Janicek.com

My wife reached the glowing age of 30 at 12:35 p.m. this past Wednesday. To celebrate I took her out to dinner. Seeing how it was Ash Wednesday, our dining selections were limited. Elise said she wanted “Sushi, Italian or seafood”. I thought seafood sounded peachy so we went to Truluck’s.

After waiting for 20 minutes for a table, we were seated at a cozy booth adjacent to the on-display kitchen. Our waitress, Issa was prompt and very helpful in selecting wine, appetizers and entrees.

Issa returned after leaving us with a wine list and asked if we had come to a decision. I looked to Elise and said “What would you like, birthday girl?”

Issa quickly responded: “Oh, it’s your birthday?!” To which Elise replied: “Yes, it’s my 30th”.

I don’t know how it is that females know these sorts of things, but the astrology discussion ensued. “So you’re an Aquarius?” Issa pointed out.

“Yes I am!” Elise said.

“I’m a Capricorn!” said Issa.

“Tee hee” giggled Elise.

“Hee hee” chirped Issa.

“Oooooh, then your birth stone must be the Amethyst!” said Issa proudly.

“Yes, it is!” Elise applauded.

“Did you know that some signs actually have two stones?!?!” Issa proclaimed.

Not to be left out of this riveting conversation, I chimed in and said:

“I have two stones. Whaddya think of that?”

We all laughed.

Elise and I shared a nice bottle of woody Cabernet Sauvignon. I don’t recall the name and the website’s wine list isn’t up-to-date.

We forwent appetizers as we had some leftover cheese and crackers at the house earlier that evening.

For dinner Elise ordered the Seared Sesame-Crusted Tuna with Tamari wine sauce. I chose the Jalapeno Salmon Bearnaise with sautéed jumbo lump crab meat and gulf shrimp. Elise’s tuna was fantasic – sashimi grade tuna that melts in your mouth! My salmon was good. Halfway through the meal I remembered that it was supposed to be topped with a jalapeno bearnaise. I didn’t taste nor feel any heat from jalapeno.

After our entrees Issa brought us a complimentary Chocolate Bomb – a giant double chocolate truffle drizzled with white chocolate topped with a birthday sparkler.

After dinner we walked across the street to Ringers, a new upscale sports bar that our friend partly owns. Said friend greeted us at the door where we paid many compliments to the new establishment. Elise and I were treated to a couple drinks and lively banter from the bartenders.

Midnight came quickly and the birthday girl and I headed home. With the party this past saturday and a romantic night alone, I think Elise had a very nice birthday.

This past Saturday I threw a birthday party for Elise and our friend Michelle. Said party made for a lot of planning and preparation but it was all worth while. Jen and Kari drove in from Dallas (Kari flew in from Minneapolis!) late Friday and helped out a lot.

Although Elise was one of the honorees, she did most of the work. I guess that’s par for the course when you’re a caterer. Along with the help of Jen and Kari, Elise ordered most of the food, the margarita machine from Greg over at Party Machines, a keg and all of the decorations. I spent all day Saturday at Garden Ridge picking up tiki torches and at Central Market getting various noshes and stuff for sauces.

The party went well and although we haven’t talked to many of the attendees since, I think it’s safe to assume that everyone had a great time. Here are photos from the party.

Last Thursday was extra special for Elise and me. We went to the Y Bar and Grill for a nice dinner where John and Christine asked us to be Jack’s Godparents. We gratefully accepted the offer.

John and I go way back. We’ve spent countless hours talking, lauging, crying and spilling our guts to one another. We’ve done good things, bad things and things we still haven’t figured out. I feel as if we became family the day that we met.

Since Christine came into John’s life and Elise into mine, our family has become tighter. With the addition of Jack, that bond has grown exponentially.

Elise and I are looking forward to many, many more years with John, Christine and Jack in our lives!

“Mmmmm. Thank you. I consider myself a good cook, but I have to admit I still can learn from you.”

- Joanne Boeckman (AKA My 2nd Mom)

Now that’s a pretty cool message to get from my mom-in-law (aside from the undying love I get from the both of them!) And Joanne is a damn good cook!

“If you change three ingredients in a recipe, you can call it yours”

- Jeff Blank

I did just that when I made chicken enchiladas with a fiery Godiva mole. I’ve tried making mole in the past… not so good. It was so bad that my friend Victor couldn’t even eat it.

