Tag Archive for: family

Simply Having a Wonderful Christmas Time

Christmas has come and gone. It was a bit strange this year as on my mom’s side we didn’t exchange gifts and just got together to catch up and play games and have dinner. It was really fun. I definitely preferred that than a three-hour present exchange marathon (our family is quite large).

One of the best things that happened this Christmas was giving my brother-in-law his present. You may be wondering what it was. It was a pillow with my face on it. Oh yeah, and I’m wearing a sombrero. My sister and I have a history of playing pranks on each other at Christmas. This year my brother-in-law was on the receiving end of the prank since I had his name in the gift exchange. The pillow is one of those pillows with sequins on it that display something when the sequins are facing one way but swipe the other way and they show a different picture/design/color. Anyway, below is a nice video and pictures of the pillow as well as some other Christmas pictures.

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I am not my father

No, this isn’t a post about how I’m turning into my dad, though my dad and I are a lot alike when it comes to many things, especially politics and baseball. The title of this post needs to be taken literally. For those who don’t know, I am named after my dad. Growing up in the same house, phone calls could get confusing. Are they calling for me or my dad? Then I started getting mail. It was easier to figure out that college pamphlets were for me and AARP material was for my dad. There is one avenue in my life where I’m still confused with my dad: email.

My dad and I have very similar email addresses because we have the same name. My family on his side continuously sends me emails (emails that are sent to the entire family) thinking I’m him. Then I get all the replies when they reply to all. It’s been explained that my email address is not my dad’s, but once your email address is in their address books there’s no turning back. You’re on the chain for good and because of family happenings regarding my grandparents over the past few weeks I’ve been seeing an influx of emails. Sometimes I’ll get 20 a day not meant for me.

I’ve decided I’ve had enough and set up a gmail filter. Any message that comes from the addresses of my aunts and uncles go directly to a new label and are marked as read. It’s not that risky because they think I’m my dad anyway so they wouldn’t be using that address to contact me. They also know that my dad never checks his email so they including my mom’s address on all emails. Then once a day I will delete all the mails from the label. I had a bit of trouble trying to figure out how to enter in multiple email addresses in the from field in a gmail filter but I think I found a solution. If you place a | between the email addresses, gmail will see them as separate addresses and apply the rule accordingly. Let’s hope it works. I’m waiting for the next email to arrive.

Gifts Galore

Well, Christmas has come and gone. It was a good one. I was given seasons 4-7 of The West Wing. I love this show so much. It’s such a smart, funny, well-acted show. I also got a bunch of Best Buy gift cards. I spent those today when I went to buy an external hard drive. I got a 500gb MyBook. I reformatted it and partitioned it so both the pc and the Mac can use it. The Mac partition will be used with Time Machine. My Christmas prank on my sister was great. She got me good as well and gave me this really cool picture of the first pitch on opening day of the first Cardinals game at the new Busch Stadium. It’s very cool. Can’t wait to hang it somewhere. My other sister got me a cool Cardinals baseball (well, it was from my nephew) and the Wii Zapper which I am using to play Medal of Honor: Heroes 2 and, of course, Link’s Crossbow Training. It was a great Christmas. I hope everyone else had a great holiday as well.

Holiday Parties

This weekend was a busy weekend. Friday night was happy hour with people from work. A couple people who don’t usually show up came out and it was fun. I really enjoy the people I work with, even though I never get to see them throughout the day. I’m with the kids from 7:15 until 2:15 without a break. I eat lunch with the kids in the classroom. I never deal with any teachers. The only people I deal with on a regular basis are the hall monitors and the lunch ladies. Needless to say, I really enjoy happy hour as it gives me time to really get to know my fellow co-workers.

After happy hour on Friday I went to my sister Lisa’s party. Her and Kevin were having people over to show off the new floor and the wall they knocked down in the entryway. It looks really nice. They had quite a few people stop by their place to check it out, as well as enjoy some tasty food (except the meatballs), beer, and friendships.

I woke up on Saturday to about four inches of snow. For once the weather people were right. It snowed off and on all day. Why couldn’t this happen during the week so we can have a snow day? I would really like one right about now. The snow did put some extra stress on the day as we had plans to go to my Grandma’s house for her holiday party. We made it out there, but it took about an hour longer than it should have because it was snowing heavily again and the roads weren’t in the best shape. Coming home was even worse since it snowed another two or three inches while we were at the party. None of the roads looked like they were plowed recently. It wasn’t until we made it back into St. Peters that we experienced decent roads. Good job St. Pete! Anyway, I had fun at my Grandparent’s place. There’s some pictures on my Flickr page if you want to check them out. No, we weren’t opening Christmas gifts. We did a white elephant thing and all the gifts were items from our homes.