the nez sez

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December 31, 2004

Yawn! Happy New Year's Eve!

Kate and I ended up dining at Yats on College. It is one of my favorites places, her's too. It has everything, food, atmosphere, cheapness, congenial owner (Joe) and staff. You gotta want some Cajun though.

Then I bailed out her cell phone bill to the tune of $230. I gotta quit that, she is so irresponsible with money. After that, we went to Wal-Mart where I bought a few things for the office and some deeply discounted x-mas items.

Ohyes. I am 54 today.

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December 30, 2004

Breathing again

I have returned to an almost snow-free Midwest. Lots of fog as the remains of the snow melts forever in the 60° warmth. Well, some of us think that's warm!

I had heart palpitations when I went to unpack my camera. I pushed its little "on" button and all I got was a spasm of movement and brief glimmer of LED light, then nothing! I keep a spare battery so I tried that, and the results were the same! I was in a panic now. It may not be the greatest camera (it's a few years old, of course) as it has been lapped by far cheaper models, but still, I paid big bucks for it - and, here is the kicker - it is out of warranty! Fortunately for me, I let the thing charge in its stand for a couple of hours and it is fine. I suppose it got "turned on" in my luggage and discharged. The "spare" battery never gets used so it was also discharged.

I called my kid, and we are going to celebrate the return to normalcy by a dinner at Olive Garden!

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RIP Jerry Orbach

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December 28, 2004

A quick post

Wrapping up my visit to NJ tomorrow. I am at a friend's house in Short Hills for the night, then off to EWR after brunch for the quick 1:41 flight back to the heartland. It has begun to snow here again. We got a dusting a few days ago which didn't seem to cause any trouble. I am hoping the dusting we are getting now will be the same. Tra la.

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December 25, 2004

Well, it's Christmas.

Time to be with the family and friends. I called a good friend this morning and wished him well. We are going to get together tomorrow for a while, and then again on Tuesday.

My nephew and his family are hosting a proper Christmas dinner this evening, complete with turkey and presents. Should be a festive time and I am looking forward to it. The WX is clear and cold with the promise of a bit of snow for tomorrow. Not enough to mess things up so I am told, but enough to give the atmosphere that Christmassy coating of whiteness.

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December 24, 2004

Made it to Newark

Late, but ok. The rental car ran out of midsized so they gave me a big, honkin' Buick at the same rate, which is outrageous to begin with because it's Newark.

Made friends with a couple going to Paris on their honeymoon. It was tense for a while, but in the end they made their flight. Everything was delayed somewhat by rain in Newark.

I slept long and hard last night after a full day of travels. I went from the upper Midwest to the East coast via the Ohio Valley. I went from -12° to 60° complete with delays and a hot dog in Chicago. What a day!

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December 23, 2004

Big travel day for Nez

I am in Rochester MN now. I leave here at 10:45 to go to Chicago, which is a waypoint back to Indianapolis. I hear they got a few inches of snow there yesterday - managed to miss that I guess. It is -11° (-24°C) here though, which more than makes up for it! Then I leave Indy this afternoon for EWR and the rest of the family for a few days, some of whom are sick with the flu so that ought to be keen and peachy. I am just a jet-setting little bugger, that's all there is to it. I'll manage to Buzznet a few shots in the airports as usual.

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December 21, 2004

Bonding with Lindsey

My grandniece is five. She is very good at Rally-X and Pac Man. She has a book her kindergarten class is writing! Each of them gets to take it home in turns. Pretty good for five year-olds. When I was in kindergarten we ate milk and cookies and took naps!

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December 20, 2004

Arrived safely!

The trip was fairly uneventful. There were about three gate changes at ORD in the span of about 45 minutes. We were about half an hour leaving ORD for RST, but we made up the time (almost) in the air.

The hairy part came in our approach to RST. There is a howling snowstorm going on here in Minnesota (surprise, surprise!) bringing RST down to absolute minimums. In fact a squall blew up on the first try so they executed a missed approach, but came in bang on the second attempt. Good pilots, doing it by the book!