Mole is a complicated sauce that has endless varieties. I made mine with some awesome Sandia peppers that I picked up at the Austin hot sauce festival. I also used anchos, garlic, cumin, chili powder, cinnamon, brown sugar, jalapenos, carrots, celery, Godiva chocolate, Vidalia onions, tomatoes, yadah, yadah and a lot of love. The best enchiladas I think I’ve ever had (but I’m biased). The mole was spicier than I expected but Elise and I can handle the heat.

I reached the age of 29 this afternoon at 2:51. I’ve realized a few things. It’s scary to find myself saying things like “Gosh, I remember 20 years ago when…” I’ve realized that things like tattoos, piercings, leopard spotted hair bleach treatments and funky clothes don’t suit me as well any more. I’ve realized that I don’t mind when the girl at Supercuts trims my ear hair without asking. I’ve realized that Profit & Loss statments, property taxes and fiber mean more to me than I thought they ever would.

But the most important thing that I’ve realized is that I don’t care. I’m not going to worry about how old I am. I’m happy with who I am and what I’ve accomplished in life so far. I know that I’m a good person and I have hopes and dreams that get me up in the morning.

I also have a wife that’s older than me. I’ll let her take care of getting old.

I treated myself to sleeping in this morning. It didn’t help that Elise and I stayed up until after 1 a.m. watching Metallica’s Some Kind of Monster DVD.

I got to work at 10 a.m. and met with my boss for two hours. I know he didn’t mind me showing up late because he knew of the shitty day I had yesterday. He and I went over outside sales stuff and other business. Kevin bought the office lunch from Russo’s and a bottle of Dewar’s for your humble narrator.

Later this afternoon our DHL guy showed up for his daily pick up and also had a package for me. Mom & Dad Boeckman sent me a sweet card, the American Chopper: At Full Throttle book and a bottle of Mr. Moto motorcycle cleaner. A very cool themed birthday present. I’m looking forward to reading the book and using the Mr. Moto to get the trusty Shadow spiffy for this Spring.

Yesterday I received one of my Mom’s signature customized birthday cards along with some cashola that I’m going to put away for Elise’s and my eventual trip to Prague.

This morning I woke up to a sweet card from Elise along with a box of Haribo gummi bears (I’m very particular about my gummi bears). This past weekend she bought me a Turtle Beach Video Advantage PCI capture card.

Unfortunately aforementioned wife has to work all night. I’m going to cuddle up with my bottle of Dewar’s and watch American Idol. See, when you’re 29, pop television becomes mainstay. As does fiber.

Just when I thought today couldn’t get any worse – it did. I answered one of our phone lines this afternoon because the girls were all busy putting away inventory.

“Hi, this is Josh, can I help you?”
“Uhhh, Josh, I’d like to place an order…”
“Okay, which pharmacy?”
“Actually, can I put my order in with someone else?”
“Uhhhh… sure. May I ask why?”
“Do you really want to know?”
“Yes.”
“Because last time I called to place an order, you took it and it was a confusing ordeal.”

That pissed me off and heightened my bad mood.

After work I went to TKD. Clyde and I sparred pretty hard. Now I feel better

Every once in a while my job really sucks. Today was one of those once in a whiles. Being in management sometimes makes me miss the days when I squeezed dog butts for a living.

A customer called and chewed me a new asshole. The gloves came off and I was made to feel like I was an inch tall. No punches were pulled.

It was one of those calls where you try every friendly customer service rebuttal but you might as well just say “Yes, yes, you’re right, I suck.”

So, being the person that I am (still 1 inch in stature) I have to look at this as a learning experience and generate an action plan. That’s business talk for crawl into bed with a pint of Ben & Jerry’s and cry.

But really – I handled the call as best I could and took the exchange as constructive criticism.

My original Tae Kwon Do instructor always told me: “You never learn by winning all the time.” Meaning: when you get your ass kicked, learn how to prevent it next time.

I hate reading other peoples’ blogs – well, unless they’re someone that I know personally.

Elise has pointed out that I have a man crush on Andy Rutledge. I found Andy’s site after Googling “thunderbird drag and drop attachments“.

So I found a personal website that I’ll take the time to check regularly. Elise will probably start checking my Trapper Keeper for doodles of “Josh + Andy”.

I usually come up with my best recipes somewhere between the time that I go to sleep and the time that I actually start cooking. It’s a very complicated process.

