Thanksgiving dinners. And lots of them.

I spent Thursday with C2's family for their X-giving dinner. Lots of food. It was good dinner. C2 used me as an excuse to leave early.

Thursday evening we met up with Mat and hung around with him.

Thursday night my windsheild wipers died. Bleah. Wipers are a must when you drive in Seattle in November. Friday I got my wipers repaired. It cost $350.00. I was probably gouged, but I had no choice. It's raining heavily lately.

Saturday C2 and I worked on the deck.

Saturday night I went to the Cuff.

Sunday Jenny and I went snowboarding at Crystal Mountain The weather was beautiful. Sunny. Not too cold. Not too many people.

Now, Saturday night at the Cuff I mentioned to someone that "I was going to Crystal." He assumed I ment the drug and warned me how addictive it was. He tried it once and knew from experience. He winced when I told him I ment "Crystal Mountain-- the ski hill."

Last night I had dinner with Steven, Vic and the Bellevue Blondes. It was a pre-thanksgiving party. Vic and Steven are leaving for a 10 day Hawaiian cruise (lucky dogs) and one of the Blondes is moving from Seattle to NY.

Played hockey tonight. We tied 3-3.

The game was early, so for the first time this year the team went out for beer afterwards. There are a few interesting people on the team.

One guy is living off the wealth of his parents. He said so. His mother wants him to say he is a banker or something non-descript, but he doesn't want to lie.

Another guy teaches people how to use the computer program I work on.

A girlfriend of a team mate is a crisis center councilor. See does her work over a cell phone. Twice during the evening she received a call, swore and went outside to answer the call.

I had a lazy Sunday.

Wolk up. Had breakfast with Steven, Vic, Matt and Sandy. Went shopping with Steven and Vic. Drove back to Matt and Sandy's place and ate cookies-- Matt made Christmas. Hung out with Matt and Sandy for a while. Had dinner with them. Went to the Cuff. Went home.

Friday night C2 and I had dinner at Siams. Afterwards we went off to CC's and then the Cuff.

CC's has changed. The crowd used to be blacks or alcoholic preppy's. Now it's has the alcoholic bear crowd.

Saturday C2 and I worked on the deck. We finished all the footings.

Out of the blue, Brux called. he and C3 are in Pickering Ontario, looking for a place to live. We didn't talk long. He called with a calling card that was about to expire.

Saturday night I had dinner with Vic and Steven. Afterwards we went to the Cuff. It was a busy night.

Had Survivor Potluck on Thursday evening. John was sick although Mac showed up for a while. Steven was there forr the first time in weeks. Usually he's out of town for work.

Last night I was supposed to meet a guy for coffee. Sort of a date-lite. He no-showed. So, I went ot a sex club.

What? I was in the area. I was frustrated.

Last night I watched Barbarella. It's a good bad movie. The entire point of the movie is to show scantily clad women or naked women through oqaque plastic.

Today it's raining hard.

Played hockey last night. We tied 3-3. Steven was there. Afterwards he said he'd never watched a hockey game before.

Saturday, C2 and I worked on the deck. We've almost finished pouring all the footings.

Last night Survivor potluck was at Matt and Sandy's. Mac and John couldn't make it because Mac was sick.

It was a fun night. Sandy kept trying to get us to drink more with him-- shots, more wine, more mixed drinks.

Sandy is going through a "Pot Drought." Sandy smokes pot fairly regularly. But, his supplier has hit a dry spell. So no pot for Sandy. Now he's drinking more. Matt hopes the dry spell will end soon. They've got C2 looking for another supplier. Which is odd because C2 doesn't do drugs. C2 has a friend who knows a friend who sells.

Last night Steven and I saw Elf witht he movie bears. What a bizarre movie. While it's not a great movie, it's much better than I thought. They play it staight. They take a very silly situation ( A human raised by Christmas elves returns to New York to find his father) and just run with it.

