Category: Miscellaneous babble

There’s so much construction going on around the hospital that some days I feel like I should be walking around wearing a hard hat and safety vest or something.
There’s construction on the ground work for the new hospital being built near the parkade I’m in, construction going on for new sewer lines up the block, construction for rerouting utility lines on the walk between the parkade and the hospital, construction for the new cancer center building next door, construction on the ground floor of the library, construction for a new parkade on the other side of the hospital. Construction here, construction there, construction everywhere! Some days it looks like there are more construction workers here than there are patients.
Everywhere you look there’s a piece of heavy machinery lumbering towards you, or a crane dangling several tonnes of precast concrete slab over your head, or those blue sticky pads for picking dirt and dust off your shoes. Hammering, drilling, banging and thumping here and there. It just never ends around here.

Tomorrow I will be 35. A few years ago, I thought people who were 35 were old. Now I’m one of those people. There are days where I start feeling the years. Lately that’s been happening more often than previous years.
This year I’m determined to get back to the more active lifestyle I had when I was in my 20s. I think having a dog around will do a lot towards that. What I really want to do is get back into cycling, but that will probably have to wait at least another year until we get a little more financially settled after getting this house. In the meantime I’ll have to settle for getting back to the running thing. Maybe I’ll try for the Cooper River Bridge Run next year. I’ve always been more of a 5k person though. Never really been much good at the 10k distance, but there’s always a first time for everything!
Yes, Bridge Run 2006. That will be a good goal to shoot for.

USCIS (formerly INS) does this thing now that they call biometrics, where they take a digital photo and fingerprints for any of your immigration related things. Problem is not all of their offices can do the biometrics thing.
So yesterday, I had an appointment at the Charlotte NC ASC (Application Support Center) which was the closest place I could go for the biometrics thing for my EAD application. Charlotte NC is a 3 hour trip (200 miles). Here’s how the day went.
0830: Drop the wife off at school and head out on the road to Charlotte.
1130: Arrive in Charlotte. The ASC wasn’t too far off I-77, so it was pretty easy to find. Get in line, person says I need to come back closer to my appointment time. :P. Head off to find a place for lunch.
1230: Back at the ASC. Hand the person at the desk my paperwork and passport. She stamps it, paperclips them together and hands me a number. Go sit down and wait for staff to come back from lunch.
1330: My number finally comes up. Head over to the computer, right index finger gets smushed onto the fingerprint capturing thingy, then I sit down to get my picture taken.
1345: All done, processing person stamps my paperwork again, then tells me my card will be mailed.
1350: Fill up the car and head back home.
1700: Arrive back home.
Argh. Could have had all this done the old fashioned way in Charleston and had my EAD card right then and there. Instead, it was a 6 hour round trip for something that took 15 minutes to do. And I didn’t even get my new card!
sigh
The fact that they can do all this stuff digitally is great though. I just wish it was available at their local offices so I don’t have to spend the whole day travelling just get something that takes 15 minutes to do.

I did absolutely nothing today except watch over 11 hours of Lord of The Rings: Extended Special Edition. All three of them. Back to back. Short pauses for bathroom breaks and food.
It was fantastic. Can’t wait to do it again.

Back home the day after Christmas, Boxing Day, is traditionally the biggest shopping day of the year. In the US, Boxing Day seems to be the biggest day of the year for returning things.
The wife and I spent our Boxing Day preparing and roasting 24 little chickens (those alleged Cornish game hens) for a party of 20 or so people that never materialized. So instead it was just a party of 13 or so people. And now there are a lot of extra little chickens filling the fridge.
They were tasty though, and I certainly won’t mind taking a few of them back home with me.
The problem with my holidays is that they usually aren’t. Unless we go away somewhere, we always seem to end up working, mostly catering for parties the wife’s folks are having. I guess it’s partly our fault…we seem to have developed a reputation for cooking really well. I suppose there are worse reputations to have.
Christmas day was a pleasant event. The wife’s family opens their gifts at the stroke of midnight (or as close to it as she can get). So we were up until about 2 AM Christmas Day exchanging and opening gifts. Santa was surprisingly good to me this year. I must have been a very good boy.
Then it was off to bed, and then breakfast at her brother’s place. Followed by more gift opening, and then the roasting of the turkey. Christmas feasting was at 5, and then everybody lapsed into a food induced coma for a few hours before heading off to the airport at 9PM to pick up the wife’s cousin. Then it was back to the compound and her aunt and uncle’s place for more gift exchanging and gift opening.
All of that made Christmas a long, tiring but satisfying day. Lots of good food, lots of presents, and best of all lots of family to hang around with.