Monday, November 14, 2011

Nov 14

http://www.thomnichols.com/
Ok, I’m not sure what the problem was, but it was our 20 year anniversary this last week. Twenty years is a long time and I wanted to do something special for my wife. We were talking about it and we were thinking about going to Vegas or going up into the mountains. We would have liked to take a week off and go to somewhere special like Hawaii or something like that. But, a lot of things happened this year and we had limited funds. Every time I thought about putting some money aside, something would come up. So, on our anniversary, I took my wife to spend the day at Walmart and to make it extra special for her, I let her go by herself and stayed home watching football. After she got done shopping, I wanted to take her out to a nice restaurant and then maybe take her to a movie or something since we didn’t go anywhere. So, I got free tickets from my daughter who works at the movie and bought her a hotdog at the theater and a diet coke. (It was a large diet coke) I’m such a romantic.
Actually, we didn’t do anything for our anniversary. When we first got married, we attempted to go places on our anniversary, but something always got in the way. So, over the years, we stopped trying to go anywhere and just bought each other presents. This year, a lot of stuff really did happen. So, we’re going to put off celebrating it until early next year. We need to survive Christmas first and then we’ll figure out what we’re going to do.
My eldest daughter couldn’t wasn’t able to keep her surprise in. She told us that she is going to fly in for Thanksgiving. She’ll arrive on Thursday in the mid morning and doesn’t have to return until Sunday. So, we’ll have a big Thanksgiving at the in-law’s house on the day and a big Thanksgiving on Saturday with my side of the family and she’ll be able to attend both. It should be pretty nice.
The Broncos won again against the Raiders. That’s two games in a row. We haven’t won two games in a row in years. The whole town is excited. We play the Jets on Thursday night. My son thinks he might be able to get tickets to the game. It will be nice to see another game. I won’t be able to stay for the whole thing. I have to work that night so I’ll have to leave early. Still, half a game in person is better than no game.
I had to take CPR training again. My card hadn’t expired, but when I received them in the mail, I just threw them away. I only got them in the first place for work. When the company switched over to the different company, they required us all to be CPR compliant. So, since I couldn’t produce the cards to prove I’d taken the class, them made me take it over. The company instructor was very adamant about the class taking anywhere from seven to eight hours. He said that there was no possible way for him to reduce the class to anything less than seven hours. The company didn’t want to pay all of the employees seven or more hours and pay for the class, so they have been putting it off until they could get a new instructor and force the guy to reduce the length of the class. It only took eleven months, but they finally got him to assure them it would only take five hours. They signed us all up for eight o’clock in the morning on a Sunday. Most of us were a little upset because it meant that we were going to miss the Bronco game. So, when we got there, the guy was complaining and told us that he was mistaken on the time and it would take us at least six hours if not seven. But, he announced that anyone that was re-qualifying could test out of it if they thought they could pass. I really didn’t want to stay for the whole day, so I volunteered. (I was the only one) There were four tests and I whipped through the first one. There were a lot of questionable questions, and I really didn’t remember most of it. So, naturally, I missed about half of the questions and failed the first one. I took my time on the other three and only missed two questions. So, the instructor said that I was going to have to stay for the portion of the class I failed. He said it should only take about two to two and a half hours and then re-take that portion of the test. That still got me out at the beginning of the game, so what else was I going to do. The instructor tried to start the class. He pulled out his little remote control, aimed it at the DVD player, and hit play. Nothing happened. Twenty minutes later, he couldn’t figure out how to operate the equipment and decided he would just read us the information from the book. I’m sure he knew his material, but he stumbled quite a bit as he tried to relay it to the class. He read a lot of it from the book and then just grabbed the tests and started asking questions from it. When he ran out of stuff to talk about, he had finished the class in two and a half hours. I got home right after the kick off.
My brother called while I was in the CPR class. His computer got a virus and he wanted me to pull it off. So, I went to his house and picked it up. I started messing with it tonight and I think I got it completely pulled off. I rebooted it several times and left it sitting. So, if it wasn’t completely gone, I should know by tomorrow morning. I also installed a malware remover so he can run it once a week. He has five kids and if they were anything like mine, he’ll need it.
I saw two very disappointing movies this week. The first was the Immortals. It looked like it was going to be really good. It was a good action movie as long as you didn’t pay any attention to the story. They really pushed the limits of the myth, but that’s expected in movies. But, the main premise of the movie was totally irrelevant. I’m glad that I didn’t pay to go see it. (My daughter got us free tickets because she works there) Then, I took my mom to see the movie In Time. Its storyline was also really weak. It wasn’t what I expected. The characters did illogical and stupid things and there wasn’t enough action. So, that’s two strikes at the theaters. I hope my next one is going to be a good one.
Well, I haven’t put a lot of time into my book, so this week I’m going to buckle down and get going on it. I only worked on it one last week and the week before. So, I’m putting Night Ranger, Pink Floyd, Eagles and ZZ Top into the playlist for background listening and I’m going to get started.
-Thom

