We started out with a quick show and tell, which is something that people never grow out of, no matter how old they manage to get. When people aren’t in school anymore, it usually means that most show and tell is with more extensive or expensive items, and usually they are less generally enjoyed and more appreciated by a select group. Like when I show and tell about a new set of bump keys, it’s not something that most girls would care about.

After show and tell ended, we made our way out to a restaurant known as The Cheesecake Factory. Since I’m trying to lose weight (I’m now at… well, I’ll tell you that another time) I ordered a

It’s really a good salad, and though it’s not the best dietary option, it’s better than the excellent cheeseburgers that they sell. I don’t mean better in taste, just in health.

Along with the salad I had one quarter of a club sandwich, with lightly toasted bread. I didn’t ask for the bread to be lightly toasted, but was very glad that it was. Overall, the lunch and company for lunch was grade A.

After the food was taken away it was time for some fun, which for me is balancing a salt shaker on it’s ridge. I was told that this was a bar trick, but I started doing this when I was 18… about 4-5 years before I ever went into a bar.

Because there was too much light left in the day, we headed out shopping. I have never previously been inside a Bristol Farms market, but I found some things worth taking pictures of and something worth shopping there for too. I don’t know how the pricing compares to my favority market, Albertson’s, but I think it’s much more expensive. I know the cheesecake is more expensive than I have ever seen before.

Now the reason that I will visit is because the best selection of beer that I have ever seen in a grocery store looked me straight in the face and challenged me to think of something that they didn’t have already chilled and ready to drink.

Though it was still hot outside, we had one last stop to make, this one at Gelson’s grocery store, which I would never shop in on a regular basis because the pricing is intense. I had to get credit approval just to walk in the store! I was looking for Krusteaz frozen French toast, which they didn’t have. I’ve run out of places to find Krusteaz French toast now. Before you tell me that you’ve seen it, make sure that you aren’t going to tease me with hope. I don’t want the French toast sticks and don’t want the cinammon flavored either, just plain, frozen, French toast from Krusteaz. No luck? I didn’t think so.. oh well, thanks for trying.

My car in the garage.

Pretty sure if the only two places listed are in the spot, they could do away with an arrow and just have a comma separating the locations.

Nice neon sign for the casino hospital.

Shouldn’t this sign be in Spanish first and English secondly?

Plug your laptop into the red outlet, it’s backed up by power generators.

What a wonderful compliment of gadgets and medical stuff, along with a digital clock for accurately calling the time of death.

Another angle of the room. Look, clothes on the wall.. looks like I don’t have to streak anymore!

It’s The Law or.. Es La Ley

I think this says something about having to pay unless you don’t want to or can prove that ESL is your way of life.

Check out the monitor. I’ve watched those for so long that I just pretend it’s a TV show (and it’s better than some shows on these days).

Nice lines in the ground. Sort of like what siblings would do when drawing lines to separate their shared bedroom.

Accucare Sphygmomanometer. Umm.. I’m not sure what that word means, but this one is broken.

Having tape on the ceiling to keep the A/C from giving the flu-ridden worse times is a great idea, almost like not putting an A/C vent over a bed in the hospital.

This is a hospital. That’s a vent in the hospital for the HVAC. I think someone doesn’t do a good job cleaning.

“Canon analyze ECG” message means that the monitoring equipment just isn’t trying hard enough.

There’s a cute nurse at the hospital. She has a great sense of humor, likes jokes about thermometers and where to stick them, and has the most incredible big brown eyes of any nurse, ever.

“Some ECG alrms off”. Just some of the alrms alarms were off, the other ones were working excellently.

27 minutes later, same alarms warning.

Guess this was just taken so you could see the reflection of my camera in the monitor.

Nothing is more adorable than a young kid’s belief in things pure and fun.  That’s why Santa Claus and Christmas is so popular.

The reasons Christmas is popular in the United States are:

• retail stores make cubic tons of money;
• families have an excuse to get together;
• people can be generous in giving gifts;
• people will be receiving presents for just knowing someone;
• adults can relive being children by continuing the story and beliefs;
• parents can participate in the children’s fantasies of Rudolph and Santa and Elves.