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Last minute packing

Well, my flight to ORD doesn't leave until 11:30 AM so there is still plenty of time. Katie has agreed to take me to the airport in exchange for breakfast at McDonalds - at the airport. It is my usual travel routine anyway. I should get to Minnesota around 2:00 PM. It is supposed to be snowing in Chicago - let's hope they handle it better that they did around Thanksgiving. They should have a full crew working today so it will be OK. I woke up to 8° temps this morning. It is up to 10° now. The sun is not up for another hour and Katie is picking me up 90 minutes after that so that does not leave time for much of a thaw. I did notice that the wind has swung around from the SW now so that is a good sign.

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December 19, 2004

Sad

RIP Fishie

Posted by nezbitthecat at 09:45 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Behold, a coating of white.

Yep, it snowed last night. There is about an inch or less on the ground this morning. The grass and random leaves can still be seen poking through the snow so it is not very deep. It is colder than freezing so it's the non-packable, powdery type of snow that will blow off a car as you drive away. It will blow off the street if they haven't bothered to put down salt, which it being Indiana, they haven't bothered. I might just venture out and see up close. I won't have to bother with boots just yet.

UPDATE
There is only about ¼ inch of snow not an inch. The city has treated the roads because they are wet..

Posted by nezbitthecat at 09:04 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

December 18, 2004

After the party

Not too much to report. It was a "working" party for me somewhat. I installed a bunch of upgrades and checked a few things out. I got two great gifts though! The first was a credit card to Starbucks, a gift I will start using right away, maybe even today. The other was a rather large, 512 page book called Chronicle of Flight; A Year-By-Year History of Aviation by Walter J. Boyne. It is chock-full of pictures of cool airplanes! I am a sucker for cool airplanes.

The Holiday madness begins on Monday when I am off to Minnesota for a few days. My niece lives there - yeah, I know. "Who goes to Minnesota in the Winter?"

Then off to NJ for a stay and Christmas dinner, and etc.

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December 17, 2004

Partay Day!

A few of my clients are having their annual Christmas bash today. All scheduled on the same Friday before the Friday before Christmas, when nobody will be working (either day, actually). I am going to try to hit as many of them as I can. I like this kind of compressed partying, hopping from bash to bash. A plethora of meeting, greeting and eating all in one day.

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December 16, 2004

I suppose I am in the mood...

I have had the same blog design for about six months now. It's ok, but I think I need to change it. Well, why not? That's the thing about this stuff called software. It is soft. You can re-mold it anytime you choose. Other bloggers do it. I just as well ought to get on the same bandwagon and see what I can do the make it look different.

Christmas is coming up next week. I will be traveling to the East coast again, as I do every year, and will have some "downtime" at my disposal. Besides fixing/installing/tweaking all the relative's computers, I should be able to have time to do a little fixing/installing/tweaking of my own. We shall see. Stay tuned.

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December 15, 2004

Cold!

18° this morning. I haven't ventured outside yet, but it looks very cold. There are usually early morning dog walkers out there, but not this morning. Even the dogs themselves know better, they get out, do their business, and dart back inside without delay.

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December 14, 2004

Use it or lose it

The end of the year is a curious time. I strolled into one of my client's offices yesterday only to find the place practically empty of people. Usually it is a busy law office, but I only saw two or three support staff there manning the phones. They have a policy where they have to take their vacation days before the end of the year or they will lose the benefit. It seems like a very short-sighted policy to me, but I am sure it is a bean counter rule; so that the management is not liable for the cost of accrued employee vacation. So the place shuts down for the whole month!

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December 13, 2004

The first snow!

Just a dusting, but there are white places out there in the lawn. At my latitude we don't usually get much snow. The "lake effect" stops about 30 miles north of here (thank goodness) and we are spared. The temp is dropping like a rock, 38° (3°C) when I went to bed last night, 28° (-2°C) now. It will be down to 18° (-8°C) tonight when the cold front passes and the wind dies down. Speaking of wind, we had 30+ mph gusts all night. I am lucky to have new double glazing. All the windows are tight and insulated. They don't rattle at all.

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December 11, 2004

An Interesting quiz . . .

(behind the "cut")

Take the Quiz and build your portrait!