Monday, November 7, 2011

Nov 7

It’s Monday again and time for a blog update. Like always, visit my website at www.thomnichols.com and let me know what you think. I have changed it up a little. I think I’m going to add some stuff this coming week.I should probably do this tomorrow, because it will be my 20th wedding anniversary. Wow, twenty years, that's a long time. But, that will give me something to talk about next time. So, here goes.

I helped my son move into his new apartment this week. They’ve had their old place about a year and a half. When they moved out of our place, they only had a room full of stuff. Now, they’ve accumulated an entire house full. It’s amazing how that stuff adds up. They did most of the work. I was just helping with the big stuff, beds, dressers, washers, etc… I was supposed to go down there at the beginning of the week, but one thing led to another and I didn’t make it until Friday. So, they moved stuff over little by little over the week. One day, I was dropping my granddaughter off and she saw them taking a load over. She went crazy telling me to hurry and help her out of the car seat because they were moving without her. I barely got the door open and unstrapped her when she was running for the new place.
My wife had to work some overtime shifts this weekend. The Saturday one was a graveyard and the Sunday one had her coming in at three in the morning. So, her sleeping schedule was thrown all out of whack. I tried to give her the house on Sunday so she could get some rest by going over to my son’s house to watch the games. He was having some trouble with Comcast, his cable company, but managed to get it working before the game started. At first, it was close. It seemed like it was going to go like the last couple of weeks. But, they started running an offence that was more conductive to Tebow’s quarterback style. He still has trouble throwing down field, but they gave him more short passes and screens. We managed to stay neck to neck with them for the first two quarters. That was when I had to go pick up my daughter from work. So, I didn’t get to see the entire third quarter. But, that didn’t matter because in the fourth quarter, they kicked butt. We ended up winning by a couple touchdowns. It was a very good game and it was a divisional game that, even though we are in last place, we are only one game out of first place. Yeah, I know how that sounds.
When we got home, after picking up my daughter from work, we tried to be quiet. It didn’t work. My wife woke up and didn’t get a chance to go back to sleep until late in the evening. I was surprised that she didn’t just come home and crash. Instead, she went out with her sisters and had a few drinks at the restaurant with them. I’m sure she’s asleep now. She probably dropped off as soon as her head hit the pillow.
My daughter started working at the movie theater. Her first day wasn’t very glamorous. She had to clean out dirty toilets and maintain the women’s restroom most of the day. But, her second day was much more satisfactory. They taught her the background part of the concession stand. She didn’t get to work the register, but she got to make the food. After that day, she said that she wasn’t sure if she ever wanted to eat at a theater again. She said that it wasn’t disgusting how they made things, but they ripped people off. Her first duty was filling the nacho trays with chips. They gave her a whole class on how to arrange the chips so that it looks fuller in the tray using as little as possible. Then, she graduated up to hot dogs, chicken wings, bagel bites and other prepared foods. She didn’t even get to popcorn until she was almost off. She said that she likes the concession stand part of it, but it isn’t as busy as maintaining the theaters. She said that there was constantly a movie ending where they had to go and clean up the seating. She said that the usher part was what kept her more busy than anything else. But, she likes it and I’m sure she will like having a paycheck.
