"Ah, but I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now."

My Boog Pages

Being For The Benefit Of Mr. White!

Dave's been bugging me to update, so here is the post-holiday year-end what-I-did-on-my-Christmas-vacation wrap-up hyphen-fest.

Part I: Girlfried I got started with Christmas a little early this year. With the wife's consent, I bought myself a little present and upgraded my computer (which my wife calls my "girlfriend") to Windows XP. I've been using it at work for a couple of years, but man, what a difference. My computer now runs faster than it ever did and hasn't crashed yet. Who'd have expected advertising to tell the truth?

One of the best features: I can now use iTunes. I probably haven't bought an album in two or three years, just cause I can never work up enough enthusiasm to fork over $15 for the few songs I'll like. Now I can get them one at a time. And the first one I bought was a forgotten rocker from 1992, Matthew Sweet's "Girlfriend", which kicks just as much ass as I remembered.

A couple of days later I stumbled across THE TEN MOST ACCURATELY RATED ARTISTS IN ROCK HISTORY, and, of course, Matthew Sweet was listed. As was Madness, which reminded me that I wanted to download "Our House".

Part II: Bring The Payne! Another benefit: My computer now runs Max Payne 2: The Fall Of Max Payne. A technical triumph, with some really nice bits, but not as memorable as the original. Some of the levels are absolutely terrific, especially the levels you play as Mona Sax, but it just didn't stay with me the way the first one did.

Part III: From The Mouths Of Babes My daughter got off a couple of good lines this year. First, I was driving her back home from the cowgirl museum and I told her that her first and middle names are the names of queens. "In fact", I said, "Elizabeth is the queen of England right now."

"Where does she live?" asked my daughter.

"Well, uh, in England," I replied.

"How do you know?"

What could I say? How do I know?

Then, for Christmas she got a Polly Pocket dance van, and when my dad and sister went back to Shreveport, they joked that they were going to take it with them. To which she replied, "Aunt Paige, you can't fit inside."

Last, we were watching the new Looney Tunes complilation, and Wile E. Coyote was about to blow up a bridge directly over his own head. My little five-year-old girl took one look and said, "Oh hell no!" I blame Bush.

Part IV: A Confession I've been pretty grumpy lately, as some of you (but especially you, Dave) may have noticed. The main reason seems to be that with the new baby there's not enough hours in the day to do everything I want to do, whether it's sleep, play with the kids, beg my wife for sex, whatever, but it's especially cut into my writing time (another reason for the infrequent updates). It hasn't helped that my office was turned into the baby's room and my computer was moved to our bedroom.

Now that I've finally given in and made my computer the Official Family computer, though, I plan on moving it to the Official Family Room, where I can stay up all night writing if I want - or, since I'm 36 with a wife and three kids, stay up until *eleven*! With luck, this will mean more stories next year. With a lot of luck, it may mean better stories.

Part V: Peace On Earth, Goodwill To Men Be sure to visit The Hunger Site every day. It doesn't cost anything to send hungry people some food.

And please consider donating to the tsunami relief. I gave through Amazon.com - they're now up over $2 million USD.

posted by Graham at 1:24 PM permalink

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