I’m here in Aurora writing this on my Mom’s iMac, after loading up Fetch and BBEdit and getting it organized. I have to admit, I’m impressed by how zippy this 3-year-old machine really is. If I was to find one at home used for less than $400, I’d probably buy it so that I could give Renie her beige G3 back.

Christmas was fantastic up here; everybody had a great time and enjoyed their gifts. Renie, as usual, knocked herself out and gave me a beautiful progressive-scan DVD player which also plays MP3’s on CD-ROM discs- wow! I’m going to have to rethink the whole musical situation at home and really figure out a way to wire the house so that the TV/DVD player is hooked into a receiver that reaches upstairs. Mom and Dad gave me a beautiful used flash unit for my Minolta, which is fantastic- I can’t wait to get the roll I shot up here developed to see how the flash syncs up with the shutter. But I’m thrilled- finally I can use it in low-light situations, like the basement…oh, yeah…that’s done already.

Jen was wonderful and gave me a beautiful silver ring, the first piece of jewelry I’ve ever owned (and worn) and it looks like it belongs on my finger. She was nervous and worried that I wouldn’t like it, bless her heart, but once I put it on my finger it hasn’t come off. I’m still holding it up in front of mirrors and looking at it as if aliens stole in the bedroom at night and put it on my hand- it’s shocking, but very comforting, to see something that beautiful but masculine on my finger. Also, my obsessive-compulsive tendecies have kicked into high gear, and I find myself playing with it when I’m nervous or bored.

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Just realizing how badly over to the PC side I’ve gone…this page looks like crap on a Mac running IE 5. I just spent about 10 minutes cleaning up bad HTML. Makes me wonder if the other pages look the same (I’m too scared to look and too tired to clean them up.) My skillz are nowhere right now. I need me a Mac bad.