Well here we go.  Back to work and hopefully some normalcy to my schedule in general.  After the last several weeks of holidays, 1/2-days, etc, I have a feeling this is going to be a long week.

It seems like a long time since last Monday…  We did a LOT last week.  Nothing anyone would be interested in though I imagine.  New Years Eve was something of a bust;  Nobody seemed very into it this year.  (Or maybe just not into celebrating it with us…)  For that matter, we weren’t either, so we went down and said “Happy New Year” to everybody at the Brooksider, then went across the street to Carmen’s and picked up some takeout.  Went home, ate our delicious dinner, then played Rock Band for a few hours.  That got us to about 10:30, and then we popped in a movie.  “Tropic Thunder” was the show for the evening.  As has been the case with any other movie I’ve tried to watch lately, I made it about five minutes into it and fell asleep.

Friday we were absolutely beat down.  I can’t recall exactly what the reason was for our extraordinary fatigue, but neither of had any interest what-so-ever in doing anything after work.  We had every intention of hunkering down, maybe playing a few games, and going to bed at 8:00.  That plan lasted until John & Susan called us and said they were up in Waldo for some happy houring.  We were so set on our original plan that they had to work on us for like 20 seconds, but eventually we relented and walked up the street to join them.  We hung out in that area for the rest of the evening.  We played a few bajillion rounds of  “photo match,” the rather kiddish game where you look for the differences between two pictures.  I’ve always found it oddly entertaining though;  It could well be the only arcade-type game I’ve ever fed a quarter into.  After a while though, John got us started on “Buck Hunter,” and I have to  admit it was a bit more entertaining than the picture game.

Saturday was pretty nice out, so we started on our obligatory New Years fitness program.  I fully expect it to last around 8 days if the last few decades are any indicator, but you never know.  Donette read somewhere or another that she is supposed to be walking 10,000 steps a day, so she picked up a pedometer, leashed up Gabe, and off we went.  We walked all the way down to the grocery store, did a little shopping, and all the way back home.  (Roughly 2.5 miles.)  Then we drove out to the ‘Dotte and hit Nebraska Furniture Mart, which is a fair amount of walking too.  We couldn’t find anything to waste our money on there, so we walked from there to Cabela’s, where remarkably we couldn’t find anything we “needed” either.  After that failed shopping expedition, she coicindentally got a hot tip that the ‘Dotte Walmart had Wii Fits in stock though, so our long drive wasn’t wasted.  We (or at least I) were a little disappointed to find that all that hiking around only added up to about 6,000 steps.  Good grief, exactly how far is 10,000 steps???  Farther than I care to walk in a day, that much I have determined.  For dinner, we tried out a new recipe I spied the other day, chorizo-stuffed poblanos.  It was a reasonably successful recipe;  I was a bit thrown off by the heat of the poblano peppers.  I don’t know if it was because they are “out of season” or what, but they were a lot hotter than I anticipated.  Matter of fact, they tasted like chorizo-flavored pain.  But, at the same time, oddly tasty pain, so I sat there in a puddle of sweat and mowed through them.  After dinner we watched “Hancock.”  It must be a pretty good movie;  I made it about 15 minutes before I fell asleep.

Sunday we once again walked Gabe down to Brookside and did a little grocery shopping.    I don’t know if all this walking will do us any good but Gabe is liking it.  We sat around the house for most of the afternoon, then the Martins came down and saved us from total boredom.  Chris and I went down to the Brooksider and watched some football, and the girls stayed home and did whatever they did.  Probably talked bad about us.  We headed back home for dinner, and made some kind of lemon-garlic-scallop linguine.  It came out pretty good;  Much less painful than the previous evening’s entree.  After dinner we made them join our band and play some Rock Band II.  That was the first time we’ve been able to play with all four people at once;  Martin on bass, Donette on guitar, Dakin on vocals and I tried to play drums.  I’m pretty sure Martin will be defecting from “Guitars For Christmas” to join the “Physco Tabby Pitbulls” in the near future;  He recognizes our vast potential.