new year's eve @ drk & liz'z old place. i erased sil's camera accidently. shawn and i played som ds at the party (big dorks) then rick kite showed up and happened to have his ds with him too (bigger dorks) so we played 3 player mario64. didnt drink much as my stomache had a bad day. ern made up for me though. left party @ 2:30a, sleep @ 3.
crit?: 0work> left early> kendra came over, her phoen was broke. worked some tinker-fu on it and we got her contacts off and used her sim card in ern's old phone. need to solder a new power switch onto the broked one. ern and i had a surprisingly nice evening to ourselves.
crit?: 0woke up @ 4:30 didnt get soundly back to sleep before wake up time. zombie'd around the office for a few hours but was generally unproductive and nasty. took off @ noon, ate, slept for a few hours. ran some errands (picked up prince of persia: sands for xbox) came home. kendra came over and we talked and played video games. then she left and i went to sleep ultra early.
crit?: 0 
drawing night turned into fixing julian's computer and playing ds night. i went to get in my car to go home (from shawn's wife's mother's beau's house) and my car was missing. i t was dark and stormy, so i beeped my car to flash the lights. they flashed from down the driveway/hill. odd. i open the door to my car at the bottom of the incline and the ebrake is still on
i push and pull on the frame to see if the car is freerolling despite the ebrake and it wont budge at all. weird. i did the push pull thing when i got home too and it wouldnt budge on level ground. i plowed throgh a floodlake near worktoday so i guess i got my brakes wet?
boxing day @ ern's aunt/uncles house. played games and assembled puzzles and sandwiches. i receieved a box of $2 chuck for drawing night. no really.
crit?: 2woke up, and opened our stockings + few remaining presents from family. did i mention i got 60 bic pens? my sis was able to find these certain kind of color pencils i like, and she got me a bunch of them. (the red + blue ones i use on work doodles). We went over to ern's aunt/uncle's house for a while and had a few drinks then headed to my parents house for xmas dinner and more games.
merry christmas internet friends
we got around pretty slow, to savor the day off. i think i played a lot of halo, then around 4 or so we went over to my parents for christmas eve crab + presents. ern got me scrabble and 90's trivial pursuit and othello, so we brought those over and played with my parents and sister. we did the dinner + presents thing and didnt end up getting home till quarter of midnight or so.
crit?: 0xmas party at work. i forgot to bring cups. leah brought her baby* in, i got nervous and sweaty holding it (her) 'cause it (she) kept crying. an elaborate prank started by a veep and an estimator backfired, making an old lady cry. we got out around 2p, so i went to ern's work to get back a check to deposit in the wedding fund. ern and i did the last of our xmas stuff without family, on the last night without family.
* note the crazy red rimmed baggy eyes? that's due to this being the most hectic holiday season yet.
ha! even though we both said we weren't going to do large presents, in favor of many smaller presents, we both did. ern got me an xbox and halo2! woo! i've been keeping a list of all the xbox games, or games that were released on all the consoles that i wanted to get for the xbox. first up will be prince of persia: sands of time. woo! it came with a football and tennis game, i played the football one (ea sports ncaa 2k5) but i suck pretty hard at it. halo2 though, i was starting to pick up before i went to bed.
crit?: 2
woke up @ 2a with a horrible headache. went back to sleep. woke up @ 7a with the same horrible headache. tried various things to make it go away. lindsay graduated from uc davis today, so we went over to parents house to carpool. mom has super prescription headache medicine so i took one of those and we left for davis. the graduation was nice. ern and i switched off playing ds while the pomp and circum stanced. we met up with linds then went back over to her and her manfriend's apartment for graduation gifts. afterwards, vacaville for dinner at pietro's (a place steph and i used to go to a lot) dinner was awesome and they gave us this giant oak table that was off on it's own. home. bed.
crit?: 2day of ne'er ending errands. we did a total house cleanup (spiderwebs, vacuuming... the works) 'cause my mom and grandma were set to come over later. then we went out and did a ton of errands. one of these errands was picking up 2 pairs of energy xl-150's for my stereo. (merry xmas to me). then home and mom and grandma came over. i gave gma the tour and ern filled mom in on the madrona manor. ern went for a tour with her aunt on friday and liked it. i think it's where we'll be doing the wedding. apparently the madrona walkthrough had been scheduled for weeks, but i guess i just paid attention on thurs. the brochures look nice and i'll be going to see it next week. after they left, i tricked ern into finishing the alterations of this nice button up shirt i inherited and then i went to an art show @ moxie. it wasnt too long before i got weirded out and left, but we watched spiderman 2 to test out 1/2 the new speakers ( i pick up the other pair next week). they sound amazing.
crit?: 1 
it's 11:25a, i've had way too much caffiene and i can't hold my pen right.
