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We got some snow last night, but not enough to stop me from going to work. So I must go, but first I wanted to post some pictures of our house in the first snow of 2004 (plus some others from Christmas).

Sherry has been diagnosed with Scarlet Fever. Don’t worry, it is not that big of a deal these days, but we are still taking it easy, and I slept in the other room the other night just to be safe… but after 48 hours of antibiotics most of the rash has gone away. The funny thing is, the red bumps are the only symptom that she had. She never had a fever and she never had a sore throat. The bumps just showed up after we did about 8 hours of yard work on Saturday.

Regina’s friend Randy is getting into town tonight so Sherry and I are going over there tonight until around 11 just in case Jake wakes up while she is picking her up from the airport.

Not much work has been done around the house and I am starting a diet. I am using a pretty cool website to track my eating habits and physical activity. I have set up the workout bench that Sherry got me for Christmas and have actually been using it.

Work is going good. Much, much better then that old piece of crap that I use to work at 🙂

So in general, life is very good.

Pearl’s best friend Charlotte was related to this boy… very sad 😦

Suffolk boy found drowned in lake

Mom and Don had a great time up here. It was good to see them. We didn’t really get much work down around the house but we had fun just hanging out and showing them our new home, both the house and the area. We had dinner on Saturday and had Pearl, Shelley, Mike, Shawn and Regina over. It was a good time for everyone to catch up and see each other again. We then played Trivial Pursuit and the boys lost to the girls (thanks to Shawn). But I got entirely to upset about Shawn giving hints to the girls and provided some tension for everyone that wasn’t quite as competative as me (which was basically everyone but Don).

My Christmas present to all of you is a few pictures of the house in holiday mode… Hit up my Yahoo Photo Album to check out the work in progress.

PBase is trying to get $23 out of me to host any more pictures and Sherry and I are not sure yet if we want to spend that… so feel free to email me and contribute some money 🙂

I have to say that it is amazing what a new correctly run company can do for ones psyche!! When I showed up at work on Monday I had orientation for the first half of the day and then was taken upstairs (3rd floor) to talk with my new boss (Mike). He took me to my……. NEW OFFICE! That’s right folks, for the first time in my career I have a door! I know it is stupid but I feel pretty damn cool walking past a closable opening that has my name on it. But I digress, Mike then took me around and introduced me to lots of people that I will be working with, and then left me alone in my new office to set up my two (one brand new) computers. One for development and one for checking email, research and the such… not quite sure why I need two yet, but I am not complaining. I think it has something to do with extra security, even though I can still get to the internet on both computers?

As you can expect being an anti-virus / security company they are pretty hard corp around the office, I have to whip my badge from my waist about every 100 steps or so to get in and out of the doors that lead to and from the secure and unsecured areas… and there are some areas that I still don’t have access to.

But my wife is dragging me out the door now. We are going to Coleman Nursery to see the holiday lights with Shawn Regina and Baby Jack.

Well I have taken the week of… well actually I guess I was “given” the week off since AMA continues to suck, and decided that one week wasn’t worth it. But I am very relaxed now, did a little work on the house, and prepared for Mom and Don’s visit right after Christmas.

I have started hanging some of the doors back that I have primed and painted a fresh coat of white. I have also been replacing some of the sockets and light switches and their face plates to give off a fresh look as well. But as usual when dealing with a 40 year old house that job turned out to be more then I bargained for… Seems that 40 years ago they didn’t run a ground wire with the hot and neutral wires so that the three pronged outlets that I bought would be violating code if I installed them (which I did a couple of places any way). Running the ground wire might be a task for another day, since if you do try to run the wire through the same conduit as the old wires they will get shredded since they also used some type of tar and string concoction to wrap their wires back then, which doesn’t hold up very well after 40 years and a fresh wire being rubbed against them.

I am very excited about Mom and Don coming to see our first house, and about opening our presents, sherry and I are very fortunate and have a rather large pile gathering for ourselves. Sarah and Heidi’s presents arrived today and I had to force Sherry to wait til Christmas to open them.

… and only cost me $75! The water pumps pressure gage had been melted by electricity so they replaced it with a $25 part and charged me $50 for the know-how and labor to do it… which, after one week of not having heat in the whole house sounded good to me:-)

We did have a lot of good fires this weekend and hope to continue to do so… which reminds me… need to close the flu when I get home.

Just got done quitting at AMA and now looking forward to starting at Symantec!!!

Here is an article about them for you to get familiar.

Got the offer today. Same money I am currently making plus 3000 stock options… which is potential big money.

Benefits are better and the company is an actual software company!!! I will be submitting my letter of resignation on Monday 🙂

PS… Heater still broken.