On Sunday I woke up and announced to my wife and the slumbering cats that I was going to barbeque chicken. I did just that and I must admit, I did (I think) an awesome job.

For my sauce I reduced 24 oz. of Coke to ~ 5 oz. I then added 12 oz. of crushed tomatoes, sauteed onions and garlic, then some Worchestershire, Soy, Thai chilies, chipotles, a Cab Sav reduction, a splash of Dr. Pepper, another splash of beer, paprika and chili powder, salt and pepper. I let the sauce slow cook for a couple hours and then took the trusty boat motor to it.

I rubbed an organic whole chicken with 1/4 c. Johnny Beans coffee, salt, pepper, chili powder, paprika and thyme. I slow grilled it with a makeshift smoker (oak chips wrapped in foil) for ~ an hour.

I tossed a couple cans of pork ‘n bean in a pot with some sweated vidalias and brown sugar.

All made for an awesome BBQ chicken dinner and some good NFL playoff games. I wish I had written down my recipe for the sauce. Oh well… I’ll figure it out again (and hopefully make it better)

Johnny Carson was one of my idols. Every once in a while I like to try to convince myself that I’m funny. I attribute that to paternal geneology and Johnny Carson. I remember when I was a little boy – Shirley Clutter introduced me to Johnny Carson. She thought that he was the funniest man alive. I soon shared in Shirley’s adoration for Johnny.

I’m sad. Life is much too short and, really, not that serious.

Elise and I met up with Philip, Rob, Dave and Shannon last night to watch the Ice Bats beat the Loredo Bucks 5-3 in their last game of the season. Bonus: Pushmonkey (local band that Elise and I really like) performed after the game.

Going to Ice Bats game has been a tradition for Elise and me since we’ve been together. We go, sneak in a pint of Jack Daniels (sorry, I’m not paying $5 for a beer), make some noise, watch some fights, chant “Go Ice Bats” and Elise has to re-explain the rules of hockey (Northern folk understand ice hockey. Most Texans just go for the fights and to revel at the notion of a large platform of ice on which to skate).

The game was awesome. It was also good to catch up with the boys. Two weeks ago I gave a lot of business to the company that Rob works for. I found out last night that Shannon works for a competing vendor that I’ve used in the past. Rob and Shannon are neighbors. I handed them both my business card and told both of them to call me Monday morning. That was hilarious. I kept my mouth shut and laughed as the two of them starting fighting (in a neighborly/friendly way) for my business.

After the game we all went our separate ways. Elise and I came home and looked at old pictures and watched the video from our trip to Galveston for New Years 2000.

Elise and I went on a dinner date last night. I chose Chez Zee. If it weren’t for the atmosphere and the borderline overly-friendly and mildly entertaining maitre d, we would have walked out.

First off, our waiter was horrible. He didn’t introduce himself, ask us how we were doing and taking our drink orders seemed like a chore for him. I watched our waiter throughout the evening. He had five tables. He wasn’t too busy to be more attentive to us. I saw him and two other waiters playing catch with a pack of cigarettes in the alley of the kitchen.

Elise had a chardonnay. I had a J&B on the rocks.

Dear Chez Zee bartender,

On the rocks = don’t float the ice. (Thanks Doug Paul)

Champion de Marlboro Wimbledon then took the food order of a four top that was seated after us.

Said waiter then took our order after putting the four top’s order into the POS. Ten minutes later, as he was walking by, asked “Oh, did y’all want some bread?”

I thought about saying “Oh, is that what the bread plates are for?” I bit my tongue.

Elise and I both struggled with finding something on the menu that brought taste buds to attention. I was quick to notice that most menu items were chicken entrees. I wasn’t really in the mood for chicken, nor was Elise. Elise thought the Spinach Salad with Warm Bacon Dressing and Pecan Chicken sounded good, but didn’t want to pay $15 for a salad.

She ordered the Oriental Ginger Stir Fry. I had the Chicken Gorgonzola Pizza (from the appetizer menu). My pizza was very good – very flavorful and plenty of food for half the price of an entree. We both agreed that the stir-fry wasn’t much better than a frozen boxed dinner. It was very bland with no hint of ginger. The fried wonton bowl was also more oily than she would have liked.

Chez Zee is well known for desserts. We didn’t want to stick around any longer than necessary. No dessert for us.