Posted by nezbitthecat at 01:06 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Where's the snow?

Indiana television devotes a disproportionate amount of time to broadcasting the weather forecast at local news time. I suppose it is because there are so many farmers that make there living here in this rural state, but it just might be that they can't be bothered to dig up any "real" news so they inflate the weather and sports to take up the half hour! So last night they were making a big deal about how cold air was arriving from the Great Lakes and the rain was going to turn to snow - but not to worry, because there would be no significant accumulation, and it would warm on Saturday afternoon, etc, etc. I am looking outside - zip! Nada! Not a flake.

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December 10, 2004

Airport run!

I get to make an airport pick up this morning, something I rarely seem to do. Sue is returning from a work gig in JAX and arrives at 10:05 according to the schedule. I have three different flight tracker programs to check on flight progress. I don't know how accurate they are, but I will find out. IND is IFR with 2 mi RVR, no problem, but there are t-storms around JAX so that could delay departure. Did I ever tell you about the time I sat, in the plane, on the ground at EWR for eight bloody hours! You don't want to know, t-storms are the worst when it comes to flying.

UPDATE!
According to my software, the plane was enroute to JAX from TPA, but since there were t-storms over JAX, it got diverted to OCF probably to wait it out. It finally made it to JAX and just left JAX for IND. Whew! Thank god for good tracking software!

UPDATE!
Mission accomplished!

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December 09, 2004

New (lack of) sleep pattern

I seem to be falling into this routine where I wake up and get up at 4:15 AM now. I mess around until 6:30 or 7:00 when I feel tired again. So, back to bed for two or three more hours, ultimately getting going around 11:00 AM - self-employment does have its compensations. I guess I will go with it for as long as it lasts, but hopefully I will return to a more normal wake up and get up time of 7:00 AM or so.

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December 07, 2004

tee-hee! yep, that's me!

You scored as Couch Potato Cat. Decorative pillow? No, that'd be you sitting on the couch, even still. Hmm. . . I'm guessing you have Web TV. Couch Potato Cat 75% Ninja Cat 58% Pissed at the World Cat 58% Nerd Cat 50% Love Machine Cat 42% Derranged Cat 8% Drunk Cat 8% Which Absurd Cat are you? created with QuizFarm.com

Posted by nezbitthecat at 09:41 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Happy Hanukkah!

The rain is quite intense today. I will take it, it could be snow, and a great lot of snow it would be as well. I haven't checked my rain gage yet, but I am guessing that there is close to an inch since midnight last night. That would roughly translate into a foot of snow.

I remember being jealous of the Jewish kids because their Hanukkah would last eight days, but they only got one present each day. I would clean up all in one day, Christmas, with at least eight presents. So I guess I had no reason to be jealous.

Today's rain...

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December 06, 2004

Sorted.

I stopped off at Wal-Mart this afternoon to hunt down another wireless thermometer and found it. Now I have two inside displays and one working outside sending unit. OK. I installed the other display downstairs so I can tell the outside temp without going to the window. So lazy! So American!

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How cold is it?

I cannot really tell, my thermometer broke! I have a remote wireless thermometer, one bit outside on the deck and the other bit here on my computer desk. I noticed that the display showed correctly for the inside temp, but the outside is just displaying two blank likes. I thought it was the batteries (it has been a year or so), but no, that didn't fix it. Damn!

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December 05, 2004

A helping hand

I visited my friend Alexis this afternoon whose daughter, Kelsey, was having trouble getting connected to the internet. Turns out that Kazaa had done its dirty work to the computer and installed numerous bots which proceeded to eat up the meagre 56K dial-up bandwidth. I removed what I could and restored connectivity, but there are still a few bots on there somewhere so it will deteriorate again. Did I say "dial-up" - I did. There are some still out there who still use it. (tee-hee!)

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December 04, 2004

38 meaningless questions (a meme)

Stolen from Motor City Bad Kitty

1) Name the Last Four Things You Have Bought:
1. McDonald's
2. Coffee at the Monon
3. Gift for secret Santa
4. Dinner with Katie at Applebee's

2) Name Four Drinks You Regularly Drink :
1. Coffee
2. Orange Juice (no pulp)
3. Coke/Diet Coke (mixed 50/50)
4. Iced tea

3) Last Time You Cried? Can't remember - not recently.

