplished one thing, UC and CSU APPLICATIONS DONNNNE!! Yeah, now on to private schools >___<. Today we went to the grave to visit my grandma, haven't seen her grave in over a year. I don't know why but my mom wanted to take pictures by her grave. Strange. Then we went thrifting nearby. We got some good winter stuff.

That fat roly poly I am holding is my little sister, Sophie.

My sister found some awesome textured tights.
They were pretty old school, but really pretty.
I am always wary of textured tights in case they look hoeish :]



I like grandma cardigans.



I love this shirt. I cut the shoulder pads out of it.
The color is such a vibrant purple.





My sister and I have a fetish for military style jackets.
Especially over girly skirts.



My mom found some cool 99 cent leather wallets.



What I wore today. I look like a retard.



Pretty details of the dress.



My blue tights & my reddish orange carpet.
They do not keep me warm.

So I found the CUTEST HAT for Sophie.
We had to buy it.
She looked delicious in it.



SHE IS SO PRECIOUS WHEN SHE SMILES.
she is a munchkin evil monkey though, really.
babies are only angels in front of their mothers and fathers,
in front of others (like their older sisters, they are a holy terror)

At Thanksgiving, all the little girls were fighting over Sophie. They acted like she was a play doll. Even when Sophie was being fussy and pulled their hair, one girl said "Oh she likes me, she wants me to be her sister". It was so cute.

Kids are so cute.

--ck.

Mouth Gets Dry When I Take Adderall

Guidance I changed the comments

To add games, watches and other widgets on Opera we go to the bar up and puts Headlines Markers and Widgets, press and we will add widgets or add a widget, we will get a page with lots and choose the ones you like.

Movies Beautiful Agony Tat

An entertaining game ... Use