I thought about stiffing the waiter on gratuity. I’ve spent many years in the restaurant industry and know that that makes for bad ju ju. So I left our waiter a little less than a 10% tip. He was terrible.

People will always be people and mostly strange at that. Representing a restaurant well as a server is critical if that restaurant wants repeat business – and what restaurant doesn’t want that? I took a comment card home with me and planning on filling it out and attaching a short letter recounting our recent visit to Chez Zee.

One bad apple can spoil a nice, Friday night dinner date with my wife…

Wireless security. Two words that have had me pulling my hair out. There are many wireless networks in my neighborhood. I became paranoid. I have sensitive data on all three of our computers and I wanted to protect it (as well as keep people from stealing my high speed access.

I use a Netgear WGR614 v2 802.11g wireless router. I have a G4 iBook with an AirPort Extreme card and a HP dv1040 XP laptop with an 802.11g card. I also have an AirPort Express base station that serves swingin’ sexy sounds to the stereo in the living room.

My initial attempt at wireless security was to enable MAC address access control. A valiant effort but not enough (so I’ve read). I’ve also learned of WEP (Wired Equivalency Protection) and WPA-PSK (Wi-Fi Protected Access Pre-Shared Key) – the latter offering greater wireless security.

Here’s how I did it (I’m writing this in hopes that it will help someone else as it took me what seemed like forever to figure this shit out.)

Disable WEP or WPA.

Open AirPort Admin Utility (Applications > Utilities)
Hit the ‘configure’ button
Click the ‘Security Options’ button at the bottom.
Select WPA Personal (make sure you have the most recent firmware from Apple’s website)
Click ‘Update’
I got some message saying this isn’t supported by this network… save anyway.
Now configure your router to use WPA.
Create your password (or keyphrase as they like to call it).
Your AirPort Express should be solid green now.
Enter the same password on any laptops.

A relatively quick and painless task if you figure out how to do things in order!

I walked out into the backyard this evening with Elise’s laptop. I opened NetStumbler and found 16 wireless networks. Wow.

Every once in a while I’ll like to go back and read entries that I’ve posted on Janicek.com. I’ll think: “I wonder what I was doing this time last year.” I’m glad I do this on occasion because my memory isn’t getting any better as I grow older. That and I don’t remember things like I used to.

Although I have a little over a year left until I turn 30, my memory isn’t what it used to be. It’s because of this that I like to revisit entries on Janicek.com.

This time last year I ate curried squid. I decided (again) that I don’t like SprintPCS. John and Christine bought their first house in Austin. I tested for my first star. I was reminded for the 28th time that I don’t like cold weather. I was also reminded that I’ve been with my current employer for 2 years now. It’s funny to think about how just over two years ago I was working in the corporate/cubicle environment and absolutely hated getting out of bed every morning. I don’t miss that.

Having said that I’m now going to tempt fate: Life’s not too bad.

- Sleeping late
- Peppermint Altoids
- Gwen Stefani’s L.A.M.B. album
- Godiva dark chocolate
- Yellow Tail Shiraz/Cabernet Sauvignon (with the aforementioned chocolate)
- The Apprentice
- Plotting the death of Russ Martin because he pulled from 104.3
- Menstruating (see the first 5 vices)

Here’s a funny movie of yours truly giving Jack his first drum lesson.

Yesterday was one the best days of my entire life. For my birthday last year Elise gave me a gift certificate for a cooking class taught by Jeff Blank, Chef-Owner and Robert Rhodes, Executive Chef of Hudson’s on the Bend. I cashed in on said gift certificate yesterday. That class was so much fun that I don’t think I could find words to describe it.

There was a group of approximately 40 of us who arrived at Jeff’s house at 11 a.m. Talk about a gorgeous house – nestled atop a hill overlooking Lake Travis. We were served wine from the outside bar as we waited for the class to begin.

