Classic Noreaster Snow Storm hit the eastern sea board today.  I was originally supposed to drive down to DC today for work, but that didn’t happen!  Darn.

Took this nice pic of my garage and my neighbors nice new fence.  Quite picturesque if I do say so myself.  FYI – this is the view out my window from my “office” when I’m working from home.  Much nicer today than on most days.

That’s right ladies and gentlemen… It’s that special month where the facial hair is strategic, the children are locked away, and the ladies are stunned by manly sexiness…

Welcome to Mustache March!!!

Since working on “Project Bob Evans”, let’s just say I have a new found appreciation for Pancakes.  And guess what – yesterday was NATIONAL PANCAKE DAY!

In celebration of pancake day, I decided to make my own pancakes and invite over the parents.  Add bananas and some little sausage patties… good eats.

And then for dessert – chop up some chocolate bars and mix in with the batter and bananas… yum.

Kudos to ok10minute for the awesome picture.

And yes.  This was taken at The Club.

My friends and I have a saying.  “Bow.”  People always ask what we mean by “bow” when we say it, and its often hard to define.  Simply put, it’s just a thing you say when things don’t make sense or make you disgruntled as a substutite for an explitive, but also so much more than that.  It could be an expression of how you feel or a just a phrase you use for no good reason what so ever.

By the way – it’s “Bow” and in bow and arrow.  It is NOT “bow” as in the sound a dog makes.

Today I had an incident at work that really exemplifies the definition of “Bow”.  Let me explain as follows:

I don’t like working.
I don’t like working overtime.
I don’t like working unpaid overtime.
I don’t like working unpaid overtime on a Friday evening.
I don’t like working unpaid overtime on a Friday evening only to find out two weeks later that everything you discussed on that Friday evening is for not because the people whom you discussed the issues with have since decided that they didn’t want to do the extra work required by what you discussed on said Friday evening – so now you have to go back to the drawing board to a list of suggestions which you had made months ago.

Note that it was said on this call today that no thought had yet been put into this effort.  My actual response was, “I seem to recall spending about three hours discussing this on a Friday evening, and I’d hate to think that one of my Friday evenings had been wasted for nothing.”

Bow.

So if I were going to give a review to 2008, the analytical part of me would want to devise some sort of scoring system assigining a point value plus or negative to different events throughout the year based on significance, impact, time period, relevance, involvement of pie, and other important factors.  Then normalize against some standard scale say 1 to 10 and posting such score with the supporting analysis and regressions and such.  However, the lazy part of me on this Saturday afternoon – especially being about three weeks late for such an entry – is going to prevail and I’m going to somewhat randomly generalize such a scoring to this:  6.2

That’s right.  6.2 / 10.  That’s my score for 2008.  Given most academic scoring, with the exception of CS 282 which has such a curve that a score of 3/100 would be considered above average, that’s right a 6.2 out of 10 would be considered failing, or a very low passing.  Quite frankly, 2008 wasn’t all that great to me.  Lets review…

I’m not one to gripe too much (hah), so I’m not going to go into all of the things that made 2008 below average but there is one particular stand out.

The passing of my grandmother in May hit me hard.  I was close with her and I miss her ever day.  She was an amazing woman and I have many fond memories including her sitting on my cousin’s motorcycle, the look on her face when she got excited by something,  and her wacky stories of mischief from when she was a kid.  But missing her – that’s somewhere around negative one million points give or take.

Some friends of mine went through some sad times.  Minus a bunch of points.

Stocks.  Bow.  Minus the net percentage loss of my 401k excluding prior gains factoring for the comparitave loss of the market whole and whatever.  Whatever.  Bow.

Didn’t really stick to plans to stay healthy and keep my weight at least even.  Bow.  Minus the net gains in my lbs.  Bow.

I decided to take a new job this fall.  I was getting frustrated with what I was doing before, not for any particular reason but maybe staleness and the need to move on.  So I took a new position in the same company on a startup program.  Let’s call that program “Project Bob Evans.”  If you get it, you get it – if not, don’t think about it too much it’s not worth it.  Suffice it to say – even more frustration with this job.  I mean, it put me three weeks behind on this blog entry – that alone is like minus half a point.  The full venting about Project Bob Evans will have to be for another blog post, but suffice it to say – minus approximately 12 points.

There were some good things in 2008 too.

• Two of my close friends got married and they had the kick-assest party of a wedding ever – plus 17 points.
• Got to do some sight seeing and visit a friend in Denver over the summer – plus 8 points.
• And again to Denver in November with sight seeing and friend visiting  – plus another 8 points.
• A good friend of mine from work had a baby – plus 4 points. Though I still haven’t seen this beautiful little girl (minus 0.5 points) and it meant she couldn’t make PBJ (minus 0.6 points).
• Oh yeah – helped with the MS 150 Lunch Stop again, helping to make THOUSANDS of PBJ sandwiches for the bike riders – plus 2 points.
• Made a switch on my job – ok yeah, the new job itself is a pain but I still made a change that I wanted to and in the long run it’s probably a good move – plus 3 points (netting the new job thing to only minus 9, on the metric scale of course).
• Friends of mine announced they are expecting a baby in 2009 – plus another 4 points.

So how does that math add up to 6.2 – who cares.  Stop thinking, it’s better that way.

I do however have a positive outlook to 2009.  I’ve got a list of resolutions that I am really hoping to stick to this year.  And though it will make it even later on my schedule of anticipated blog posts, I’m gonna have to make that for another post for now cause I’m tired of typing.  Until next time (which will be sooner than 3 weeks this time).

Updated additions:

• Phillies won the world series – plus 18 points (yeah, you’d think some of the other things would be higher positives, but scale is irrelevant)

Had a Christmas Party at my house last week for my friends, including the Second Annual All-Booze White Elephant.  Rules this year were a bit simpler and straight forward – helps when someone sensible and less out of it is MCing such an event.

I fried a turkey for it too – after a successful run on Thanksgiving I figured I’d have to encore such a masterpeice.  Another great success.  Also baked a pumpkin pie – first time I’ve done a pumpkin one.  More goodness, more calories – woo!

Bowling of the Santa’s last week.  Other friend’s Christmas Parties.  More Christmas parties to come – not to mention family stuff.  We do Christmas Day at my Aunt and Uncle’s with one side of the family, then the day after Christmas at my parent’s with the other half of the family.  Not that the two sides of the family don’t get along, it’s just what we do and it’s great.

Wanted to post some of my favorite holiday pics from the last two weeks – enjoy!

Now.. to find a good bar to watch the Eagles tonight!!!