Bye 2008! Gfy!

Good riddance to bad rubbish, I say.

In fact, I'm really happy that we're into the last year of this decade. (Shaddup Greg, I'm referring to public perception not actual reality) In my not-so-humble opinion, there were only 5 good things to come out of this decade: Julie, Joey, Emma, Andy, and YouPorn. That's about it.

This should be a fun NYE. We'll be at Julie's sister's house which is stumbling distance away. My dad is watching the boys, my mom is watching the Princess. I have a case of Schlafly Oktoberfest. I'm off work tomorrow. I'm spending the day hydrating myself. And Greg is Kanadian.

It never fails, though. And I may have mentioned this last year. I always have a very strange feeling on NYE. I can't really put my finger on it to describe it. Kinda a heightened sense of awareness. Also a heightened sense of empathy. It's just strange. Throw a few more drinks on top of that than I really need... Well. Thank God for Julie.

Have I mentioned that 2-year-olds are a pain in the ass?

Julie made some pizzas a few days ago. Instead of putting ham on them she used Kanadian bacon. Joey asked why Kanadians call it bacon. I told him it's because they're so stupid they think ham is bacon. My kids must think Kanadians are the biggest idiots in the world.

2008 suxed. 2009 can't be worse.

OBTW, thank you Manbearpig! I really enjoyed yesterday's weather. Please come back!

Pulled Pork: Julie FTW!

I'm a perfectionist when it comes to pork. Especially when I'm not the one preparing it. That said, I've had a pork shoulder sitting in the deep freeze for a year now, it was time to do something. The plan was to smoke it and have pulled pork. Well, it's too cold to sit in front of a smoker all day. So Julie decided to make it.

You can imagine how picky I was with MY pork shoulder!

So she ripped into it. She used an awesome rub, seared it, then baked it. It was so tender she was able to shred it by hand. Then this homemade sauce she made...

Let's just say that I tried to harass her when I started eating. "It needs less salt" or something along those lines. But it didn't last long. I gave up. Pulled pork: Julie wins.

I woke up around 4am and had one thing on my mind: Pulled pork.

Finally I made it to about 10:15. That's late enough. It's 12:15 somewhere. Time for lunch.

Julie's pulled pork rox!

Another Great Christmas!

Well, it's come and gone. Christmas. My favorite time of the year.

You would have never known it was a recessionary Christmas to look at the kids. They did great. Julie and I picked up a few small things for each other as well. But as you know we didn't get anything for anyone else this year. And ya know what? It sure seemed to cut down on the stress!

We couldn't make the Key celebration this year, which really sux. The Key Christmas is always a lot of fun. The problem is that it was Christmas day. We do Christmas day at our house with Julie's family and the few Kelleys that are here in the STL area. Also with the honorary Kelleys.

A fun time was had by all. We all ate too much to get drunk, so no drunken funness ensued, but it was fun anyway. :)

Now we get to go through and pull some old toys to give to Goodwill or something. Holy crap we have a lot of new toys in this house.

We got at least one squeal out of all the kids this year. They really had a great Christmas.

This year the kids got a LOT of presents. Nothing was real expensive, the idea was quantity AND quality. In other words, a lot of inexpensive, yet fun, things. Guess what? It worked! We won't get away with it much longer as the kids age, so we'll take it while we can.

Merry Fucking Christmas Becky, wherever you are! You were on my mind every time I said "Merry Christmas" to someone.

Twas the Night Before Christmas

We had a great Christmas Eve. We were both off work. I finished wrapping presents today. Yeah. You heard me. I'm the one who does the Christmas present wrapping around here. And I've always hated it. I'm good at it for whatever reason (Patience (formerly known as P but from whom I now have permission to use her name) says it's the price I pay for being gay) so that means I do the wrapping.

I'll pause while you go back and read that sentence again for clarity. Ok now read it again. Yes Greg, that should be a perfectly viable English sentence. Obfuscated as hell but viable.

So anyway I always hated wrapping because of the cutting. Last year Julie got a $9 wrapping paper cutter thingy made by Scotch. The thing is she bought it after Christmas so she paid $1 for it.

This thing rox. It actually made presents FUN again. Not that they were ever really a hoot and a holler.