Our computer woes are continuing. My son’s laptop stopped booting, so he brought it over for me to look at. It ended up he had some kind of virus that wiped out his entire hard drive. I ended up having to do a complete restore. So, everything he had on it was gone. He said he didn’t have anything really important except pictures. I think we’re going to get him an external hard drive for Christmas this year. That way he can back up all that stuff onto it in case his computer crashes again. That is what we did with our computers. The kids were always downloading music and movies and stuff. I would come home from work all the time to find out they had inadvertently downloaded a virus. In fact, the girls didn’t have their laptops for more than a few months before they started getting viruses on them. So, I have two externals because we have ten gigs of music and I don’t know how many thousands of pictures. (About ninety percent of which are the baby) We need a new baby we can spoil and take pictures off. But, that might mean that I would have to get another hard drive just for him or her pictures. (My wife goes crazy with the camera and babies) My youngest daughter has been hinting about wanting a Kindle for Christmas. There is a new one out there for only seventy nine dollars. We might think about that for her. My eldest daughter will be home for Christmas, but she’s been gone for so long I don’t know what she’s going to want.
But, the cat is out of the bag. My eldest daughter lost her wallet in Georgia last week. She started carrying it around in a little backpack instead of a purse and left it in a taxi. She called to let us know so we could help her cancel credit cards and request new SSN and driver’s license cards. So, my wife naturally went into her account to make sure that no one had started charging stuff on it. While she was in there, we saw an airport charge. My daughter has been telling us that she was going to stay in Georgia for Thanksgiving because the army wouldn’t let her come out. But, from the amount of the charge, it looks like a round trip ticket. We figured that she was either going to come out and surprise us or she was going to fly her boyfriend out there for the holiday. But today, the cat came out of the bag. Her boyfriend let it slip that she was coming out. We’ll still act surprised, but it is going to be very nice to have her back even if it is just for a few days. She’ll have a four day weekend, so I hope she can spend the entire time out here.
Well, I better get back to work. I’m nearly halfway through the River of Magic. It is coming along very nicely. If I continue to work on it, I should have it finished by the end of November. But, like today, I didn’t get much sleep and don’t really feel like working. Last week I only managed to write one day out of the week. So, I’ll have to put in twice as much effort tomorrow and not let it turn into another week like that. I’m putting Cinderella, White Lion, Scorpions, and Dokken in the playlist tonight. I need something loud to keep me awake and I think those should do it.
Until next week,
-Thom

Tuesday, November 1, 2011

Nov 1

http://www.thomnichols.com/
Yes, it’s Tuesday again. I’m going to blame the lateness of this blog on Halloween even though it didn’t have anything to do with it. I was just being lazy on Monday and didn’t even think about it until it was already Tuesday. But, speaking of Halloween, I have a couple of cute antidotes. The first one was when I was taking my granddaughter out trick-or-treating. We had been building it up for weeks. We had her costume about a month in advance. She was beautiful. Naturally, she dressed up as Cinderella. She is a Disney Princess freak. She was Belle last year and she will probably be one of the other ones next year. The kids took her trick-or-treating at the schools. My daughter’s high school was doing it for all of the neighborhood kids and they went to the college. I usually go over to visit my mom on Mondays and then sleep in the evenings so that I can stay awake all night at work on Monday night. So, I cut my visit short so that I could go to sleep in the afternoon and go trick-or-treating with my granddaughter in the early evening. So, I was asleep when they went to the schools. About six o’clock, my daughter and I head down to my son’s house so we could take my granddaughter out. She was still excited. She got a lot of candy already, but she was anxious to get some more. We took her to the very end of the apartment complex and up to the top floor. Our plan was to go around the whole complex in order and hit every door. We trudged up to the top floor and knocked at the first door. A guy with a scary clown mask came to hand out the candy. My granddaughter took one look at him, screamed and started running away crying. She was so upset she wouldn’t go to anymore doors. In one fell swoop, I traumatized my granddaughter for Halloween and clowns, a very productive evening.