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after work i darted home and changed into some dressy clothes. ern's work's holiday dinner was downtown @ josef's so we went over. her work had hired a magician, who kept us all entertained and the hor'deurves and free drinks were nice. josef's fucked up the seating number, so they had to scramble more tables and chairs and place settings in at the last minute. my food was ok but rumour had the fish at dry. a drunk obnoxious man heckled the magician after dinner for a while but was trounced pretty badly. i'm not sure why the obnoxinator didnt give up, he just kept pestering and pestering while trying to "win."
crit?: 1
today was both up and down.
almost got in an accident leaving for work at the corner. was slightly late to work. all my slacks were unclean and i didnt feel like ironing so i just wore jeans. it was a nice day in ptown so i spent most of it taking photos at jobsites. a bird shat on me at one of the projects. TA says that's good luck though. home, then groceries. we havdt gone in so long that i stopped bothering to look in the fridge for food.
gave ern her xmas present early. she hasn't had a camera since hers was stolen from her truck.
crit?: 0 
woke up v. early to a sick little girl. in celebration of (most of) her finals being over we met with some of her classmates @ the hilton bar for drinks. one of the appetizers had a mayo based dip, which was bad, so ern started sicking it up around 4am or so. around 6 i went over to safeway for a bleary eyed dash and cash of pepto and ginger ale. luckily she had the day off, though her last final @ 4pm. she got better before then and was able to make her final just fine, which she got a B on.
i killed my precious hp ipaq 4155 today doing a rom upgrade. i called hp pretty mad (it is one month out of warranty) and talked them into fixing it for free, but i tried some tricks from the internet and was able to revive it and get rom 1.10 on there. rom update 1.10 has a launry list of stability and features added so this should be fun. i personally didnt have stability or feature-lust for it, i think it's a damn fine machine, but i do have issue with pocket artist being so crashy on it over a long period of time. do to the hard reset i have nigh 30mb freed up with apps that i installed on my sd card this go-round. hopefully the added space will allow me to do the drawings on it for longer periods of time, sans crashing.
crit?: 3
woo, just took down the show @ moxie, sold 4 more drawings. gave her and her man-friend a taskpad drawing each.
crit?: 1 
see here
crit?: 0
woo xmas bonus!
...
so you'll notice there aren't any drawings up top. i was drawing tonight, and had a nice fire going in the fireplace. one of those dura-flame logs, only i got the environmentally safe ones that burn cleaner or whatever. the problem with them though, is the flame starts to crap out 1hr into a 4hr log. so about that time i usually start throwing hunks of chainsaw'd pallet on top to keep the fire heating the studio. so i did that. i threw a hunk of pallet on top of the crapped out duraflame log. pretty much instantly the fire got taller, and the warmth started happening again. i dragged my little drawing table a bit closer to the fire so i could feel it on my back. i had a nice cuppa tetley going, and it's raining and windy outside. cozy eh? drawing, tea fireplace? so i draw for a little bit more and i start smelling this "hot" smell, like when you put too high a rating of lightbulb into a fixture and it just warms up too much. so i look at the fire and it's pretty decent high now but it doesnt look right. it _looks_ like the chunk of pallet has been soaked in gas or oil or something and is just burning like it's little chunky heart depended on it. i get up and go over to the fireplace and put my hand on the chimney a little. my fireplace is one of those stands in the middle of the floor open hearth with a big 12" chimney/flue dealie. the chimney doesnt usually get more than just moderately warm. only now it was hot. dead hot. hot on my fingers that are touching it and not expecting it hot. well this isn't right. i step outside and look at the top of the chimney, which extends maybe 2' above the studio roof. MOTHER FUCKING SPARKS AND CHUNKS OF SPARKS ARE COMING OUT OF IT. now i didnt grow up with a fireplace but i'm pretty sure this is dead-wrong. so i start freaking out. the smoke looks bad and sparks are flying every which way but extinguishing pretty quickly (it's raining + windy remember?) so i could just let it burn i guess right? i step back into the studio still pretty panicky and notice that it's a wall of smoke. well this isn't quite right at all so i grab the fire extinguisher from the wall and pull the pin. i aim it while standing back from the bonfire in my studio and shoot. the flame goes out! instantly! only, now there is a lot of smoke. A LOT. i step back outside and it looks like my studio has turned steam-engine. the smoke coming out now is laying low to the ground and sweeping over the barn behind us and into that street. shit. uh. shit. oh, and it's a duraflame log right? right. it's like sizzling fire-goo. they call it napalm most other places. this shit won't stay dead. i'm not very prepared for bonfires and such so i dont have big steel tongs. what i do have is a completely soaked outside fire pit and a bunch of stacked up tiki torches. i clear the way to the firepit and reomve the heavy steel lid. i pick up the still smoldering-but-wants-to-grow-up-and-be-fire pallet chunk using the tiki torch handles as tongs and waddle it to the pit. i pour a bucket or two of water on it just to be safe. the fucking fire goo is still burning in the studio so i pour a bucket into my hearth. that seems to do it and it smokes less and less till it just stops. since i was outside a lot, and it's rainy and windy i'm soaked. oh, and now i have ash, soot, fire extinguisher white powder stuff and water all over. but i've gotta get it clean, ern comes home in an hour or two! so i cleaned it up and set up a water trap for the hearth runoff. then i decide to back. away. slowly. i had thought about just drawing some more but i figured i had better leave well enough alone and skedaddle. the fire chunk in the fire pit and the fire goo were both out so i left some windows cracked to clear the smoke and backed. out. slowly. nothing is coming out of the chimney and all seems dead.
