December is BUSY
That's right. December is BUSY. With all sorts of stuff. My weekend was packed. Which is not a bad thing.

Yeah, the week was mostly work, bits of kung fu, choir, etc. At work I'm helping the company get started on fixing some spyware with an enterprise version of Spy Sweeper (which is apparently the only real choice now that Pest Patrol was bought by a different company). It's pretty slick. Works like an enterprise (i.e., company-wide) version of a virus scanner. I like it.

That, and lion dance practice has begun in kung fu. Every Sunday for now. This is the first year I'm going to be the lion! I'm normally Buddha, but I guess I'll have to be ferocious now and be a lion. The lion head. A guy named Kaleb has the good fortune of being the butt. It's hard work! I'm going to get buffer, I think.

Which reminds me of class this week, on Thursday. Or was it Tuesday? One of the two days. I think it was a Tuesday. Anyway, Sifu had pulled all the floor mats up, and it was time to clean underneath and clean the mats before putting them back down. So we split into teams and cleaned. One team to do the initial scrubbing, then a water vacuum machine, then cleaning all that off and any last grime. Me and Justin were on the last team. So, to make it just like a traditional kung fu school cleaning, we'd grab a mat and then sit in a horse (or occasionally another stance) to clean the mat. It was a good workout. About an hour of horse stances. But we did get to get up from them between mats, so it wasn't too bad. But it was kinda cool.

And the weekend was crazy busy. Busy on Saturday with paintball! It was a lot of fun. Went with Carlos and Justin (a different Justin) and did some woods ball. I took my Armotech (looks like an M4 carbine) and had lots of fun with it. Great exercise, some good games. Got sun and fresh air, so all in all it was good. Then had to get cleaned up and go to the kung fu dinner. Yay! The dinner was good. Ryan's Steakhouse. Not upper class food, but it's buffet style, so if you didn't like what you had, you could go back and try something else. We had a ton of people show up. And Sifu gave out awards, in addition to little pins to recognize how long we had been at the school. One for a year or less, another for one to four years, and one for five or more years. Yeah, Sifu erroneously put me in the middle group, but I've actually been there (as of this year) for five years. Dang! Five years is a lot of kung fu. So I got the cool DRAGON pin. Mmm, dragons.

After that I did some computer work to fix a friend from kung fu's machine. It was a lot of work, so he paid me, which is good. I wiped his drive, reinstalled the OS (with a better version), set up his DSL, made sure his machine was up to date in patches and was secure, and he was good to go. Hopefully he's enjoying it.

Sunday was more kung fu. Lion dance practice. Had to skip a choir lunch (kinda sucky that I did) to do it, but it's part of kung fu. And right in front of the school there was a massive Toys for Tots drive. Which made it very hard to get in. See, it was sanctioned by marines and policemen. So hum-vees (the REAL ones) were parked at every entrance, to scare you away. Didn't work on me, because I needed to go to KUNG FU. So I got in, just in time. Before all of the thousands (I'm not kidding) of Harley-Davidsons showed up. Yeah, they do a parade every December for the drive. Starts somewhere on Riverside, ends right in front of the kung fu school. In the huge parking lot. I did get to see some crazy motorcycles, and a lot of leather jackets.

After that it was taking Sandra to Newman for church (she was TOO TIRED after all those pesky finals to drive). Mass was weird. Lots of mistakes. One humorous one was Henry (the alter boy) lighting a candle with a match, then blowing out the match, but somehow forgetting to move it away from the candle. Yeah, both went out. Physics works like that. Then he lit ALL four of the advent candles. Whoops. And someone came up to rectify the situation, but blew out a PURPLE candle, not the pink one. It was insanity. And the music was all right. I actually played the Our Father on time this time. Plus I played some Christmas carols after church, just for funsies.

And today was interesting because of a little extra something that happened at Circuit City. See, they made a mistake in a deal they had. Any $19.99 game you could get two for $29.99. Nice deal, eh? Well, somebody made a boo-boo and they were actually being sold two for $9.99. Yeah. So I made my way over for lunch and snagged four for $20. Found out later, they sent a memo out about ten minutes after I left to notify everyone NOT to sell at that price. I should have bought twenty. Imagine the money that could have been made. I guess it was a mistake that started yesterday, but they're fixing it tonight. If you're lucky, you could go to one of them and find an attendant who's unaware to purchase from. It will still ring up on the machine at the lower price until tomorrow.

So I have way too many games and too much to do to enjoy them all now. Oh well. I'll have break to take care of that. Yaaay! Vegetation is always fun. I guess that's my Christmas present to me. And now it's time for random link! Want to do scientific things that aren't normal? Well, apparently someone's made a list.

- posted by Pootenheimer @ 3:15 PM | 3 comments