Look Who's Back . . .No, Honest, I Mean It This Time

Remember last month when I said I was back on the blogging track?

Obviously, I lied.

Sadly, no really good excuse for my lack of posts, other than a general lack of inspiration and desire. Had planned on getting back into it over Christmas break, but wound up just reading old comics and watching lots of movies. Then I had thought "alright, let's make 'posting regularly' one of my New Year's Resolutions!" But, yeah, that didn't happen either. And while I was trying again and again to motivate myself to post, as usual it fell to a pointed comment from Zinger to get me moving: "Can't believe Rosenberg is only going to be updating Goats three days a week. Next thing you know, he's only updating once a week, then once every couple of weeks, then not at all. We all know how frustrating it is to keep checking a site that never updates, right?"

Point taken, my friend, point taken

So, what's been happening in my life since the last time I actually posted?

CHRISTMAS: Cap'n Cluck and Angel hosted a White Elephant gift exchange at their house the Friday before Christmas. My contribution? A framed photocopy of the picture I had posted at work for the "Guess whose parents these are" game

Gotta love the 70s, right? Anyway, Fluffy was the lucky recipient of my parents' wedding photo, along with a beat up copy of the 2000 Video Hound Movie Guide, added to give the box some weight.

I spent the first week of my Christmas break in Miami, OK where I gleefully introduced my parents to such Odd-Squodd-esque films as In Bruges, Burn After Reading, Mister Foe, Sasquatch Gang, etc. Dad and I also got to enjoy a couple of entertaining horror-comedies The Cottage and Dance of the Dead, which I plan to talk more about on Monday. Honestly, a good portion of my enjoyment of spending time with my folks is introducing them to films I know they'll like but which they would never rent on their own.

The second week of Christmas break was spent largely just sitting around my house watching Netflix and DVRed shows. Man, I love my DVR.

NEW YEARS: I spent the bulk of New Year's Eve fighting with a nasty piece of malware on my PC which not only kept most of my anti-spyware and anti-virus from opening and/or updating, but also blocked me from accessing several web sites devoted to fighting such things. Luckily, I now have WiFi and a laptop, so I was able to download the software needed to clean up the PC onto the laptop and then burn it to disc to get it onto the PC. After about 6 hours or so of messing with it, finally get it all cleared up, and so was able to make it to the Singles New Year's Eve Luau with no problem, especially with the help of the new TomTom GPS unit my folks got my for Christmas.

The Singles party was a lot of fun, even if it did remind me just how horribly out of shape I've gotten in the last few months without PigPen and Cap'n Shack-Fu around to get me off my butt. Dancing can take quite a toll when you're old, fat, and have no endurance. I also about lost my voice doing karaoke. Good times, good times.

I got to try out the TomTom again on New Years Day when I drove out to Van Alstyne to visit Clan Flunky. Flunky's folks had bought around 8 acres there a few months back, and Flunky had spent most of his Christmas vacation helping his dad with landscaping. When he invited me out to visit, Flunky told me I could bring my work gloves and pay for my lunch with hard labor; I opted to just be a mooch instead. I was really glad I got to spend the day with Flunky, Flunky Lover, and their two spawn, since I hadn't seen them face to face in probably two years. The elder spawn is not nearly as hypnotically cute as he once was, but he makes up for it with his mind-bending joke telling ability.

Spawn: Knock knock
Me: Who's there?
Spawn: Chair! [erupts into gales of laughter] That's how we play this game!

CAP'N SHACK-FU: My best bud Shack-Fu has now been at the FBI academy for a little over a month. The first few weeks were pretty rough as they tried to weed people out, but things seem to have settled down a bit . . . of course, "settled down" for the FBI academy is relative term. He has put down Oklahoma City as his top choice for a duty assignment after graduation, so we're all praying that that pans out, since he'd only be a couple of hours away then. Right now I'm hoping to head up to Quantico for his graduation in May; with luck I can work it so I can also swing by Maryland and see Clan Flunky again while I'm in the general area.

And, for the record, yes, it is still horribly surreal for me to think that my best friend in the world is on the verge of becoming a full-fledged FBI agent.

FACEBOOK: I know I mentioned back in September that there had been an increase in the number of Wyandottians on Facebook, but it has been steadily increasing ever since then. As of this moment, I now have over 50 former classmates from Wyandotte as friends on Facebook. Kind of interesting, seeing where everybody is these days. Plus, I enjoy knowing that some of them who never had much exposure to the "real" Todd are now getting to see a brief glimpse of my insanity as evidence by my random status updates.

In addition to the Wyandottians, I've also managed to reconnect with my old pal from the Stillwater Public Library Days J.D., along with his wife and mother-in-law; now that we're in contact again, there may be hope that we can actually get our schedules to line up so that we can meet up at some point, since I can't even remember the last time I got to see them.

Oh, and earlier today I added CoIM to the Facebook Blog Network; if those of you blog monkeys with Facebook accounts could take a moment to go here and confirm me as the blog author, it would be greatly appreciated. If nothing else, I'd like to get the number of readers to rise above 2.