Sunday, November 23, 2008

Early Thanksgiving

The family did an early Thanksgiving celebration this weekend since several peoples' schedules were a bit tight this year. So I headed to the parents' house early Saturday afternoon and did the turkey thing.

Had a great time; ate a lot of good Mom-cooked food, and brought back loads of leftovers. It was a quick trip and there was some irritation at my father's attitude (nothing new there), but overall it was a good visit.

I'm a little concerned over my youngest nephew though. He has bad allergies, and something was irritating them this weekend. They gave him some medicine for them, but by the end of the day he was looking pretty rough. His eyes were red and watery, and his head was twitching to one side with almost every he blink of his eyes. He hasn't been to the doctor for those in-depth allergy tests yet, but I hope they take him soon.

Sunday, November 16, 2008

Volunteering

I actually left the apartment and went out this Saturday night. And it was even for a worthy cause too! A friend works part-time at the Western North Carolina AIDS Project (WNCAP), and I volunteered to help out at their 2008 Raise Your Hand Benefit Dinner & Auction. It's an annual event and was held at the Grove Park Inn this year. They had a silent auction that was loaded with cool stuff and then a live auction that they held after dinner.

I helped with some data entry stuff for the auctions at the event and also with the checkout procedures to get all the items to the people who won them. It was a tad chaotic at the end with everyone trying to leave at the same time (and of course the typical computer problems that always happen when you don't need them to) but it was a pretty cool evening. A lot of people showed up and much money was raised. Although I'm not sure how much impact this year's economic fun had on it compared to previous years.

A trip to Denny's and then some margaritas (and maybe a rum & coke or two) (and a few beers) rounded out the night and made for a fun day. 'Course Sunday was spent napping and being lazy.

Wednesday, November 12, 2008

12 of 12

Thanks to Chad for the cool 12 of 12 idea. This 12th happened to fall on a weekday so the pics this time may be a bit less than interesting. Also, this ended up being a pretty dreary day here so most of mine were taken during the couple of sunny hours we had around lunchtime here in Asheville. Larger versions of the pics are on my Flickr page here.


7:45am
A dreary autumn morning



8:15am
The house across the street from work that's for sale.



8:30am
My cluttered office (I do my best work amidst chaos)


11:50am
A cool door and handle I spotted on the way to lunch. The doors were at least 10ft high


11:52am
I had lunch at Mela Restaurant off Lexington Avenue in downtown Asheville
(very good Indian cuisine)


11:53am
Another cool door, this one at the entrance to Mela. The pic's a bit blurry so it doesn't reflect how truly awesome the door really is.


12:35pm
One of the many cool hidden alleyways in Asheville.


12:36pm
Looking back towards Lexington Avenue.


12:46pm
A view of Lexington's cool sidewalk.


12:48pm
A side street.


12:56pm
A shot of the Vance Monument and Pack Square, taken from inside the car.


1:02pm
Another blurry one, taken from the moving car as I went by.
Cool art project on one of our underpasses.

Monday, November 10, 2008

Animal Visits

I was a bit under the weather this past weekend, so I spent most of it around the house doing a lot of napping and being lazy. Not that that's different than my usual weekends, but I at least had an excuse for it this time. The fact that I was sick and slightly feverish at times may have contributed to some of the dreams I had. None of them were particularly odd or anything, but I had quite a few of them and that's unusual for me.

The main theme of my weekend dreams appeared to be animals. There was a family of enormous black bears in one of them. Enormous as in: larger than the size of my car. They weren't doing anything much beyond hanging around the yard, but their size was a bit startling and there was 8-10 of them. Another dream involved a baby goat (a kid?) that I had to walk around on a leash. It was one of those dreams that jumped all over the place and was extremely fractured and odd. The fact that the goat put the leash on itself with its tiny human-like hands should give you an idea of the weirdness factor.

The coolest by far though was the one with Shelbe. I was flying in the dream too, so that made it even better. I was swooping up and down in the sky flying over meadows and around trees, and all the while The Shelbster was running at super speed on the ground beneath me. I'd fly down to pet her and she'd jump up to meet me; we both were having a blast. It's one of the best dreams I've had in a long while and hopefully I'll have it again soon.

Tuesday, November 4, 2008