Why Hello There New Faucet

This is our new faucet. Isn't it beautiful? Much better than the old one, and the sprayer works too. And I put it in all by myself with no help from the hubby. It did, however, take a Dremel tool in order to cut one of the bolts off the old one because it had rusted so badly that turning it caused it to break under the handle.

Old Lange Sign

New Year's Eve is a stupid holiday. Yeah, I said it. The wife and I both woke up feeling crummy today; I was obviously getting sick as early as yesterday, but today Wife woke up feeling yucky, too. So...I guess we'll be noting the New Year all by ourselves, right? Whatever. We played some games, just the two of us, which was fun, even though I lost all of them. Oh, well. Maybe I'll win more games next year.

Battle.net is garbage

My buddy called me the other night and asked how I felt about an Internet game of Diablo 2. This being Christmas vacation, and thus a low-workload time of year for me, I replied that I thought that would be just great. I logged into Battle.net, the online service designed to work for this very purpose, and started a game. My buddy called me a little while later to tell me that he couldn't log into the game--one of those super-helpful and informative error messages "Failed to Join Game" kept popping up.

After trying a couple of different tricks and getting nowhere, I Googled the text of the error message and found that a lot of different people have been having the same problem for several months now. "Yeah, it just doesn't even hardly work anymore. Sorry."

There is no fix for this problem yet; Blizzard understandably hasn't gotten around to dumping any money into fixing this problem on their (free) servers when World of Warcraft brings in 800 brazilion dollars every month due to all the paying addicts.

So after whining and moping about this, I played a little single-player game for a while, and I found a nifty piece of equipment for my character that I didn't have yet. My theory is that the game was trying to keep me from being angry at it. It kind of worked.

Congaree Swamp

Today the hubby, our friend, and I went down to the Congaree Swamp. It was a nice cool, but not cold, day with no mosquitoes. Every trail we went down sadly forced us to turn back because it has recently rained and the trails were flooded. (It is a swamp after all.) By the time we finished we had walked over ten miles and since we had gotten a late start we were all super hungry. Luckily our friend, who is a little larger fellow, knew of a great Italian sandwich place just down the road. We ate a huge strombolli and headed home to take a long nap. Not a bad way to spend the day.
We also got our new dining room chairs. They look great with our table, but one of the chairs is going to have to be replaced this weekend because it has a rip in the cushion and we couldn't catch the delivery guys fast enough. Nothing every happens easily when you get stuff delivered.

Christmas

Our first Christmas by ourselves was good, but very different from the usual hustle and bustle of years past. It did let us open all our presents on Christmas rather than having to open stuff before we left or finding some creative way of letting the recipient know what was waiting for them at home. It also meant I had a giant box sitting next to the tree tormenting me for a few weeks. Pure torture. We could also decorate the house outside for the first time since we moved. We had lights all across the eve of the front of the house and on most of the bushes up front. If we do it again next year we are going to need more lights because the holly bushes are enormous.
We had our friend and fellow orphan over for Christmas Eve dinner of ham and goodies and I forgot how much work it is without several other hands helping all day. I really could have used my sister-in-laws to help with the rolls especially.


On Christmas morning we took our time getting ready, eating breakfast, and opening presents. It took us several hours to do all of the above, but it still left us with a lot of day to waste away. Felt good to just be lazy on the couch with the Calvin and Hobbes book on my lap. Eventually we had to clean up this tremendous mess and then put all the decorations away. Soon we will also have to return to work. But luckily not today.