The class was held in what I would guess was Jeff’s “teaching kitchen“. We watched and learned to make the following four couse meal:

WILD GAME CHILI TOPPED WITH MEXICAN CREMA AND TOMITILLO WHITE CHOCOLATE SAUCE

APPLEWOOD SMOKED QUAIL IN GINGERED-HONEY GLAZE ATOP BABYSPINACH WILTED IN A HOT PIG DRESSING

AXIS VENISON BACKSTRAP IN AN ESPRESSO-CHILI RUB SERVED WITH LOBSTER IN A SHINER BEER-BLANC

SOUTH OF THE BORDER ANCHO PECAN PIE WITH A RUM-BRANDY-VANILLA SAUCE AND CINNAMON ICE CREAM

We were able to sample the quail and backstrap after they were cooked. I immediately decided that I was going to buy a stove top smoker. I called Elise before the class left for the restaurant for lunch and told her how wonderful the class was and that I was going to buy a smoker. She told me not to because she had already planned on getting one for my birthday. I don’t know if I can wait 9 more days!

The class was VERY informative. It was great to learn techniques from a master. I was truly awestruck and found it fascinating how chefs combine such a high level of art and science. I’m not quite to the point where I consider Omega 3 fatty acids and complex protein strands in my day-to-day culinary endeavors.

I choked up a couple times during the class (seriously) – I sat there and thought to myself “this is one of those life experiences that I will never forget.”

Anyhow – I guess it goes without saying that the food was excellent. What’s interesting is that the ingredients that were used aren’t uncommon in my own, or anybody’s kitchen. Well, aside from veal stock.

What’s also interesting (and pissing me off) is Executive Chef Robert Rhodes has to be the same age as me, if not younger. He graduated at the top of his class from the Culinary Institute of America and is leaving Hudson’s later this year to be a chef at the White House! I was going to offer my resume but thought these guys might catch on to my using Orville Redenbacher and Betty Crocker as references.

The late lunch was fantastic. Every course was cooked to perfection. If I had to pick a favorite course, it would be the venison (duh). I was full after the chili but ate every last morsel of every single course. I’m not big on desserts but cleared my ancho pecan pie and ice cream plate as well. I gained a lot of weight yesterday but it was soooooo worth it. I’m hoping to take one of Jeff’s classes at least once a year.

Jeff and Robert visited every table during lunch. I didn’t get a chance to talk to either of them but would have loved to have said thanks. So instead I went home and thanked Elise again for the gift certificate and told her how great the class was. I flopped down on the couch, fell asleep and haven’t eaten anything since yesterday’s lunch. I’m still full.

So, if you’re in the Austin area, you’d be missing out if you didn’t attend a Hudson’s on the Bend cooking class.

Click here for the photos.

I received my property tax receipt in the mail today. If that’s not justifaction to procreate, I don’t know what is.

Austin ISD: A ton of money
City of Austin: A crap load of money
Travis County: Lotsa cashola
Hospital District: Not chump change
ACC (Travis): Eh – a semi-pretty penny

So we’ll have a child. I would assume this would happen in a hospital. My tax dollars went to the Hospital District. Then we’ll send mini me to school. A LOT of our money went there. Then mini me will become a juvenile delinquent. He’ll go to a correctional facility (that we’re paying for handsomely). He’ll whittle a knife out of a bar of soap, stab his cellmate and then be transported to the higher security county facility. Might as well… I paid for it. He’ll eventually be rehabilitated at the age of 38. It will be then that we can proudly send him passing through the ivory towers of the university – er, the community college. We paid for it.

Life is starting to make a lot of sense now.

So very true.

I was getting ready to go to work yesterday. I walked to my truck and noticed that I had four quarts of used oil in the bed of my truck from when I changed my oil last week. I decided that I didn’t want old quarts of oil in my truck, so I took them, along with the old oil filter and walked them to the garage. In doing so, I spilled oil all over the floor of the garage.

I used the rest of my gasoline from our gas containers to wipe up the spilled oil. I put the gas cans in the back of my truck so I could fill them when I stopped to get gas on the way to work.

I went to work. After work, I went to Tae Kwon Do. When I leave Tae Kwon Do, I always keep my dobok on while driving home. I got home, got out of the truck and grabbed my two gas cans. Just as I grabbed the two bright red gas cans, my neighbor pulled into his driveway. Both of my hands were occupied carrying gas cans. I lifted one of my arms in a waving gesture to greet my neighbor (who happens to be a black man). It was then that I realized what it looked like I was doing. I laughed at myself and went inside.

John and Christine came over tonight for the first time since Jack was born. I was laughing (at myself, by myself – as usual) the other day when I was recounting the day that Jack was born. I left work early because I knew that Elise and I would be going to the hospital that afternoon. I pulled onto the street that enters our subdivision. I decided to pull over and check the mail (we have one of those community mailbox centers). I opened our mailbox to find the mail and a key. The key was for one of the larger mailboxes that the postal service uses should you receive a large package via the USPS.

