Last day of 2010, just about ready for 2011. Most people are off work, since New Year’s Day is on a Saturday, so that’s kind of nice. And those people who want to party hearty will be able to take advantage of 2 full days of recovery, should they need it.

I don’t have anything that special planned, though I’m making chicken enchiladas for dinner. Nathan’s having a party at his place, with games and Rock Band 3 with the intimidating Pro drum set. I’m not going to show up for that—mostly because I’m on call for work, and I know that I’ll have to do a couple of things in the morning of Jan. 1 to fix a few files. In other news, apparently Stephanie used the Target gift card I got her to get a heated mattress pad, and it’s been useful since it’s been much colder than usual in Phoenix the last few days.

And, of course, the champagne exploded when I opened it. I did it right by the sink, though, so the mess was minimal and easily cleaned up. Anyhow. Let’s hope that 2011 is a good year. . . .

Here’s a shot of a guy playing some large handbells with sticks. This is actually the easiest way to deal with larger handbells, since they can weigh over 20 pounds each.

Thursday, I had to go to work. There were many, many extremely stupid “security notices” from Qualys, who are probably the least competent technical organization it’s ever been my displeasure to work with. The DMV and the TSA do a better job than they do. Week after week, it’s nothing but problem reports that either don’t correspond to anything remotely resembling reality, or claims that we’re running some piece of software that we’ve never even installed. Sometimes both at once.

I don’t know how they’ve managed to stay in business with their level of stupidity. All I can think of is that the technical ignorance of too many managers combined with the current climate of paranoia has led to this.

This is the keyboard player of Huney Brown, a group that was performing at the Luminarias three days ago. She was trying to add some energy to the crowd, but everyone was pretty relaxed. She did say that she was from Detroit, and was happy that the Lions had won, which was kind of neat.

Anyway, I was off work yesterday and today, which is kind of nice, but I’ve got to go in on Thursday. Stephanie and I didn’t go to trivia yesterday, which was probably a good thing as the big table we usually sit at got broken up into two tables, so there wasn’t enough room for everyone to show up. I got a lot of reading done, and amused Moira. All of this is good. And apparently John won the fantasy football competition at his work, which is slightly weird as he’s not a big football fan. His strategy was “Picking players whose last names started with ‘A’.” Seriously. And it worked. Good for him. No Rock Band tonight because Steve’s still in New York. Ah well, we’ll start that up again pretty soon. . . .

Here’s a somewhat blurry photo of the lights on the mountainside on Dec. 26. This turned out a lot better than Dad’s attempt to capture the same scene. I think this is because my camera allows for 1-2 second exposure times, while his doesn’t. Ah well.

Monday, Stephanie had to work. Mom, Dad, and I didn’t do all that much, but we went to the Chandler mall and looked in a few stores for a couple of hours. Mom said that Macy’s had been picked over something fierce, and there wasn’t anything left there that anyone would want. Dad and I went to Barnes & Noble, but I’d left my gift card at home, so I didn’t buy anything. Then we went out for dinner at a neighborhood Italian place, then saw Stephanie briefly.

What else. . . the storm over the east coast and the resulting traffic spike of people trying to rebook their flights totally b0rked the section of Delta’s website that handles checking in. Mom and Dad tried to check in multiple times throughout the day and ran into various web application errors every time. Delta’s phone# said, “Use the website”, which was absolutely no help at all. I don’t know if they’ve managed to check in yet or not. Their flight out is early tomorrow morning, so I hope they have. Anyway, here’s a picture that perfectly sums up their experience today:

Sunday, Boxing Day, we all went to Sweet Tomatoes for lunch. Mom and Dad wanted to take Stephanie somewhere, and couldn’t do that tomorrow since Stephanie has to work tomorrow. But anyway, we all had tons of salad, bread, and dessert. Then we went to Fried Electronics, mostly to get a memory card for Dad’s new camera, and replace my old monitor. So now I’m typing this on a wider, shorter, and non-flickery monitor. The “shorter” part will take a little getting used to. It’s only 124 pixels shorter, but that’s still a difference.

Then I read some more of Paradox, one of the books I got for Christmas, then we had leftovers for dinner before going to the Luminarias. I put the liner in my jacket and wore a scarf, even though that really wasn’t that necessary. Anyway, we all saw the Botanical Garden at night with a lot of lights hung up, and saw some of the local musical talent. Mom enjoyed it; she said it was pretty.

