Just back from excursion down the valley for work & shopping. Early dinner at Rein's, pastrami on rye did me a world of good. Got a Carnegie Deli cheesecake to take home, anybody want to come by & have some? It'll be thawed tomorrow...

Also went by the Table & Vine for fancy cheeses & alcoholic drinks, wish that were still in Northampton.

May or may not go out to house show in Turner's shortly.

Big time sleep catch up. Hurray.

Going to get up & move around.

On getting up to go get some pudding, realized I was far too sleepy to enjoy going out for music. Going to stay in & continue watching postapocalyptic soap opera with dogs.

L.'s gone to Northampton for music, may go to Turner's for more after, envy her energy, sort of, though blanket is nice.

Ribs were extremely tender & tasty, not all that spicy, a pleasant background burn, earthy, rich. Butternut squash was spicier actually, love that spicy maple sugar stuff. Also ate the rest of that applesauce Toste sent us, tangy, almost sharp.

L. made more butterscotch pudding, going to have some of that in a bit.

Snowing again, a holiday whenever you want.

Oven braising some short ribs, recipe here. Skipping the black beans, going to make some butternut squash instead.

Think I'm going to some show or other later, though I'm pretty sleepy.

Plodding through end of week monitoring & tidying at work, didn't sleep well last night, had scary dreams, overslept, rushed out of house head still full of scary dreams.

Slowly returning to the real with the help of coffee, but the work I'm currently doing is such as to cause the mind to drift. Yuck.

Want tasty lunch, somewhere, somehow.

Tired & irritated.

Leftover curry was, however, quite delightful. Made some more raita to have with it.

Thumb hurts where I cut it earlier chipping away ice.

Woke, checked my email, learned that twice-rescheduled conference call had been canceled.

Car was half embedded in snow/ice from neighbors' roof, took about an hour & a half of shoveling & rocking back & forth to get it loose.

Last night was strangely busy, got done with work, went out & shoveled the walk, went back in to read. Got call from L. saying she couldn't get into the driveway, went back outside, plow had filled driveway, covered entire sidewalk with icy slush.

Went back inside, did dishes, L. started making these orange/pumpkin rolls from the latest Gourmet, then I made a chicken curry with egg noodles for dinner, ate that, watched a little Top Chef, then went out to try to remove slush before it totally solidified. That took quite some time.

Came back in & collapsed, was given hot rolls with butter, really lovely & fragrant, would like to try them with a suitable soup. My mom called, told her she should make the rolls & have them with a suitable soup.

Extremely stiff & sore, feet won't warm up.

Snowing hard.

Conference call for early this morning was, of course, cancelled & rescheduled for early tomorrow morning.

Have had a pretty enjoyable morning working from home, horrible db problem notwithstanding.

Just shoveled the walk, L.'s gone to work for a bit.

Just back from seeing some music round the way, nothing too earth shattering, but a pleasant enough scene, drinking ginger ales & captioning Neil & Cory's drawings with ads for Malt-Os, the ring-shaped treat that tastes like malt.

Should really go to sleep, have an early conference call if you can believe it.

Realized that I've managed to miss out on the lion dancing again this year.

Anyway, happy new year, anyway.

Decided yesterday that beard was getting to be too much & trimmed it, now have abraded neck.

Long day, head hurts.

After work, brought projector & ps2 to H & O for Singstar party. Got free Korean, yip, yip.

Would like to be asleep.

Realizing that if I wanted to/was able, there are enjoyable shows to go see pretty much every night this week. What to do, what to do?

Work, work, work.

Bleh.

Would really like to be asleep, head hurts too much.

L. made some really delightful rolls earlier, twisty & salty, salty, salty.

Going to try to sleep again.

Late night with the Indian food & the Trivial Pursuit, slept in again, pretty great.

For the first time since the violent puking episode, my stomach feels normal. Attribute it to the delightful raita. Maybe all the ginger helped, too.

Sometime I should take a week off & just sleep & sleep & sleep.

Stayed out late catching some pretty enjoyable alt country type band in some godforsaken spot out in Belchertown. Slept in. Spent most of today making a variety of Indian foods for dinner party later at Karen's.

Just took a very hot shower. Ready for action!

Peretz is chewing on a bone on the floor.