Just as I grabbed the key, my cell phone rang. It was John. He said “Dude, I have a boy!” It was at that point that I was filtering my mail. One hand held mail. The other hand held junk mail. My shoulder was holding my cell phone against my ear. I went to throw away the junk mail and accidentally threw the mail key into the trash. I was trying to maintain some sort of enthusiasm while hearing the news of my nephew’s birth while juggling two handfuls of mail and digging through the trash while other residents of the neighborhood were stopping to get their mail.

I was just reminded of that and thought it was funny.

I hate spyware, adware, malware and tomatoes.

I’m a huge advocate of preventing malicious software that can be installed on a Windows computer without users’ knowledge. I urge friends and family to use Firefox as their web browser, Thunderbird as their e-mail client or to purchase a Macintosh.

I’ve become well versed in scanning and removing malicious software by means of Ad-Aware and Spybot-S&D.

When Microsoft released its Beta AntiSpyware software, I downloaded it. It crashed. Go figure.

I stumbled upon this picture when messing around with Hello and Picasa: The Notorious VIC with Quentin Tarantino 

Happy New Year. Hoo. Haw.

I was recently thinking about jobs I’ve had in the past. The first job I had upon passing the ivory towers of the university was a telemarketer for the Texas Department of Public Safety Officers Association (TDPSOA).

NOTE: If you receive a phone call from someone taking donations for the TDPSOA, hang up. If you’d like to donate to the peace officers (or firefighters or any other public service organization) you can donate directly.

So my telemarketing job was rather monotonous. I did well at this job but after six weeks or so, I decided to spice things up a little. I used to call people and the conversation would go something like this:

Person eating dinner: “Hello?”
Person eating dinner: “Hello?!…”
Person eating dinner: “HELLLLOOO?!!!!!!!”
Josh: “Hello! Mr. Jack Kerblashulsnuckitz?” [Actual pronounciation: Smith. All telemarketers are required to butcher your name]
PED: “This is him.”
Josh: “Hi Mr. Kerblashulsnuckitz, this is Josh Janicek with the Texas…”
PED: “Actually, it’s Smith. Mr. Smith.”
Josh: “Right. How are you doing this evening Mr. Smitherblashulsnuckitz?”
PED: [Sighs] “Fine.”
Josh: “My name is Josh Janicek and I’m calling on behalf of the Texas Department of Public Safety Officers Assocation and the reason for this phone call is that the DPSOA is needing some help this year…”

And I’d go on with my pitch. Fifty percent were naive and gave me their information so I could send them ’something’. The other half screamed and cussed and told me where I could put my phone.

Employees couldn’t deviate from the script. I noticed the high turnover in this telemarketing cube farm so I decided to make my job more fun. I did so in adopting aliases because nobody bothered to know anyone’s name.

PED: “HELLLLOOOOO?!?!?….”
Josh: “Hi Mr. Uzbekistan. My name is Mike McCready.” (Guitar player from Pearl Jam)

The guy in the cubicle next to me overheard my conversation and snickered.

I overheard his next phone call.

PED: “Hello?”
Guy in next cube: “Hi Mrs. Jones, this is Ronnie James Dio.” (Singer for Dio)

This went on and on. We tried to out-do each other all day with obscure rock star telemarketing alter egos.

One day one of the managers came to talk to me. The managers were the guys who wore headsets and walked about the cube farm. They wore headsets so they could listen in on our telmarketing phone calls. This particular manager came and sat down next to me to tell me how great of a job I was doing.

He said: “Now Mike, you’re doing a great job. There are some areas we can work on, but all-in-all, great job. Mike, how do you spell you last name? Is it McKreedy?”

I couldn’t help but grin from ear to ear. Not because I was being recognized for doing good work, but because I had to tell him how to spell McCready – my alter ego and the guitar player for Pearl Jam.

At 5 O’clock when the siren sounded and the work day was over, the managers always gave us a pep talk. On this particular day, my manager said: “And congratulations to Mike McCready for getting top sales today!”

I turned beet red. Everyone clapped.

Ronnie James Dio sat at his cubicle, looked directly at me and laughed his ass off.