So yeah, presents were wrapped. We went to my mom's for my stepdad's family's Christmas family function. That was fun as always. Ham roxed!

We were home with the bratasses in bed by 8:30. We cleaned up a bit for tomorrow's festivities. Moved the presents upstairs. Santa, Julie, and I had a beer. She went to bed. I downloaded the new just-released MediaPortal 1.0. Then I posted this. Now I'm going to bed.

Merry Christmas to All, and to Greg gfy.

I Miss Manbearpig!

Wow it's cold! Manbearpig please come back!

I have made a lot of posts about Manbearpig. For those of you who haven't caught onto the connection, Manbearpig was a South Park character created to represent Algore's whacked-out idea of global warming. Therefore, Manbearpig is actually a direct reference to global warming.

I sure wish global warming would happen. I'm sick of these record lows. That's it I'm going to go drive my V8 for no apparent reason so I can help bring back Manbearpig.

Brrrrr!!!!!

(Hey P... Remember when we were talking about this and you said you wanted to go back and read the Manbearpig posts? clicky)

Tweets from a Plane Crash

Wow. This is a very interesting read. Kinda says something about the times as well. Read from the bottom up. Read the intro paragraph especially if you're not familiar with Twitter.

Clickie

Emma's Amazing Talent

Like her grandfather, she can fart on command. Not very princess-like, but that's ok.

Yeah.

Ouch. That Hurt.

So I haven't really said anything because it shouldn't bother me but dangit it does. When we pulled into the parking lot of the hospital on Wednesday for Andy's speech therapy (aka ST), he said, "No. No. No."

He didn't want to go to the hospital. I'm sure he didn't know why but he knew that he didn't want to go there.

Ouch. That hurt. Ouchie.

2008 - Much Better Than 2006 - 2007!

2006 and 2007 sucked. Everyone died in 2006. It was one after another. The only good thing to come out of 2006 was Andy. If I had to sum up 2006 in a word it would be: loss.

2007 sucked. People continued to die. And my son picked up this little disease known as cancer. I spent all of my energy on Andy. And the constant fear didn't really help any. If I had to sum up 2007 in a word it would be: exhaustion.

2008 was much better. It has been an awkward year for me personally. The first part of the year was pretty much putting a cap on the whole cancer thing. Since then it's been all about healing. Physically and developmentally for Andy. Mentally and emotionally for Julie and me. In fact if I had to sum up 2008 in a word it would be: healing.

For those of you who have known me for some time you know that I've changed over the last 18 months or so. That is, I'm really not the same as I was before this whole cancer thing. I have a different perspective on life. I think I'm still trying to find myself. Right now I'm pretty much a dad and I'm living day to day. I guess I really don't have time to be anything else. 3 young kids will do that to anyone I suppose. Julie's pretty much in the same situation.

I'm curious to see what 2009 will bring. Although for those of you who really know me you know that my new year begins on April 11. But the time between now and then starts to set the foundation of the coming year.

We'll see what happens.

Andy has speech therapy tonight. He's making progress.

New Site Feature

"You Need a Pet!" Look to your right. -->

Ok Greg. Now look to the right again. But down a little.

Unless this post is no longer at the top then you may need to look up.

Why do I even bother, I know you're going to make a smartass comment no matter what.

Adopt a pet. NOW! DO IT!

Canadian Cardiovascular Meeting

Something along those lines. I'm not even going to comment. Clicky

Rick is the man!

I just rickrolled myself just to hear the song. I'll admit it.

What a Week

I won't go into details because it will bore you. Suffice it to say it's been a rough week that really started about last Thursday and went straight through a weekend. By the time I got home in the evening I was frazzled all week.

I've decided to 100% distance myself from work this weekend. I didn't bring my laptop home. I left it on incase something really bad happens and I can then remote into it from home. But yeah, I didn't bring my laptop home. For the weekend. This hasn't happened in a long time.

Yay! The weeks is over!

But incase anyone happens to be Googling something along the lines of "wireless clients roam to distant access points" and you happen to be using "Cisco wireless controllers" then the most likely fix is to disable "aggressive load balancing."

Sorry for that strange paragraph. But the end result is that soon enough this will have a permalink high enough up on the results of various searches that it will provide help to someone having a particular problem which is probably somewhat common.

