Off with a bang!

Bang! Bang! Bang!

That's the sound of the new year starting off for me. We're now twenty-six, err.., twenty-seven days into '05 and I must admit January has shaped up very nicely so far.

Productivity at work has been at an all time high.

Jen graduated from The Andrews School and got her certficate of graduation for Medical Transcription. Even better, she was hired by Transolutions a few short weeks after graduating, and is now working part-time from home!

Co-worker buddy & I swept our opponents during our last league match, going 5-0 in singles and our doubles match.

Using some of my Christmas money (thanks to my in-laws & Mom & Dad!), I have some Sanus Steel Foundations speaker stands on order and they should be arriving on Friday.

I have weekly birthing classes to look forward to starting tomorrow! Jen is at 31 weeks, leaving only two short months to get ready for the baby. And no, we don't know if we're having a boy or a girl. Already having one of each, we thought we'd let this one be a surprise! Only this time, if all goes as planned, we'll be having a home birth, assisted by a midwife from Birth Works Midwifery Services.

I also have the Arkansas Closed Table Tennis tournament to look forward to on Sat. February 5th.

The Kiddos had a wonderful Christmas having been surprised beyond all expectations with the new Gamecube. We've been enjoying that as a family as well!

I must conclude by saying that shopping malls are evil, horrible places. Either I'm getting old or I'm getting even more antisocial because after having to go to the mall over the weekend for Jen to exchange some maternity clothes, I couldn't care less if I didn't set foot in a mall ever again. I felt severely uncomfortable, and felt like any minute I was going to run screaming out into the parking lot. Mostly I felt like I didn't *belong*. It was a very foreign, strange world to me. I felt like I was surrounded by people I had *nothing* in common with - mostly punks. Or at least that's how 80% of the people acted. Sure there were other families like ours, but we were definitely in the minority. Ugh. I don't have a problem going to Target or Best Buy or Walmart. But the mall literally scares me.

This year has also seen a revival in movies - that is, watching all the "blockbuster" hits of '04 that I refused to see/missed in the theater and chose to wait until they came out on video. In no particular order:

Garden State
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Troy
I, Robot
The Bourne Supremacy
The Village
Dodgeball
Spiderman 2
Napoleon Dynamite
The Terminal
Taking Lives

Busy busy busy. That's me. That's good, right?