Hmm. Interesting (and surprising) that my blog gets a handful of hits a day that aren't me. :) Mystery guests: shoot me a comment if you want to reveal your identity! hehe

Ugh, gotta go back to work tomorrow. :( It's gonna be especially hard to get up in the morning because I'm suffering from a bit of a cold right now. Stuffy nose, dry scratchy throat... Which reminds me it's about time for me to take my cold meds.

It's been a productive few days off though. Lunch downtown on Friday was a lot of fun. Had some yummy Thai food. Yesterday I went for a workout and then did a lot of cleaning around the house: purged some old bills and bank statements from my file drawers, cleaned the guest bathroom toilet which has had a water ring in it for months now (found a great product that made the job easy: Scrubbing Bubbles Fizzies :)), and cleaned my bathtub - including the drain, which evidently has been clogged with sediment and hair that's been there for years, because once I removed the gunk (major yucko), the tub drained more quickly than it ever has since I moved in!

I finally took some time this weekend to dust off my digital piano and play a few tunes - some pieces I had played before, plus a couple that were new to me (mostly simple stuff). I'm pretty rusty but if I get back into playing regularly hopefully I'll get more comfortable with it again.

Also - I started the Harry Potter book ("The Sorcerer's Stone" - the first in the series) this weekend. I got it from Lori for Christmas. :) So far it's pretty good! And now I can have at least some idea of what people are talking about when they discuss Harry Potter. heh.

And another Christmas has passed. This one was busy but very enjoyable. Christmas Eve dinner at my parents' house was fun. And dominated by the new babies in the group, hehe! Lori, Rho, Jerry, and I ended up staying till 5am (!!!) chatting about anything and everything. Needless to say it was a little tough to get up for church in the morning. :)

After mass we headed over to the Virays' for lunch. It's always fun hanging out with them, and especially with the kidlets. I need a nap afterwards though. :) For dinner we went to Tita Marie's place. Greg was in town with Julie so it was great to see them. And the food was yummo as usual!

I've got today and tomorrow off (yay) so I can catch up on sleep and maybe do some cleaning around the house. Tomorrow I may be meeting with Jerry, Rho, and Lori for lunch downtown. Maybe I'll brave the post-Christmas crowd at the malls too some time this weekend.

Got Windows XP Home installed on my comp last night. All in all it went pretty smoothly. I did have to update and/or reinstall a couple of programs and drivers but even that wasn't too bad. The new XP interface is pretty nice (although I didn't much like the blue rounded taskbar and windows, so I switched to the "classic" look), and it does seem more responsive than Windows Me. And so far, no crashes or blue screens! (knock wood)

My Christmas gift for my mom still hasn't arrived in the mail. I ordered it a week-and-a-half ago, at the same time (and from the same place) I ordered my dad's gift, and his was shipped within three days! The customer service guy did mention that Mom's item was back-ordered but they expected to have more in stock within a couple days. I'm thinking I may have to give my mom a scanned image of the item from the catalog in the mean time. :)

Woohoo, I'm done with my Christmas shopping! Finished up last night. Now, to wrap the gifts... Actually, only a couple actually need to be wrapped. Still, I should just get it over and done with ASAP so I'm not scrambling around on Tuesday night looking for scotch tape. :)

I bought a copy of Windows XP Home upgrade edition. I'm gonna try and install it on my PC this weekend. I'm a little trepidatious about it but hopefully it will go well. I just think it will solve some of the crashiness that's plagued my PC as of late.

Lori's coming home tomorrow for winter break. It worked out that Jerry was working in Indy this week and so could drive to IU and pick her up before heading home. Anyway, it'll be nice to have her around for the next three weeks.

Ah the holidays. You have twice as many things to do and spend six times as much money compared to any other four-week period of the year. :)

Mom's b-day was on Wednesday. We had a nice spaghetti dinner at my parents' house to celebrate. I got her a new telephone for her computer/hobby room.

I'm proud to report that I am halfway done with my Christmas cards! And roughly halfway done with my shopping. Well, more like one-third maybe. I have ordered and received my gift for my Dad; Mom's gift is on backorder but will hopefully ship soon. I have gifts in mind for my sister and grandma, and I need to get a couple of gift cards for my cousins. Still don't know what to get for Mark G. Hmm, I guess I still have quite a bit to purchase...

Tonight I took my CR-V in for it's 15,000-mile service (a little late, since it's got about 16,600 on it now). Dropped some dough on that, and while I waited for the car I had the complimentary shuttle take me to Woodfield Village Green where I spent even more on a few things for myself and a stocking stuffer for my sis. I'll be dreading the MasterCard bill next month.

But hey! If the Lotto ticket that I purchased with four of my co-workers earlier this week is a winner, then my money worries are over!!! ;) We had a dollar left over after paying our lunch bill at Giordano's the other day, so we used it to buy a Mega Millions ticket with our birthdays as numbers. We've already started fantasizing about where we'll go for our first trip together as multi-millionaires. :D

Thursday night I met up with two old pals from my training class at CSC, Michelle and Melissa. Chelle is originally from out east, moved to Minn when she got married, and is currently on a project in Chicagoland. Mel is a Chambana girl, worked out east with Chelle for a while, and eventually found her way to Chicago when *she* got married. Funny how we all ended up in Chicago again five years after our training took place. :) Anyway, I met up with them for dinner at Champp's at Old Orchard Mall. It was great fun chatting and catching up with them! We plan to get together again some time in the near future, since Chelle is going to be around for at least a couple more weeks, and possibly longer if her assignment here gets extended.

Driving my sis back to IU today. Not looking forward to the long drive :) but it will be nice to see the IU campus again.

Thanksgiving was fun... Got mobbed (literally) by kidlets at the lunch party I went to - at one point I think I had five kids sitting on/climbing/tickling/hitting me at once. :) Then for dinner my parents and sister and I went to another friends' place. My mom prevailed yet again in the karaoke "competition"... she sang her now signature song "Top of the World" and scored another 99. My sister hit 91 with one of her songs, but my dad could only muster a 78 with his effort. :) Anyway, I didn't sing but it was great fun watching everyone else belt out the tunes. Not to mention, the food was great!! Yum!