So we didn’t do much for New Years this year. Plans to go out kept falling through, and while we were invited to some parties, we just decided to stay in again (which is what we did last year). We watched the ball drop and some other movies, but that’s about it.

We did go out to dinner and I made John try wonton wrapped ahi tuna. Basically it’s raw tuna. I don’t know why I have gotten into this recently. I blame a friend who introduced me to it. John ate one piece just to try it. I made him after I pointed out that I had tried crab he ate recently. I also told him on our vacation I made reservations at the Asian place on the ship for lunch one day, so he’d be eating it again in some form

We are getting ready for our cruise and will be leaving shortly. I’m still excited to see Chichen Itza. I’ll do my best to blog as much as I can. Be sure to check my Tumblr Blog too, as it’s easy for me to quickly post photos to it from my phone.

Oh yeah . . . Happy New Year! It’s the year of the Mayan Apocalypse!

So I made it home to Virginia before the Christmas traffic rush. I got here a few days ago. I guess I should have checked the weather forecast, because I packed thinking it would at least be cold . . . not 60 degrees! The past two days I’ve not even bothered putting a coat on to go out. It definitely has not yet begun to feel a lot like Christmas.

I have yet to take my stroll around the neighborhood to see the Jesus lights, who did a good job and who shouldn’t have bothered. Our neighbors fortunately did not seem to put anything out this year but a nice santa door decoration. Perhaps the neighborhood association wrote them a letter finally begging them to just not put their horrid trashy lights out? Or maybe they somehow found my blog or facebook posts indicating how their pathetic light display made the Tiny Baby Jesus cry? It really was bad. Like wrap a strand of lights around the trunk of a tree for all of three feet and stop bad.

There is another sad light out in the neighborhood this year. For as long as I can recall, ever since I was little, a man 3 doors down always had a blue star on his roof every year. Even when everyone in the neighborhood had grown old and didn’t bother with lights (this was my grandma’s house originally, and she got it in the 50s and raised her kids here), he always put the star out. In the past decade or so most of the houses have turned over to younger families and couples, so the lights have come back. But this year the blue star is not there . . . We don’t know if he died, moved, or what.

On a lighter note. tomorrow a miracle occurs. John is coming down! This will be the first time in 10 years we’ve actually spent Christmas together. I shall post pictures to document this rare occurrence. It might not ever happen again with that whole Mayan Apocalypse coming next year

Once again, I let far too much time pass before I blogged. I’m hoping come the new year, I’ll get back into the swing of things. Especially when I get a break from stuff.

I’ve had a hard time getting into the holidays this year. Just been stressed, have a lot going on, and really haven’t wanted to drag all this stuff out. Last years holiday bad mood/break down of course has something to do with that!

I keep thinking I should bring back Twitter, since I’m not blogging as much. However honestly I find myself using Facebook not as often as I used to, and I’ve even gotten bad about Tumblr. I don’t know if Twitter will change things on that front. I just don’t have much going on, so I don’t have much to post!

As I started this post off, I’m hoping the new year will change things. John and I are going on another cruise in January. I debated a lot whether to do it, especially since our cruise friend Keith isn’t coming again this year, and neither is our other cruise friend Heidi. However another friend told me if I can swing it, do it, it would do us both well to get away from the Farm. So we are going, and I’m excited to say that for once Chichen Itza is an available tour to do. I have always wanted to see it, now I finally will! Sadly I’m somewhat too late though, as they’ve closed the pyramid from being climbed on anymore due to wear and tear on it Still, it will be awesome to see it!

As usual, I realize it’s been FAR too long since I posted. I may finally have to start pulling in my Tumblr photo posts here so people think I’m not dead, or use Twitter again.

We suffered a great loss here this weekend – - – my original model Playstation 3. I waz pissed! This was the third major turd the system had taken on me in the four years I had it. The first two were hard drive failures (I remedied that by finally getting a new hard drive for it). This time however, it took it’s final crap on me . . . from everything I could find on the net, it burned out. I got the dreaded “Yellow Light of Death” (similar to the Red Ring of Death on original Xboxs). The irony is I have an original Xbox 360 and it hasn’t RRoD on me yet . . . but only because I think it gets turned on once in a blue moon.

However it seems many of the newer PS3 games tax the original systems to the point where they over heat – - – much like the original Xbox360s. In fact it was a brand new game that seemed to do it in. Now I could have had it repaired for about 130 dollars, but at 250 you can just get a new one. And this was the third and final crap out I could take . . . as every time it had an issue I lost ALL my save games! (I really need to learn to back them up better, you’d think I’d have learned that lesson by now.)

And while I could have done without a PS3 for a little bit, given I do have the Xbox (among other systems) . . . it was our only Blu-Ray player and I can’t do without that. Oh no that just won’t do! So I spent the money to get a new system rather than have this one repaired and simply wait for it to go on me yet again (which again the research via google seems to indicate happens most of the time). The major loss was newer models aren’t backwards compatible . . . so I have to drag out my old PS2 if I wanna play older games for some reason . . . . Grrr!