Oh by the way, hello to all of you Googlers searching for "Tina Fey nude"

EHR

It stands for Electronic Health Records. As you know I'm in IT. As you also know I'm in Healthcare. You can imagine how EHR is impacting us.

We're very specialized in what we do. One of my specialties is wireless networking. I've had wireless problems at one of our hospitals that went live with EHR over the weekend. Basically I've lived there since Sunday, although a good portion of my Saturday was spent on the problem as well.

The problems are now fixed. I will now be spending the evening mentally healing.

See ya tomorrow.

Shitter Was Full!

I love Christmas Vacation. In fact if you go to any of my family functions around this time of year, or any time of year for that matter, you'll hear lines quoted from that movie quite often.

The day after Thanksgiving, I work 4 hours. Then I come home, turn on that movie, and start decorating for Christmas. This year Joey really got into that movie too. It looks like the tradition is passing down to the next generation.

w00t!

Attention Digital Artists (and wannabes)

I'm not going into much detail here on purpose. But I need a graphic. It needs to include the following:

• Cancer Sux!
  
• Saint Baldrick's 2009
  
• Somthing to do with Andrew Kelley
  
• A St. Patty's Day-looking clover
  
• 3 Colors max, preferably 2
  

Please e-mail your submission to me. If you take out the reference to Greg you'll have my e-mail address: dan@thegregsuxkelleys.org Basically it goes from teh e in the to the k in kelleys. Just trying to avoid spam.

I would prefer a professional format. If it MUST be a BMP or something like that, make sure it's very high resolution, 400dpi or better.

Thank you!

My Hair Won't Grow!

Holy crap. It's growing on the sides and back but not the top! This may be my last year for Baldrick's.

If nothing else I'll be beard shaving. :)

For those of you who donated at Andy's birthday party, I just made that donation on our behalf. Thank you!

Happy Kanada Day!

December 2 is quite a day. Everyone grab your Munchos, Dr. Pepper, and quiche. Rape an elk. Watch hockey. Play every ace. Put on some Celine. And wish Greg a happy birthday.

Also, Grandpa Kelley would have been 83 today.

Also, my aunt whom I never met would have been... not sure... today.

Munchos. Breakfast of Kanadians.

Flashback

If you've ever had flashbacks, be it from strong memories (a la PTSD) or for "other" reasons, you know how weird they are. I get them occasionally. I just had one. Actually I'm still having it. It's the strangest feeling in the world. Kinda like deja vu but not really.

I know that it's not a year ago (or longer). I know things have changed. Yet. Well, I can't really describe it. The general feeling is there. More than that, this one is very weird in that I have an overwhelming need to get Andy's TPN ready. You'll remember TPN is "food" (nutrients) via IV. We had to hook him up every night around this time.

I'm looking where we kept the supplies. I know they're not there. I can't see them. But on the other hand I feel like they're there. But they're not. But they are.

I can't shake the feeling that I need to prepare his TPN. In fact it's starting to become quite an urgent feeling.

No, I'm not crazy. No, I'm not on drugs. No I'm not drunk. Yes I've been taking my meds. No I'm not Kanadian.

This has to be one of the strangest things that's happened to me in a long time.

Fortunately writing about it has made it pretty much go away. That's why I sat down to write this out. It's as therapeutic now as it was a year ago.

Go hug your children and thank God that they're healthy.

I still like cashews.

A Normal Thanksgiving!

If you think back to a year ago you'll remember Andy's counts were perilously low. Like the only reason he wasn't in the hospital was because the oncologist on duty was in a good mood and wanted him to be home for the holiday.

Oh my how things change. This year we were back to normal. We spent the morning (and first football game) at Julie's parents' house. We spent the afternoon (and second football game) at my mom's house. My dad forgot to come over on Friday.

Basically, a typical Thanksgiving for the Kelleys. And I loved every minute of it.

And here's the great news. I was sick. I had a cold. Although I've had a reprieve for the last 3 or 4 years, I'm always sick on either Thanksgiving or Christmas. I'm happy when I'm sick on Thanksgiving because it means I'll be healthy and ready to go on Christmas!

OBTW... Hinder Rox! And rumor has it they will be opening for Crue! rox!