Saturday, we got everyone together at my place and had a Christmas celebration with presents and everything. I think I got 12 tons of stuff, including a sci-fi trilogy that the library only had one book of, shirts, and a couple of scarves from Stephanie’s parents. Dad got an enormous Doonesbury book, Mom got a leopard-skin pillbox coat, Stephanie got some CDs and gift cards.

There was way more stuff than anyone really needed. But Moira decided that the boxes everything came in were far more fun than the things themselves. Then we had lunch at Stephanie’s place (leftovers from last night’s dinner), and my parents got to see Stephanie’s cats. Well, they got to see Anna—Pinto was hiding under the couch almost all the time they were there.

Dinner was at my place, with ham, rolls, casserole, a nice Pinot Noir, and some Jello that Stephanie made for dessert. Mom and Dad said they really enjoyed the nice weather, since it was 70° F and sunny. But this year, the real fun wasn’t in the presents, it was in seeing everyone and not having to deal with work for a few days.

Friday, Christmas Eve. Mom bought a pink sweater for Moira, and it was a lot easier than we expected to get the sweater on Moira. Moira also tolerated the sweater a lot better than we thought she would. Not all of the pictures I tried to take turned out well though.

After lunch, Mom and Dad took Stephanie and me to the Sea Life aquarium in the AZ Mills mall. This was kind of expensive, but it was actually not a bad little aquarium. The LCD monitors that displayed helpful information about the fish were all far below my eye level, though, and cheap enough that their viewing angles weren’t all that high. But the fish all looked healthy, and we got to see them feeding some of the sharks and rays. We also got to see the seahorses eating brine shrimp, which is more interesting than it sounds.

Stephanie took all of us to dinner at Golden Buddha. That was really tasty, and there were a ton of leftovers. After dinner, we walked around the Chinese Cultural Center and looked at some of their outdoor exhibits.

Tomorrow: Family celebration, mostly. The mass of presents under the tree is higher than it’s been in the past, probably because there are four people instead of three this year. Anyway. Spend some time with your family and/or friends tomorrow. And have a good time. There’s nothing like a little celebration during the darkest time of the year to renew your faith in (whatever).

Thursday had significant amounts of mechanical fail. My parents were supposed to arrive in Phoenix at about 14:30 MST, but were delayed for a very long time thanks to bad weather and didn’t get in until 18:11.

I tried to wash my car, figuring it would be no problem. Nope, the dollar bill changer wasn’t working and it wouldn’t accept any of the $1 bills I had. I had to go back home and ransack the place for quarters, since that’s all that car wash will accept. And I didn’t have enough quarters to wash the car and use the vacuum. How annoying.

And also, the lamp in my monitor is getting old or failing or something. After it’s warmed up for a few minutes, it’s fine. While it’s warming up, it flickers horribly. In my future, I see. . . a trip to Fried Electronics’s after-Christmas sale.

But anyway, after Mom and Dad finally got here, I served them some leftover chicken, pasta, and rolls, and they liked that. They were really tired from spending most of the day on planes or in airports, though, and didn’t stay that long. No problem. We’ll have plenty of time in the next few days.

Wednesday, I spent most of my time cleaning things and buying things. I think the house is just about ready, though, and there’s certainly enough food and stuff for everyone. However, after dinner, it started raining lightly, and has continued to rain for about half an hour, and shows no sign of letting up. This is actually a good thing. We could use rain here, and snow up in the north where the mountains are.

While I was getting the last of the groceries, a fortyish white guy approached me. I didn’t know what he wanted at first, because he wasn’t saying anything. But I read the piece of paper he showed me, which said that he was deaf, and selling buttons to try to support his family while he looked for a better job. I gave him $5 for the button. Hope it was for real and not a scam.

Very early Tuesday morning, my alarm went off. “Oh, the lunar eclipse is almost at totality. But I’m really tired. So. ZZZZZ.” I found out later that there were far too many clouds in most of the Phoenix area for anyone to see anything anyway, so it all worked out for the best.

Anyway. No work on Tuesday, thanks to vacation days, so I spent most of Tuesday cleaning house and unboxing presents. Got a whole bunch done. Still have more to do. At least I still have Wednesday.