Well the calendar companies have again tricked us all into shelling out even more money for astrological tables which focus on the earth’s location relative to the sun.  So according to an ancient tradition which dates back nearly a year, I will review some of the adventures I have been through with you, faithful reader of my boring blog.

Let’s see...  there was that time I got ripped off on eBay, although technically that happened in 2005.  But I didn’t blog about it until 2006 so it still counts.  Then I critiqued some xenophobic e-mail, shortly before I influenced the direction of American television.  I listed a few of my favorite things, for all to see and marvel at.  Later Stephanie interviewed for and was subsequently offered a job.  But in between those two events, we ate a year-old pastry.  Once we had another source of income we bought a new car.  A few months later I bought a new amp and rocked super hard.  I built the most complex sand castle I’ve ever built, but sadly it could not stand up to the incoming tide.  As the summer was winding down, I let you all in on twenty-six video games that I think are totally cool, before letting you in on a little secret: this is where I work.  Next, I became an uncle at the same time that Stephanie became an aunt, when our new niece began to independently consume some of the extra oxygen in the atmosphere.  Stephanie made a list, focusing on movies, and then I jumped on board the MySpace bandwagon thing.  Just when I was starting to feel like a cool young dude, I got a year older.  But at least I won a hot blonde girl bean bag chair to ease my aging back.  To finish up the year I finished a project that was two years in the making, before being robbed by some stupid teenagers.

Nothing changes on New Year’s Day
—Bono (greatest rock star, humanitarian, philanthropist, and savior ever to call himself all of those things)

We spent Thanksgiving in Williamsburg, Virginia with Stephanie’s family, and I just put some pictures up.  Most are either our new niece, Riley, or some kinda artsy pictures from Colonial Williamsburg like the one that can be seen to your left.

Stephanie and I decided to carve a pumpkin on Sunday, but the new Über Target up the street only had white pumpkins left.  Rather than look for an orange pumpkin, I suggested we take the white pumpkin and turn it into a ghost, because I’m lazy like that.  We then put it on a little table we had and put some white sheets over it, so it looks sort of like a ghost.  The outline of the head we stole from Strong Sad, but we gave him a more menacing face and a goofy looking mouth.

In other news, the Red Cross comes to my company about four times a year for blood drives.  They will be here today... on Halloween.  To suck our blood!  That’s funny isn’t it?  I think that’s a little funny.  Or at least a little ironic.  What would be awesome is if the Red Cross workers were dressed up as vampires.

For Labor Day weekend, Stephanie and I went to Lake Lure, NC with her parents.  We took a bunch of pictures while we were there, mostly of Chimney Rock.  Check them out!

You may notice when viewing my photos that it looks a little different.  I tried to make the text small enough that you see very little header before the photo, hopefully reducing the amount of scrolling you have to do if you aren’t running at a high resolution.  I also moved the timestamp down below the image, since most people probably don’t care about it.  It was a bit tricky to come up with an algorithm for determining the color of the header based on the color of the background, but I think I’ve come up with one that works fairly well.

If you have any comments about the new photos view, feel free to let me know.

For the last month or so, my mother-in-law has borrowed my copy of “Legally Blonde” and apparently watched it every day.  So for Mother’s Day, Kip and I bought her a copy of the movie for herself so she could watch it whenever she wants.  This also means that I will get to take my copy back to Charlotte with me, so that I can watch it.  So what do I do?  I get up today and decide to watch it right here in Newton this morning, and Kip’s dad commented that Deborah watches it like everyday. ;)  It has been awhile since I’ve watched it, and it is “super fun!!!”

Also, I’m trying to win tickets to go and see the premier of “Cars”, the new Disney movie that is showing at Lowe’s Motor Speedway in like a week or two.  The radio station I listen to in the morning on my way to work is giving tickets away by quizzing people on lines from Disney movies.  So could there be a more perfect “game” for me to play to win.  I mean, I have seen almost every Disney movie ever made!!!  What I can’t get over is the fact that people don’t know these clips.  One morning no one could figure out that this one quote was from “Aladdin”.  I mean, am I that old that the children of this generation don’t know that movie, all they know are “Monster, Inc.”, “The Incredibles”, and movies like that.  One guy even guessed “Shrek” as the movie and that isn’t even a Disney movie!!!!  The deal is that they give you three clips and you have to get them all right or you loose.  So I’ll keep trying all next week to get through to win tickets for us.  Another funny thing is that you win four tickets to go see the movie and Kip and I don’t have kids to take, so we don’t know who we would take to see the movie.  If you would like one of the tickets feel free to leave a comment with why you feel you should get one of the extra tickets.  It will be enteretaining to see your reasons even if we don’t win.