4) What's In Your CD Player? Mozart and Mahler (Symphony No. 1)

5) What's Under Your Bed? Space (nothing)

6) What Time Did You Wake Up Today? 5:45

7) Current Hair? reddish, blondish & whitish (thinning, unfortunately)

8) Current Clothes? Plaid shirt, twill pants

9) Current Desktop Picture? http://www.nezbitthecat.com/desktop01.jpg

10) Current Worry? AM leg pain.

11) Current Hate? Current National Administration

12) Favorite Places To Be? Home is pretty nice.

13) Least Favorite Place? A traffic jam

14) If You Could Play An Instrument? piano or cello

15) Favorite Color(s)? purple, black, dark red

16) How Tall Are You? 6'3"

17) Favorite expression? "Excellent!"

18) One Person From Your Past You Wish You Could Talk To: Diana

19) Favorite Day(s)? Saturday

20) Where Would You Like To Go? Richmond, UK

21) Where do you want to live when you get married? Richmond, UK, regardless of marital status

22) Favorite food? salmon, filet.

23) Color of most clothes you own: Blue, black, kahki.

24) Number of pillows you sleep w/? Three

25) What do you wear when you go to sleep: Brown pants and t-shirt

26) What were you doing 12AM last night: sleeping

27) How old will you be in 10 yrs: 63

28) What do you think you'll be doing in 10 years: Same as now, but in England

29) Do you have braces? No.

30) Are you paranoid?! No, not usually :).

31) Do you burn or tan? Avoid the sun entirely.

32) What is the brand of you wallet? Coach

33) First piercing/tattoo? Ear when I was 30-ish

34) First enemy? That was a long time ago.

35) Last person you yelled at? Can't remember that, either

36) Last crush? Catherine Zeta-Jones Mmmmm.

37) Last thing you ate? Egg McMuffin with sausage

38) The last time you had sex it was...? a distant memory, now.

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Let the weekend begin!

December is a weird month anyway. There are always parties. People are spending down their budgets lest they lose it if they don't use it, so I stay pretty busy toward the end of the year. The WX is getting into full Winter mode - frosty mornings and little daylight. The low sun angle - even more pronounced in the northern latitudes.

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December 03, 2004

Just had my lunch

I went to a new Asian food place in the City Market called Asiana. The have Chinese food, Japanese and Sushi. Of course, it seems like all the peeps that work there are from Korea, but I didn't see any Korean dishes on the menu! I had a pork cutlet on fried rice with a salad. I love the dressing for the salad, but besides bits of chopped up ginger and garlic, I don't know what kind of dressing it is.

"He hasn't a clue! Too busy going to rave parties and sniffing glue!"

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A client doo-dah!

I usually avoid these festivities, but this looks like a worthwhile endeavor.

The WX has turned suddenly colder, but it is dry - no precip.

I was driving home last night, and about a block from my house I noticed a very wet street and a torrent of water coming down the hill. As I drove on, I noticed the water bubbling up through a manhole access cover - a leak! I called the water company and they dispatched repair trucks which are still out there. My good deed for the day.

Enjoy some holiday cheer at the

VSA arts of Indiana

2004 Holiday Open House

Friday, December 3, 4:00-9:00 PM

Harrison Center for the Arts

16th & Delaware, Indianapolis

Food, festivities, and a full-fledged

holiday shopping opportunity

for you and yours!

No RSVPs necessary

Phone 317/974-4123 TTY 317/974-4117

Toll Free 800/484-8055 pin 1605

www.vsai.org

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December 01, 2004

Surprised the hell out of me!

I was driving home last night and had the radio tuned to NPR. On comes Garrison Keillor doing his "Writer's Almanac" when he reads a poem by an ex girlfriend of mine, Cat Doty! She has just published a book of her poems! Way to go, Cat!

Why I Don't Drive a New Car
for Stephanie Back

by Catherine Doty < click for bio
from Momentum

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