Today, my granddaughter came over so that the kids can begin moving stuff over to their new apartment. She woke me up and we were playing for a while. Then, she wanted to watch some cartoons. So, I put them on and went out into the living room. She had a small bag of Halloween candy sitting on the table. I resisted for a loooong time. It had to be at least ten minutes. I started rummaging through it looking for something chocolate. I found a couple of good ones before I heard her little feet bounding toward the living room. Quickly, I threw the bag back onto the table as I stuffed the candy into my pockets. She saw me trying to hide them and knew I was doing something I wasn’t supposed to be doing. She faked me out by asking for something to drink. As I was pouring her some tea, she went for my pocket. I almost dropped everything trying to catch her little hand. The only way I could get her to forget about what was in my pocket was to bribe her with a Popsicle. It’s bad when you get busted by a three year old. But, in my defense, she is almost four.
I guess it is time to get the Broncos out of the way. Last week, we suffered through three quarters of booooooring football before we got to the last seven minutes where Tim Tebow pulled off a miraculous comeback to win the game in overtime. Well, this week, we had to suffer through four quarters of bad football to come away with a 45-10 loss. It was so bad, I took a nap through a whole quarter of it only to discover we were farther in the hole than we were when I started my snooze. If you can name it, the Broncos couldn’t do it on Sunday. I don’t want to say Tebow is a bad quarterback, but with his college success, he should be a better quarterback than what he has displayed so far. I know he hasn’t had the practice with the first string guys like he should have had and they threw him in earlier than they would with a normal quarterback. But, come on. We need to do something before next week’s game.
In baseball, the Cardinals took the World Series. The Texans had the series won in game six, but allowed the Cardinals to come back every time the pulled ahead. They took it into extra innings and then lost it. Both teams are really good, and I can hardly wait until next year. (Especially if football is going to be this disastrous)
It looks like everyone is going to be able to call me four eyes again. Yep, I’m going back to glasses. I started wearing them about six or seven years ago. Then, they either stopped working or I broke them or something. Since the kids and my wife all need glasses or contacts, we concentrated on getting them. My wife has worn them since she was a kid and the kids were in school and needed them more than I did. So, it worked out. But now, I have to hold a TV dinner box way out at arm’s length in order to tell how many minutes it needs to cook and what sections I have to cut the film off of. I’m a big reader also, and I’ve had to hold the book farther and farther away lately. So, since we’re paying for the insurance anyway, we might as well use it.
Speaking of glasses, (This is probably why the issue of my glasses came up in the first place) my daughter went on a camping trip over the weekend. She came back with her only pair of glasses broken. She got new ones today. We would have gotten them for her on Monday, but it was Halloween and my wife had to work late. Besides, it was a lot of fun watching her search for something. But, she has some new ones now and she looks good in them. I, on the other hand, am sure I will look like a dork when I get my new ones.
My son and daughter in-law started moving to a new apartment today. I was supposed to go over and help, but my granddaughter woke me up early and my wife had to go get my daughter glasses, so I ended up sleeping in late. They have until Friday to be out of the old place, so I’ll go over and help them tomorrow. I’m sure if we get the big stuff moved, they can get the little stuff. The biggest trouble is getting moving boxes. No one wants to pay for them, so they’ve been hitting up the fast food restaurants. My brother works in one and said he would save him some. But, it was Halloween and they forgot to go get them. (Man, that Halloween is a good excuse for almost everything)
Well, it is snowing out tonight and I don’t really feel like doing anything. So, I better get to work. I’m putting in a bunch of different songs into the playlist. I’m choosing them on the basis of if I would put them in a list of my top one hundred favorites. (That is a hard thing to come up with by the way)
-Thom