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Happy New Year
Jan. 1st, 2005 02:02 amWell, I can't say I'm sorry to see the *ss-end of 2004 go by. :) It's been a long haul this year, and I'm starting 2005 the same way I spent most of 2004, sick once again. If I have one hope, it's to have a healthier 2005. On the bright side, I'm sneezing and NOT coughing. Six months of coughing is enough for anyone. Now if I could only make myself REST and give myself a chance to recover for a change. :)
Aside from the headcold, which only started Thursday morning, I've had a great Christmas vacation. Got some fabulous jewelry, Lego galore, artwork, DVDs, clothes, and books. Spent some good times with good friends. I've done some things I've put off for ages. I finally started playing with my Mindstorm Lego sets, Mike and I got our Lego train up and running, and we went out and started buying up the clearance Lego at all the Wal-Marts... ;) My next goal is to motorize the Hogwarts Express train set and get that running on our track.
Mike, ichicolco, and I spent Monday in New Orleans, wandered the French Market, watched some acrobatic street performers, took tons of pictures at the Aquarium of the Americas, and had dinner at Emeril Lagasse's restaurant in the Warehouse District. It was close to a 2 hour wait since we didn't have reservations, but the meal was sublime. I had an appetizer of scallops over a white bean and pate faux gras mixture with some sort of wine reduction sauce, and salmon over ravioli and cauliflower as an entree, and the creme brulee. Mike had the fillet, and ichicolco had the pork chops. Mike had the grand marnier chocolate souffle. We hit the road home at 11:00 PM and it was tough staying awake for the drive home after such a meal! I was so tired that my brain could no longer process what I was seeing on the road--good thing I wasn't driving. ichicolco drove the first half and when he hit his limit, Mike (who had gotten in a little shut eye in the meantime) drove the last leg home. Surprisingly, relatively speaking, it wasn't that expensive at Emeril's. We've spent that kind of money at restaurants here in Pensacola, granted, usually on special occasions. ;) Entres ranged from $22 to $35, desserts were <$10. It was less expensive than a meal at Ruth's Chris Steak House or Morton's.
Now our chef friend recommended Peristyle in the French Quarter, so that's the goal for our next trip. You definitely need reservations and a change of clothing for Peristyle. As it was, we were terribly underdressed for Emeril's, but as a tourist town, we figure they must be used to it. :)
I've got my little Libretto 110CT all decked out now. ichicolco said he had bought the memory expansion, but the machine only registered 32 megs. We opened it up and it did indeed have the memory module. Later on I discovered the memory was screwed in but not seated, so now my little machine has a whopping 64 megs! Hey, it makes a difference! Mike ordered the port replicator for me from ebay, and now I've got the Mindstorms software running on the Libretto.
Mike got himself a Sony Vaio U3, an even smaller but much more modern mini-laptop, from ebay. It arrived today. His mini-laptop was discontinued in 2002, features the Transmeta Crusoe processor running at 933 MHz, 512 megs of RAM, 8 megs of video RAM, and a 1024x768 screen. It is ADORABLE! I have mini-laptop envy! :) ichicolco has a small (but not THAT small) Sony laptop coming next week. He has a great big top of the line Dell widescreen laptop, but he's finding it overkill for what he wants to do, not to mention being rather big and bulky. I'm eyeing it at the moment. I really need to sort out what I want my laptop to do. I love the Tablet form factor, but sometimes I feel hampered by the lack of a built-in CD-ROM and CPU power. Then again, I love the slow-*ass Libretto to no end for just carrying around and browsing and chatting. It's like, on one hand, I want a desktop replacement, on the other, I want a basic machine that's small and easily portable. As it is, I need to get my original Toshiba Satellite repaired so I can give it to Mike's mom.