In other news, Turkey Day is fast approaching. We have several invites as usual, but this is not a holiday I really enjoy to be honest. It was more fun as a kid, when the Macy’s parade was cool and featured floats based on Saturday Morning Cartoons. Now it’s more about listening to Al Roker blab and watch marching bands walk by and not even perform. I also am not a fan of eating dinner at other people’s house with them and their families . . . it’s just uncomfortable. While I did enjoy cooking a dinner for the first time last year . . . it too is something I don’t feel the need to do again I want to go to a chinese restaurant and have “Christmas Turkey” like in “A Christmas Story.”

Sorry it’s been awhile since my last post. Busy busy as of late. I had a birthday over Labor Day. The big 36. I am officially closer to 40 than 30 now. John got me a bunch of Halloween decor, more than I know what to do with! 8 giant tombstones and 4 dead bodies in cocoons . . . whole sale comes in hands sometimes. He wasn’t extreme couponing.

I’ll try and not let 15 some days go by without a post again. I have been posting photos to my Tumblr Blog still.

So Irene came and went, and we survived. We did lose power at around 9:30 Saturday night and it didn’t come back until about 9:30 am on Sunday.

A lot of wind, a lot of rain, but we were spared any real damage. Our basement only got minimal flooding. I think our new gutters saved us, as we’ve seen it so much worse from so much less rain.

The only wind damage was to my sunflowers. They are pretty much all toast. I had to cut down half, the half that remain I think will have to come down shortly as they don’t look good. The tomatoes survived!

I don’t think our neighbors faired as well. I heard a lot of chainsaws yesterday in the distance. I guess they lost some trees. A huge tree fell aways down the road. Actually it split off the truck half way up!

We are still under a flood watch until tomorrow, but we are pretty safe here. Other people near creeks or rivers have it much much worse. Parts of Philly really got devastated.

So Hurricane Irene is approaching us now. It’s been raining pretty good since about 10am, mostly heavy spurts then lighter ones. Not many winds.

We really won’t be hit till late tonight into tomorrow AM.

I’ve done all I can to prepare. Everything important is off the floor in the basement or in plastic tubs. I have a feeling we may finally be cleaning that basement out now! I’ve also sandbagged the basement windows as best as I can, which often is where water runs in.

Picked up the entire yard as best as possible yesterday. Brought as much crap in that I could, the rest I put in trash cans and stored/braced.

We have been told to prep for power outages. We have a wood burning stove fortunately, so we can cook. I have to go rearrange the freezers now as best as possible – a tip I just heard on the news.

So if you live on the East Coast, you probably felt the quake we had today. Even though there is a giant fault line under the east coast, we haven’t historically been prone to quakes . . . till now? Over the past few years my mom/brother in Virginia have felt very tiny ones. I was home once with the dogs and I slept through one, but the dogs woke my mom up right before it happened. She said it just felt like a large truck going up the street.

However there was no sleeping through this one . . . mainly cause I was awake. It did center in Virginia, but was felt up and down the coast. Facebook friends all the way in Oh Canada! even felt it. West Coasters are of course laughing at us, saying our quake is nothing. But for those who never experienced something like this, it was shocking to scary.

To be honest, at first I thought my cats were fighting. My PCs started rocking as I sat in front of them (yes them) and I starting trying to find where the cats under the table fighting were. When I realized I couldn’t find them, I looked around. I noticed the bookshelf was rocking, and the hanging lights in the kitchen were swaying. So I texted John “Did we just have an earthquake?” . . . but before he could answer my brother in Virginia IM’d me that they just got hit too. It took 5 minutes for my facebook to begin exploding, and now the news has taken over TV.

Wow my first earthquake! We might have another due to the laughter from those on the West Coast

Figured I’d just make a quick check-in post. I’m currently in Virginia getting some unfortunate cavities taken care of.

My tomato garden has become a jungle at home. But even though I have 30+ tomatoes, they are all still green! I might have to open up a lesbian railroad cafe soon!

I’ve seen a few movies over the past month I haven’t reviewed, so here are my quick thoughts on them . . .

Green Lantern – Not as horrible as everyone made it out to be! A bit long, needed some editing, and too much of an origins story. The only real action sequence is at the very end of the movie.

Horrible Bosses – Horrible dirty comedy, nothing terribly special or remarkable. Jennifer Aniston steals the whole movie, and she’s not in it all that much.

Transformers 3 – A-maze-ing! Of course I saw it in Imax and 3D. Definitely the best of all the movies, and more than makes up for that crap fest that was number 2.

Harry Potter on Friday, and I finally have Insidious waiting for me at home on DVD

It’s only a month and a half late, but i finally got the farm’s new webpage up! As I’m working for free (actually on my dime, since I bought all the software needed and pay the hosting bill) I am not feeling too guilty about being so late.

In truth the only person I’d really feel the need to bring that up to is the “asshat,” cause I don’t really mind spending money on John and things I enjoy doing Lets not tell the “asshat” that though Not that he’d care one way or the other, he’d make some excuse up in his head to justify it all.