Christmas of this year has come and gone. I just couldn’t get into the mood this year. Perhaps it snuck up on me. Perhaps I’m getting older and grumpier. Anyhow, it’s over and I wanted to write about it before I have to get up from here to run out and purchase lights, gifts, cookie ingredients and greeting cards for Groundhog Day.

We woke up at the crack of dawn last Thursday, drove to Dallas (stopping at the Czech Stop in West – as always) and caught our plane to Chicago O’hare. We had an hour layover and we were both hungry. Seeing how I’d never been to Chicago or spent any significant time in O’hare, we decided it would be fitting to find some Chicago-style deep dish pizza. Our on-foot scouting led us to no deep dish pizza. So we settled for a cup of soup and a sandwich.

We finished watching Napoleon Dynamite on the iBook as we flew to Des Moines. Elise’s mom and dad picked us up at the airport. We made our way out of the terminal into the blistering cold to load our luggage into the van. Luckily the weather wasn’t as cold as I was expecting. It was only 5 degrees outside. It wasn’t the 1 degree that I was expecting. Whew – what a difference that made!

Joanne made a 7 layer dip and chicken breasts with black beans and stewed tomatoes for dinner. Steve and I went up to the office and I cleaned up their computer. Eric came over later that evening and we all chatted for a while.

On Friday we woke up had breakfast and went our separate ways. Steve and I did went to Walgreens and to the local computer shop. Elise and Joanne went Christmas shopping, picked up some groceries from the Italian market and picked up Grandma T. Steve and I made it back to the house a lot sooner than the girls. Steve had to iron his shirt before lunch so I took a nap.

The girls came home and we were soon off to church.

I go to church once a year (assuming there are no weddings or funerals) on Christmas eve. I had recently considered becoming a Catholic but ultimately decided against it. My reasoning: Catholics are greedy.

I’ve been with Elise for almost seven years now. No matter how politely I ask, every time we’re in church and it comes time during mass where the congregation goes up to get nachos and cherry Kool Aid, Elise never brings any back for me.

After church we went back to the house where Joanne made tortellini soup with focaccia bread. After dinner we drove around Des Moines for almost three hours looking at Christmas lights.

Saturday was Christmas. I called my parents and then built a Texas-sized snowman (everything except snowmen are bigger in Texas).

Eric and Kim came over after spending time with Kim’s family. We had a great prime rib dinner with mashed potatoes and mixed vegetables. We opened presents late in the afternoon.

Ingrid came over later that evening. Eric and Kim went home shortly after. Steve, Ingrid and I stayed up for a while before Ingrid left and the rest of us went to bed.

Steve, Joanne and Elise went to church on Sunday morning. I stayed back and finished working on Steve and Joanne’s computer and hooking up their new DVD player. Steve and I drove over to Grandma T.’s to hook up her new computer monitor and to install a crossword puzzle game. Steve and I then went to CompUSA and Best Buy to scope out printers and scanners. In the meantime, the girls were returning gifts and doing more shopping at Younkers. We met up for at a local Chinese buffet for dinner. It was shortly after dinner that the cold Elise had been fighting had been passed on to me. We all went home and watched Rudy on DVD.

Sometime during the night, I had a nightmare that didn’t leave me with much sleep. Steve and I went to Dahl’s for candy ingredients and Alka Seltzer. Eric and Kim came over for lunch. Eric and I went to Felix and Oscar’s while Kim and Elise went to Burlington Coat Factory. Eric and Kim treated us to a nice dinner at Greenbrier Restaurant & Bar where Heather met up with us for a nice visit. After dinner the four of us went back to Steve and Joanne to watch the Blue Collar Comedy Tour on DVD.

We woke up at 4:30 a.m. on Tuesday so Steve and Joanne could take us to the airport. I was still very much under the weather. We had breakfast in the Denver International Aiport and caught our next flight to Dallas. We watched Heat on the iBook to pass the time. Luckily all of our luggage arrived and we made our way home.

We stopped at the Czech Stop again for more kolaches and finally made it home to Austin. We unpacked and I took a nap for a couple hours. I woke up, called my boss and told him I wouldn’t be in to work on Wednesday as I was still sick. I went back to bed around 11 p.m. and didn’t wake up until around 12 today. And am I glad I took the day off. I’m still feeling under the weather but should be better tomorrow.

So, Christmas is over. I’m beat and ready to take on 2005 with a fist full of nachos.

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