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