Sure, there are more reasons.  But this is a start.

As for this Christmas, I have already gone over budget and have only bought for a few people.  This year I bought for myself too (Lego time!).  Last year I bought myself the Canon EOS Digital Rebel XTi.  For this year I was going to buy myself a higher end camera but instead settled on buying myself a lot of Lego train items (beware, Lego is suppose to be doing away with the 9 volt Lego trains).

Alright, I’ll share my Lego shopping list with you as long as you do me a favor.  This is going to be one of those favors that actually should make you feel really good about yourself.  You need to order a Santa letter.  The process is easy and quick and you will be making some child (or children) very happy.  This is sort of like my random restaurant thing, only I will feel much better about the Santa letter surprise.

Click on the Santa picture on the right and than follow through and send a letter to some kid that you know.  Your own kid.  A niece.  Nephew.  Neighbor.  Some kid or adult even.  This is a chance to send something unique that will continue the beliefs and happiness of the season.

If you are anti-Christmas, I do apologize that I don’t have any recommended anti-Santa letter to send, but you could still send a Santa letter and just think to yourself that Santa is just Satan spelled with a typo.

OK, now for my Lego shopping trip.  Wait, you clicked and ordered the Santa letter, right?  Well, do that first.  Please.  This is not a totally selfless act on my part, I’m not pretending that it is.  Everyone is trying to earn money, and well, though I won’t be writing the letters you will be helping me pay for my Lego trains.  In exchange, I will post pictures of my Legos.

Alright, Lego shopping madness.  Click the image for a full size screen shot of my placed order.

Workaholic, that’s probably the term most used to describe me (at least when I don’t have my daughter).  Workaholic is defined on Answers.com as: One who has a compulsive and unrelenting need to work.  I’m not sure if I am a workaholic but it does define me pretty well.

What do you do when you have a day off of work but no family around to spend the day with?  I logged into the servers at work (remotely) and checked log files, queues, backups, work email, and then started IMing with some people from work.  I’m not doing a lot of work, but I am working.

In the background I had my TV on and during the first few hours I listened to CNBC (Squawk Box, Squawk on the Street).  After those shows were boring and I finished my daily trading, I flipped through the stations until I found a movie that I haven’t watched in a long, long time.  Before I tell you the movie, I want to share something and ask you all something.

If you have a DVD of a movie, and that movie comes on a movie station (like HBO or Showtime or Cinemax), do you watch the movie on the station instead of putting in the DVD you have of that movie?
What if the movie started like 5 or 1o or 15 minutes before you started watching?

The reason that I ask is that I started watching Princess Bride (you can buy it at BestBuy for $14.99 or Buy.com for $13.99) this morning.  I didn’t watch from the beginning and actually only saw the last 15-20 minutes of the movie (right after Weslie is only kind of killed by Prince Humperdink), but instead of putting in my Princess Bride DVD which my sister bought for me years ago as a present, I just watched the last part of the movie and that was it.  Even now that I’m thinking about it, I’m wanting to put in the movie and watch it.

So why not just put the movie in and watch it?  I don’t know.  Immediately after the end of Princess Bride on HBO I switched to Independence Day on Encore.  It’s not even the high definition version.  Why am I watching it, in the non-high def version?  I don’t know.  Maybe someone can tell me.  Oh ya, and the TV watching thing I do, it’s a bad habit, but since I have the full compliment of stations on DirecTV I feel guilty if I don’t use them.

links: Princess Bride on BestBuy, Princess Bride on Buy.com, CNBC.

Using my current favorite camera, the Canon EOS Digital Rebel XTi, I took about 750 pictures (nothing quite like a fully charged battery and an 8GB CF card).  Most of the pictures were family and friends, but some of the pictures were of the parade, buildings, other people, signs, the ground, and other things.

Since there are a lot of pictures I want to post (54 pictures) but I don’t want to subject anyone to view so many pictures at once, I have included 4 pictures on this post and a link to view the other pictures. 

Take me to more pictures!