#137. or, Anniversary give-away and snot

 When I left you last, just days before Christmas, I had planned to dive back into blogging with the ferocity of a dozen puppies, all competing to be the first one to spill the pillowy contents of a stuffed animal across the living room, at the same time. Then, I did what I've seemed to do most of the time here lately, which is pretty much nothing at all.

  We had a wonderful holiday planned. My wife had a number of days off, we wanted to have friends over, go shopping, and spend a good deal of quality time together. Then, just before Christmas, my wife got sick with a demon bug my rotten Little Son brought home from school. But because she has resistance to these things with superhero-like ability, she still managed to cook us up a magnificent holiday meal. But that pretty much did her in, and she had to bail on our annual, December 26th journey to see my relatives on my Mothers side. Which would have technically been our third belt loosening feast, as we had visited with my wife's sister and her husband on the 23rd. So, Little Son and I set off on the 26th, without her, as I began to feel the first effects of the nasty bug myself.  

  And, I've been pretty much incapacitated ever since.

  So I spent the last week wrapped up in a blanket on the couch, making my way through the Star Wars marathon on TV, as I suffered through coughing fits and a continuous string of Kleenex tissues, until my nose was raw, while a nagging migraine headache threatened to blow the right side of my head clean off.

  On the plus side, I think I wrote a brilliant post in my mind. Concocted in a combination of a cold-drug induced coma and terminal lack of sleep, only to have it all slip through my fingers, like snowflakes melting in my hand, when I fully woke. I'm pretty sure it was brilliant.

  So, my wife and I cancelled our plans to have friends over on New Years, and just stayed on the couch, sharing a box of tissues between us.

  Anyways, I need to follow up on my 1 year anniversary post give-away. I feel like I may have cheated some of you out of the opportunity to add a comment or two by not posting between Christmas and New Years. Sorry for that. But it's time to move on now and get on to new and wonderful things. Whatever they will be?

  AND THE WINNER IS.......(scientifically chosen by putting all of your names on tiny pieces of paper and having my son pick one out of a hat.)

Exactly like this.

AND THE WINNER IS........KAIT!   YAY!!

 If you don't know Kait, you're missing out. While she doesn't blog herself, she is wonderfully supportive of bloggers and is in fact, a twitter sensation!  I'm certainly better for knowing her and for allowing me to be a part of her circle of friends. Congratulations Kait!

  Now, I realized after taking the picture of the hoodies that I was giving away, a good deal of those that comment here are in fact women, and perhaps the hoodies that I took pictures of might be hoodies that a guy might like to wear more than a woman? I'm not sure though. I went back and took pictures of a white one and a pink one to add to the choice, but for some reason, cannot find those. So this is what they look like:

Except, imagine there's a pink one and a white one as well.

 And finally, because I missed my year end and any sort of resolution post yesterday, and because I'm trying to be all efficient and shit, I'll try to tack that onto the end of this post.

  I'd like to be in better shape. But I always wish I was in better shape, so that's not really a resolution. I think I just want to improve my writing. Maybe come up with some type of better schedule to get to everyone and do a better job of commenting. But I think mostly, when I'm here, my hope is to improve my contributions. I've been reading back at what I've written over the last year, and I'd like to do some more posts like I started out with. Some more off the wall sort of stuff. I guess we'll see how that goes.

  Happy New Year everyone, I'm looking forward to 2013.