In the Elf remedial education class they teach things like "Christmas Carols" and "Building Advanced Graphics Processors for Modern Personal Computers."

Played hockey last night. We lost 2-1 in sudden death over time. So close.

Friday night I had dinner with C2 and H3. Fun evening.

Saturday C2 and I worked on the deck. Mostly we poured cement.

Saturday evening I had dinner with Matt and Sanday at Mac and John's place. Behr was there but he didn't hang around. He went out clubbing.

Even though it was a quiet evening, we all drank a lot-- wine, tequila shots. Next morning we were all hung over.

Sunday afternoon C2 and I worked on the deck again. It's dark by 5pm. We ran into some problems then. I couldn't see into the cement mixer and didn't notice that some cement was going solid at the back of the mixer. It took a lot of work to free the cement and clean the mixer.

Sunday evening I had dinner with Steven. It was good to see him again.

We had survivor potluck last night. It went well. Behr refuses to come because he hates Survivor.

Matt, Sandy and I saw The Matrix Revolutions. What a lame movie. Lots of great special effects, but a very lame story. Many cliches. The story takes lots of random detours that arn't connecected. You could cut out large parts of the movie and not miss a thing.

So why did my furnace die? It froze!

The furnace has a dehumidifier. A hose that drains water runs from the dehumidifier to the outside of the house. We had a cold snap last night and some water in the hose froze. When the dehumidifier tried to pump more water out the hose, it tripped a safety and shut the furnace off.

My furnace died last night. The furnace repair man should be over this afternoon.

I went to the eye doctor this morning. It wasn't a good visit...

Lately I find it hard to focus at the end of the day or when it's dark. I went to an eye doctor for him to check it out.

The basic tests turned up normal, so he decided to check my eyeball pressure. He put some drops in my eyes to dialate my puples. Then he got his intern to check the pressure.

How do you check eyeball pressure? A small glowing tube slowly get's closer to your eye and makes contact with it.

The intern didn't do a good job. I kept blinking as the tube got close and touched my eye.

So the doctor took over and showed the intern a few tricks. (arch my eyebrowe. Get me to look off in the distance instead of at the tube thats about to touch my eye)

The eyeball pressure turned out normal. So the doctor said I was fine and could leave. But, at that point every thing was blurry. Very, very blurry. I told the doctor so.

The doctor then figured out what was going on. He ran a few tests to confirm it. Aparently, I'm farsighted, but have learnt a few tricks to deal with it. These tricks don't work well when my pupil is dialated or when my eyes are tired. That's why I have problems seeeing in the dark. That's why I have problems focusing at the end of the day.

He gave me a cheap pair of reading glasses to help me deal with blurry vision. He said in a few hours the eye drops would wear off and my vision would return. That's exactly what happened. A few hours later while I was looking at the computer screen with the glasses on, my vision suddenly got blurry again. I took the glasses off and found that my eyes had returned to normal.

Last week I worked long hours.

Only one family came to my house on Halloween. The two kids where nice, but the father was scowled the whole time.

Friday night I bought a bunch of cement, wood, bolts and a cement bit for my drill. The bolts and bit sliped under the wood so the cashier didn't notice it-- and didn't change me for it. I like that Home Depot. That's the 2nd time a lazy cashier has missed something.

Saturday I started work on the deck. C2 is helping me. We tried drilling into the cement at my basement. It took forever (30 minutes?) to drill one hole. I called my father and asked him for a hit. He said "rent a hammer drill and a good bit." I did so. The new drill took less than a minute per hole.

Saturday night I had coffee with Matt, Sandy, their friend Hugh and Hugh's friend, the infamous, "Fist Fuck Frank" After coffee, Matt, Sandy and I had dinner together. FFF and Hugh went to see a movie.

I stayed out late on Saturday night and hung out with Behr. We closed the Cuff.

Sunday I played hockey. We lost 4-1. Bleah.