what really got me going during part of it was this firetruck pulling to a stop at it's destination sound out front. i thought for sure my neighbors had called the fire dept. on the chimney bellowing smoke + fire. i'm still soaking wet right now and i've got soot all over my powerbook, but i have a fresh cuppa tetley and i'm going to just sit in here and read and pretend like nothing happened till i casually mention it to ern when she gets home.
crit?: 4woke up early and decorated the tree with ern. drank some tea and ate some breaky and waited for dad to come pick me up. we drove to mare island for a mythical gunshow, but couldnt find it. mare island is this deserted ghost town of a naval base. everything was rotting, falling apart and out in the open. the flier must have had the wrong day as we drove up and down the right street and only found a soccer game. we got some lunch then headed back by way of work. i picked up a computer i had built for my parents then picked up my tools and stuff and went over to their house to set it up/transfer their old data. they are now firefox and thunderbirded up. came home and we watched a couple eps of "smallville" which is more xfiles than crap.
crit?: 1Guess who hadn't ever cut down a christmas tree? right, ern's family tradition is assembling the tree from the tree-box. my family tradition is slogging through the mud and cold to cut down a tree on a tree farm. since we played pictionary till after midnight last night we got a pretty late start. after dropping some stuff off at her aunt and uncles, we stopped by my parents house to pick up a tarp + rope + bunjee cords. my dad instead let us borrow his pickup truck. we ended up at a fairly large tree farm, after a few misguided crap-farms with slim pickin's and dreary atmosphere. the one we ended up at had quite a few trees that were good looking. you aren't allowed to cut down trees without price tags, which was unfortunate. what was fortunate, however was discovering ern's super power of the day: finding perfect trees without price tags. we've yet to figure out a way to exploit this. we decided that the farm didnt have the Tree For Us so we started slogging back to the truck. as we approached the main thing you walk up, we found our tree. as luck would have it, it was the very first tree anyone sees as they walk up the main thing towards all the trees. we completely forgot to look. as we were cutting it down some wiseass walks up and says "hey, that's my tree" in a way that made us think it actually was. we joked with him for a while and let him know about the lack of price tag thing. he was of the mind to just take the price tag from one tree and move it to another. we were astonished, that's cheating christmas! so tree was paid for, ern got some hot cider for me and i man-muscled the tree into the truck. we took our coupon for free apples to twin hills apple farmery and wandred around the small town craft-crap.
so, here's the deal. each of us have several ornaments that we've received as gifts over the years, but not a whole tonne. we went to target and picked up 144 of these little round bulb things and several strings of lights and a tree topper. then walmart for tree skirt and tree stand. after that we dropped my dad's truck off and ended up staying and having dinner with them.
ern ate beef, i saw it with my own eyes. a-ma-zing. it was a struggle getting the tree to stand in the treestand so i took it outside and sawed off more branches until we could get it to stand without help. finally we got it all set up. we put it where the easy chair usually is and moved the chair to the back room.
work was longer than it should have been. after work we went to drk + liz's for lots of pictionary till very late.
crit?: 0 
I HAD TWO CUPS OF COFFEE, WITH THREE SUGARS PER. FOR LUNCH I HAD 3 AND 1/2 PIECES OF OLD CHICAGO PIZZA AND SALAD AND A PEPSI. THEN I HAD 7/10ths OF A PIECE OF CHOCOLATE CAKE. A COKE CAN SAT ON MY DESK FOR ANOTHER 3 HOURS BEFORE I BROKE DOWN AND DRANK IT. I WORKED ON COMPUTERS AND STUFF TILL 6:30, THEN I TOOK MORE CANS OF PEPSI FROM THE KITCHEN AND HID THEM IN MY OFFICE. at some point during the day i drew and modified two contracts. oh also the company got awarded a $21MM job today, which is good. yesterday we had champagne at work to celebrate some job closing and finally paying us and them being out of the escrow provision or whatever that lets us be able to now sue them for all the money they owe us. though im not sure if thats a lot or a little cause mostly i stay in my cave and work on computers. it usually gets dark just as im driving home, but tonight it had been long dark. i didnt realize how glarey my new glasses are but ern says it's cheap to fix. hl2dm came out, and it's fun, but it broke hl2sp.
crit?: 1