The View From Drew

Farrah Fawcet has died at aged 62.  RIP, Angel.

I haven't been able to get into the groove of things since last week.  I think Daylight Savings has me wiped.  The sad part is, I went to bed early last Saturday and slept in on Sunday.  Despite this, the week was very difficult to get through and last night I was out late at a mini reunion with a fair number of my high school classmates.  This morning, I was up early and out to Queens for the first of several classes on Smartboard usage.  I'm going to lie down now and hopefully, a nap might help. 

For the longest time, I've used Firefox, but I recently switched to Opera.  I like it a lot more and find it easier to use.  Now, I recently called it up and it says it cannot connect.  I have the same problem with Internet Explorer, but since I could care less about it, I wasn't worried.  Can anyone tell me what I need to do to correct the problem?  I tried reloading it and that didn't work.

I recently organized a mini-reunion with my high school class and am trying to put together another one.  We're planning on meeting on a Friday evening after work in Manhattan in March.  Someone suggested something close to Grand Central so that those in Westchester and points further north can take the train home.  Does anybody know of a good bar/restaurant in the area where we can gather after work for drinks and appetizers?  My New York savvy is way off these days.  Thanks.

 All right, I'm only now catching up with my LJ.  I'll be honest, save for posting the cartoon-a-day, which is a lot of fun, I really haven't been checking in here lately.  In the event the Y2K bug hits LJ the few of you who don't already know and haven't friended me, I'm on Facebook - John S. Drew.  I have a MySpace account too, but that's going to be ditched.  MySpace is boring.  I know people knock Facebook, but save for the dumb applications, I have fun there and it helps me keep in contact with industry people, family, friends, and students of mine.

Of course, you can always find me over at chronicrift.com.  I've been doing more blogging there than here lately as I'm talking up the show.


 Should we all hold hands now?

Managed to stay up until midnight.  Watched the last episode of Jekyll and the Doctor Who episode "Fear Her" with Sue as well as started to whittle down some of the backlog of current television on my DVR before the bal dropped.  It was nice.

Today, up early and getting the house in order for the arrival of family as we were too lazy to do it yesterday.  We were lulled by the serenity of the snow falling.

A happy new year to all.  For those new here, I don't do resolutions as I never follow through.  I've worked on who I am in 2008 a great deal and even though it may not have been the best of years in many respects, on a personal note, I feel the best I've felt in many a year.   

 Much squealing and happiness and some disappointment.  Eddie didn't get his iPod, but I explained to him that Santa said it was going to be just an iPod or all the cool gifts he got.  (Eddie wanted a video iPod, like mine.)  I told him that he might get one for his birthday/communion gift this year.  Surprisingly, out of all the gifts Mikey got, he loves his Dust Devil vacuum and his shopping cart.  I'm almost done putting his train set together.

Eddie loves the MarioKart game and I have to admit it's really cool.  He also now has internet access on my old laptop.  I've told him that he can't just go on the internet any time he feels, but has to ask me or Mom or Grandma so we can keep an eye on things.

Sue got me a number of comfort items I've been lacking in recent times, like a new pair of slippers, earmuffs, and gloves.  The best gift, and I maintain this for anyone was an eBay gift card.  Rather than getting a gift card to a particular store, with eBay you can get a lot of loot for little money if you bid wisely.  My cousin gave me one for my birthday last year and I had a field day.

Mikey's still asleep so Eddie had to wait to open his presents.  So far, he's doing fine.  He had his stocking which he keeps on the door to his room to keep him busy although I almost slipped in revealing too much knowledge of one of th 

You know, the boys are doing pretty well for themselves between Santa and Sue and myself.  There was no dinosaur among the gifts, but Mikey stopped talking about it fairly quickly.  He has been talking about this bubble machine for the bathtub.  That he got.  Eddie's not getting an iPod, but he is getting his moon shoes and a USB wireless jack for the old laptop I gave him so he can access the internet.  

 So, the in-laws have left and Sue is putting Mikey to bed.  It was a nice evening of ham, wine, and presents.  The boys got some new Transformers and clothes.  I didn't realize that they were that into The Transformers, but they were thrilled.  After dinner and cleanup, we baked the cookies for Santa and then the boys got ready for bed.  Eddie got an alarm clock from his grandmother.  He has it set for an early rising.  I must remember to reset it later this evening after round two is complete.  Round two consists of wrapping the boys presents while watching Buffy and Angel.  Round three is the morning festivities and round four is dinner and gifts with my family.

It's been a nice start to the holidays and here's hoping it continues.\

Enjoy the time with family and friend everyone.

dr_p_venkman  and trillsie, thank you ever so much.  Now, you have to tell we what I owe you.  You've made me a happy little comic geek.

So, I've been feeling sick again (What else is new?   I swear the warranty on this body must be for forty.), but despite this I went out last night to meet up with some of the class of 86 for drinks (I drank nothing except tea with lemon.  I was good.) and appetizers.  There were five of us all together, me and four women.  (How many of us had that fantasy sitting in a high school classroom?)  There was supposed to be one other person, but he got lost.  I emailed him this morning and told him I was doing fine without him until they started talking about breast feeding and then I kept glancing at the door, wishing he would walk in.  It was especially nice as two people, whom I hadn't seen since high school came.  It was a nice evening.

Unfortunately, as the evening wore on, I felt a pressure on my chest, as though someone were stepping on it.  I felt a little light headed briefly, but it passed.  This morning, I'm whispering and the pressure is still there.  I'm coughing like crazy.  I'm going to head out soon to the emergency room as my doctor is not available today.  My money's on bronchitis.

I'm going to be the grinch here as people list all the things they're thankful for.

I miss my father-in-law.  He was always like a kid when it came to the holidays and his childishness was infectious.

I miss Wally, a friend of the family.  He passed away three weeks before Sue and I were married.  He spent all his holidays with my family and father would always have VHS tape of Benny Hill and Allo!  Allo! to show him as we waited for dinner.

I miss A Man Called Flintstone that the local ABC channel would run here in New York.  If the parade got boring, you could always switch to Flintstone.  I miss the monster movies that channel nine in New York would run in the afternoon.  There were these comercials for Playworld, a toy store that has long gone out of business.


I miss Mystery Science Theatre's Turkey Day celebrations.

I just realized what the new Trek trailer reminds me of - the Lost in Space movie.  That tanked too.

How does one lock a mouse so that instead of having to use the side scroll bad to navigate a web page, you just have to scroll down the page instead?  I'm trying to capture a web page on video and it only captures the area around the cursor which means I'm capturing the stupid thing scrolling down the sidebar. 

And more importantly, afterwords, we went out for pizza.  We played guessing games and chain games as we ate.  (Chain games are where you pick a topic, say animals, name something in that topic.  The next person has to guess another item in the topic that starts with the last letter of the previous item.  The person who can't come up with an answer breaks the chain and loses.)

Lee Majors for President.  (Should have thought of that sooner though.)

I'm not surprised.  I'm not even disappointed.  I'm actually excited by the news as it gives Moffat more to play with now. - http://www.bbc.co.uk/doctorwho/s4/news/081029_news_04

Only Kevin Smith could come up with an idea of Santa fighting crime all year and developing a rogues gallery akin to Batman.  He then goes on to say that Christmas would be really cool as the rogues gallery goes nuts every year and tries to ruin Christmas.