Woken from less than satisfying afternoon nap by closing credit music of dumb scifi movie I'd put on to help me fall asleep.

Then the dogs started barking loudly.

Have a bit of a headache, looks like snow, not supposed to snow much if at all.

My dad's home from the hospital, apparently a bit swollen.

Just extracted email from former professor from the corporate spam filter, happens to the best of us.

Have very dry eyes, toe hurts a lot less, excited to get out of work early, eat nice lunch.

Spent my drive down here brooding about stupidity & madness. Hopeless but not serious.

Home again, remote access setup was complicated by worker's home computer's lack of a functioning CD drive (had two nonfunctioning ones). Finally got that done, drove home through weirdly dense traffic.

L.'s at the gym, I'm resting with bone chewing dogs.

Was plugging along at work, sore toe, feeling ever more droopy, went & got some barley flour soup & beef momo, feel sleepier than before, if anything, but also fabulous. Should really work on getting more ginger in my diet.

A couple more hours in this sleepily humming room, then I'm going to go set up remote access for a worker with a sick kid. Will be nice to be back out in the cool air.

Want a server room nap cubby.

Woken early by pain in toe joint, stayed under blanket for a long time, pretending it would go away. Quite the cavalcade of mysterious pains lately.

Steeling myself for the next step, a bit more coffee first.

Surgery apparently went well.

Having a hot toddy.

Just learned that my dad will be having an appendectomy later. Strange.

Kind of surprised he went to the doctor.

Having a ginger ale.

Slow day at work, figuring out exciting new login scripting & the like, then a whole bunch of requests for assistance just as I was trying to get out. Typisch für whenever.

Got home, more Katamari Damacy, then out for some nice Thai, not hungry enough for the mango with sticky rice, then home for more Katamari Damacy. Got booted off that so the wife could watch a favored sitcom, going to go out for some advanced music watching in a bit.

Taking tomorrow off.

Back at work, catching up on things, still feeling pretty vile.

Kids have been sent back home, was genuinely lovely having them visit, show was a blast.

Should eat something, stomach hurts, should eat something.

Have icy cold feet, just went & borrowed a mic stand for kid's gig. Thanks, Neil.

Spent much of the afternoon playing Katamari Damacy, sometimes I miss video games.

Kids are downstairs, watching Tupac documentary.

House full of teens is kind of fun, they seem to be having fun. Discussed historic freezings of the ocean over morning coffee.

Sometime in the night, the boiler stopped working, restarted it when I got up, brr.

Brunch in a bit.

Woke fairly early, feeling a bit better, learned that snow tomorrow was now predicted to happen earlier, decided I had better go reboot servers. Did that, came home again. Then the teens started arriving, house is full of them now. Going to go to Northampton for replacement tubes for an amp & dinner in a while.

Still extremely cold.

Started the day on bread products, toast, bagel, then worked myself up to some spicy peanut noodles. Made me feel less lightheaded, stomach's still fairly upset.

Just back from walking the dogs, too cold for dog walking or much else.

Otherwise, watching Netflix instant this & that, awaiting arrival of wife & kid.

Been mostly asleep since 3 in the afternoon yesterday, no solid food since Wednesday evening, weird.

Peretz just got such cold feet in the yard I needed to drag him back inside.

Woke very early this morning feeling queer, hyperalert, crampy stomach. Over course of day at work, stomach felt worse & worse, tried peppermint tea, ginger ale to no avail. Finally decided I should really go home. Puked violently in the parking lot at work.

Home now, feeling a little better.

Montalban, McGoohan, what's the world coming to?

In more positive news, spaghetti & meatball panini on special at the Wagon Wheel. Hot damn.

Just spent quite a while being cramped & dusty under a desk installing a kvm, then pulling it because it was defective, then installing another. Feel like I might cough up a lung.

Why I get paid the big bucks, I suppose.

Want to be home with tea or perhaps cocoa with mini marshmallows.

Full day of further sinus adventures, joy.

After work, had a hot alcoholic beverage, that was nice.

Sick of commute.

Left work with sinus headache, on drive home started feeling dizzy, dizzier now, trying to not move my head much. Blech.

Slept extremely poorly. Beautiful sunrise, intense orange through striated clouds.

Muscles hurt.