Anyway, I've decided to forego the whole resolution thing this year and just do what I intend to do without pontificating about it. (In short, I don't want my words to bite me in the butt). I will say that I decided to cut back on soda just before Christmas; I mean, I would go whole days where the only liquid intake I had was Caffeine-Free Diet Coke. I've been drinking water and tea instead; I'm rediscovering the joys of a cup of hot tea.
Aside from the headcold, which only started Thursday morning, I've had a great Christmas vacation. Got some fabulous jewelry, Lego galore, artwork, DVDs, clothes, and books. Spent some good times with good friends. I've done some things I've put off for ages. I finally started playing with my Mindstorm Lego sets, Mike and I got our Lego train up and running, and we went out and started buying up the clearance Lego at all the Wal-Marts... ;) My next goal is to motorize the Hogwarts Express train set and get that running on our track.
Mike, ichicolco, and I spent Monday in New Orleans, wandered the French Market, watched some acrobatic street performers, took tons of pictures at the Aquarium of the Americas, and had dinner at Emeril Lagasse's restaurant in the Warehouse District. It was close to a 2 hour wait since we didn't have reservations, but the meal was sublime. I had an appetizer of scallops over a white bean and pate faux gras mixture with some sort of wine reduction sauce, and salmon over ravioli and cauliflower as an entree, and the creme brulee. Mike had the fillet, and ichicolco had the pork chops. Mike had the grand marnier chocolate souffle. We hit the road home at 11:00 PM and it was tough staying awake for the drive home after such a meal! I was so tired that my brain could no longer process what I was seeing on the road--good thing I wasn't driving. ichicolco drove the first half and when he hit his limit, Mike (who had gotten in a little shut eye in the meantime) drove the last leg home. Surprisingly, relatively speaking, it wasn't that expensive at Emeril's. We've spent that kind of money at restaurants here in Pensacola, granted, usually on special occasions. ;) Entres ranged from $22 to $35, desserts were <$10. It was less expensive than a meal at Ruth's Chris Steak House or Morton's.
Now our chef friend recommended Peristyle in the French Quarter, so that's the goal for our next trip. You definitely need reservations and a change of clothing for Peristyle. As it was, we were terribly underdressed for Emeril's, but as a tourist town, we figure they must be used to it. :)
I've got my little Libretto 110CT all decked out now. ichicolco said he had bought the memory expansion, but the machine only registered 32 megs. We opened it up and it did indeed have the memory module. Later on I discovered the memory was screwed in but not seated, so now my little machine has a whopping 64 megs! Hey, it makes a difference! Mike ordered the port replicator for me from ebay, and now I've got the Mindstorms software running on the Libretto.
Mike got himself a Sony Vaio U3, an even smaller but much more modern mini-laptop, from ebay. It arrived today. His mini-laptop was discontinued in 2002, features the Transmeta Crusoe processor running at 933 MHz, 512 megs of RAM, 8 megs of video RAM, and a 1024x768 screen. It is ADORABLE! I have mini-laptop envy! :) ichicolco has a small (but not THAT small) Sony laptop coming next week. He has a great big top of the line Dell widescreen laptop, but he's finding it overkill for what he wants to do, not to mention being rather big and bulky. I'm eyeing it at the moment. I really need to sort out what I want my laptop to do. I love the Tablet form factor, but sometimes I feel hampered by the lack of a built-in CD-ROM and CPU power. Then again, I love the slow-*ass Libretto to no end for just carrying around and browsing and chatting. It's like, on one hand, I want a desktop replacement, on the other, I want a basic machine that's small and easily portable. As it is, I need to get my original Toshiba Satellite repaired so I can give it to Mike's mom.
Anyway, I've decided to forego the whole resolution thing this year and just do what I intend to do without pontificating about it. (In short, I don't want my words to bite me in the butt). I will say that I decided to cut back on soda just before Christmas; I mean, I would go whole days where the only liquid intake I had was Caffeine-Free Diet Coke. I've been drinking water and tea instead; I'm rediscovering the joys of a cup of hot tea.
