The holidays went rather well. Angela and I visited her family the weekend before Christmas, and went down to my dad’s in Indy on Christmas day. I had to work that morning and night, off at 8am, back at midnight, so we could only go down for the day, but we still got to see my family and have Christmas dinner with them. I didn’t have to work on New Year’s, since I’d previously requested the shift off, so we went up to Chicago for a party with my friends from high school. Every time I’m up there I’m reminded of just how much I’d rather be living there than Lafayette.

Other things are mostly fine. I received a raise from my December eval, so am almost making as much money now as I did when I first started at Bell. I’ve also re-activated my WoW account to play on one of the new servers with Artie and company. I quit playing previously since there wasn’t anyone on Horde-side Durotan, so this should be more fun.

More to come later.

It’s finally snowing. There’s not much, but it’s enough to cover everything in a thin layer of white. This town always looks better when snow-covered, especially when no one else is around, as happens at 4AM. When I was out walking, I think I saw only two cars out, plus heard a snow plow plowing streets to the North of me which I didn’t see. I also enjoyed the opportunity to be the first to leave footprints on the snow-covered sidewalks.

This first snow also gave me the opportunity to continue a four-year old ritual I have. The primary component in this ritual involves wearing my kilt. While one might think that this would cause me to get cold when walking around outside, it doesn’t. Due to the clouds and snow and lack of wind, its relatively warm outside (30° as opposed to the 14° wind chill two nights ago). Unfortunately, there isn’t enough snow on the ground yet for snow Scotsmen.

I haven’t heard Craig’s opinion on the snow, but Jason’s complaining about it and Nick and Mike (who took the above picture) both are talking about doing doughnuts in it. Before Josh left about 2AM, he made a miniature snowman (about 8 inches tall) complete with arms made from the tines of a plastic fork. It’s currently sitting in the freezer here at work.

Having come to this realization, I’ve started taking steps (no pun intended) to increase how much I’m walking. Primarily, this takes the form of making sure I leave my desk at work and go walk around outside. I don’t have much time for too long of a walk, but I can at least walk around the block. I’d gotten to the point of making it around the block (four tenths of a mile) without too much difficulty, so tonight was the first night I’ve expanded my circuit to walking around two blocks (six tenths of a mile). I know six tenths of a mile doesn’t sound like much, but I let my back and leg atrophy too much, so have had to start low. As it is, I was already aching by the time I got back to the building.

I’m thinking my next step on this recovery is to add additional walking at home to my stretches and the walking I do at work. As the town home is located on the edge of a subdivision, I should be able to find plenty of room to walk without having to worry about too much traffic. My short-term goal is to be able to go a mile without any difficulty, but that may not happen for a couple weeks.

While I considered just wiping out this blog and starting fresh, I’ve chosen, for now at least, to keep my previous posts for archival purposes.

Like the subtitle says, I will try to update this new! improved! blog more frequently than the previous incarnation. I won’t make any guarantees, but at least some of the posts will include content other than pictures of my cats.

While not the best way to break my hiatus, I’m going to do so with the following snippet of a chat that was sent to our staff mailing list by one of my coworkers:

Nate: Hello, how may I assist you?
fred: I want to chat with the girl in the picture
Nate: So do I. Is there anything I can assist you with?
fred: https://server.iad.liveperson.net/hc/5213942/ ?cmd=repstate&site=5213942&&ver=1&category=en;woman;5
fred: no, have a nice day

In other work-related news, we’ve finally got a fourth night guy (who should hopefully stick around longer than the fourth night guy we had the last time I made a post like this), meaning that starting 1 April, I’ll have two nights off a week again. Even better is that they’re two nights off in a row: Thursday night/Friday morning and Friday night/Saturday morning. This means I’ll have more opportunities to actually go places if I wanted to, or at least to feel like I actually have some time off. With the current one night off a week, by the time I’m actually rested from the previous week, it’s time to go back to work.