Took some time off from inertness to go pick up some Chinese noodles & dumplings, eat same, take dogs on moonlight dog walk, the world looking very much like the surface of the moon.

Back to being useless lump.

Snow arrived, in quantity, spent quite a while this morning digging us out of it, nice fluffy snow.

After that, went for unusually pleasant brunch featuring hot alcoholic beverages, clam chowder & adorable toddler.

Hands still ache. Planning on spending as much of the rest of the day as possible inert.

Paying for my urges to be nice to little old ladies with the coin of achey hands. Roma's back stoop had a giant mound of ice on it, chipped most of it off with a hoe, it seemed a bit dangerous for her mom & her walker.

After that, lots of errands, got work done, tried local burger at creatively named new Northampton spot, pretty tasty, shoestring sweet potato fries were out of sight.

Loaded up on cheap & tasty snacks, where's the snow?

At Roma's hanging with Roma's mom while Roma goes to the gym. Just set up wireless network here, hurray!

Earlier, finally chipped the ice off the front steps.

Have cold feet.

Just now, Peretz snagged his line on some ice jutting out of the back yard, quite a chore getting him detached, icy steps, etc.

While I was dealing with that, his paws got pretty chilled, poor pup.

He's licking them now. I'm going to shower & then go fetch cider donuts for me & the missus.

Pizza was slow to arrive and pretty disappointing, drag. When will a worthy pie reach these northern climes?

Didn't really detract from fun evening spent with wife & pals, though.

Cold again, almost shockingly so.

Going to take a nap. Pizza later.

Having a hard time with the return of the normal workweek.

Last night, removed what must have been a few hundred pounds of ice & slush from the front walk, then settled in to For Me and My Gal, pretty silly.

Peretz is being difficult mornings, has to be coaxed into each stage of activity, sweet old pup.

Just replaced faulty tape drive. Haven't had any lunch. It's raining.

Still a bit of a sinus headache.

Way too many layoffs, makes my stomach hurt.

Should probably feed the dogs.

Amazingly woke feeling rested, mouth still felt like something small & furry died in it over the course of the night, but smaller & less furry than yesterday. Happy days.

In not so happy news, they're still canning folks at work.

After an exhausting day at work, seemingly underwater thanks to continued sinus congestion, headed over to the H & O with a Ghanaian barbershop sign to hang in their men's room & 1960: The Making of the President to play at Soup & Games night. First time we've ever actually played a game at that, fun, unusual, a little confusing.

Came home to feed the dogs, about to go out again so the wife can sing some karaoke & I can get a little more to eat, hurray for peanut noodles!

Still feel like crap, slightly less unpleasant crap than yesterday.

Oh look, another workweek.

Xmas tree's out on the curb for collection, guests have gone home, seems the holiday season is over for the moment.

L.'s downstairs making some garlicky broth. Still feeling cold & poorly.

Went for a lovely, sociable brunch. Ricotta fritters, ooh la la.

Still feeling pretty rough around the edges.

Looking forward to an afternoon/evening consisting largely of television viewing, a beverage here & there.

Been having fun singing to Alice, high pitched nonsense, "Don't Fence Me In", etc. Also discussing why there is something rather than nothing.

Henry's gone to get more half & half.

Last night, after sausages, played some Bananagrams, pretty fun.

Now Nancy's singing to Alice in the next room.

Went to work & swapped tapes, got stuff on way home to make spicy chicken noodle, made that, made the inside of my head feel ever so much better.

Henry & family are en route to help us finish off sausages, hurrah! I hear Alice can put away a surprising lot of sausages.

Continue to feel pretty messed up, sore throat, etc. Trying to work up energy to shower.

Heated up a sausage to enjoy with hot sauce, helped a bit.

Think I've slept about 15 hours since yesterday afternoon.

Was feeling pretty lightheaded at work, didn't realize how out of it I was until I left & had trouble finding my car, then trouble figuring out which key was the car key.

Watching Inland Empire, slightly over two years since I meant to, let's do the time warp.

Still feeling poorly, woke early enough to view attractive pink sunrise, have a papery mouth.

Attendance at sausage party was scant, like old times. Was fun to cook a bunch of food.

Could use a hot shower.

Fixed a mess of food to go with Kreuz sausages, invited folks to join in, we'll see if anybody shows.

Before that, went to work.

Still feel like crap.