This past Tuesday was Valentine’s Day, as I’m sure you’re aware.  I suggested to Stephanie that we go out to eat that night.  She said it would be crowded, but I said we’d leave early and get there by about 6:00.  I mean, it was a Tuesday night, and no one gets off work for Valentine’s Day, and who likes to eat that early anyway?  Turns out a lot of people.  We got to The Olive Garden at 6:00, to be told there was a “130-150 minute wait”!  We decided to go next door to the Red Lobster, where the wait was only an hour, then we went to the Toys’R’Us nearby to pass the time.

Now I know what you’re thinking- Kip!  You are SO clever!  I mean, I bet you’re the first person to notice that Valentine’s Day can be abbreviated “VD,” an acronym most of us associate with “venereal disease.”  That is SO clever!  I mean... wow!

While that is true, I ask you to please refrain from devoting your comments to telling me how clever I am.  I know all about it (I was there when I wrote it).

In other news, I mailed off the Nielson Ratings packets this morning.  If you’re curious how the system works, I’ll give you a quick rundown of the things I found interesting (see also Stephanie’s previous post on the same topic).

• They first contact you by phone, ask you a bunch of questions, the last being if you’d like to participate.  After you say yes, they tell you they’ll pay you fifteen bucks.

• Then they send you a TV Diary for each TV in your house.

• That $15 they send you is in cash... like, a Lincoln and a Hamilton.

• The diary is a grid, with columns for each person in your house on the right.

• Recording in the diary can be a little tedious.  You have to record the channel call letters or name, the channel number, the name of the program, and who watched it.

• If a program was DVR’ed (as most everything we watch is), you have to list the date and time that it was recorded as well.

• Sweeps week runs from Thursday through Thursday... so we had two Thursdays to record.  Makes sense I guess, since Thursday is the most watched TV night.

I enjoyed being a datum.  In fact, I generally do.  People will call me on the phone and ask me if I’d like to participate in a survey.  “I’ve been waiting my whole life for this moment,” I always tell them.  Well maybe not, but I should try to remember to do that next time.  It’s just refreshing to know that a dataset reflects me, because a lot of times you hear statistics and think “Where did they get these numbers?!”  Especially for something like TV, that matters, unlike irrelevant things like psychology.  However, I was disappointed that we were selected during Olympics week, as many of the shows I normally watch were either reruns or just not aired.  But there is a spot at the end of the diary for comments, and it asks you to list any shows you normally watch but didn’t get to during this week.

People can come up with statistics to prove anything.  Forty percent of all people know that.
  —Homer Simpson

I put up a set of Christmas photos.

I am sorry that I don’t post as often as Kip does, but I just don’t have that much exciting going on to write a blog post about.  So now I am going to tell you all about all the things Kippy and I did over the Holiday Season.

The Christmas season began with us visiting Kip’s family on Christmas Eve Eve.  This was our year to spend Christmas with my family, so we spent the eve before Christmas Eve with Kip’s family.  Well, his family always gets together with Kaylor Family Christmas get together.  Apparently, the average number in attendance is between 65 and 75 people.  I come from a large family, but that is only my immediate family, I don’t have a large extended family, so I was slightly overwhelmed by the number of people that were in attendance with only about 50 people there.  After dinner that night the family got together to participate in the traditional game of Dirty Santa game for those people that bring gifts to trade around.  This being my first time attending this party, I wasn’t quite sure what to expect from this version of the gift exchange.  Apparently this was the first year that they allowed young children the participate as well, and let’s just say, I don’t think they will be playing next year.  These kids I would guess were no more than seven or eight years old, and I don’t think that they were quite prepared for exactly how dirty the game could get with high school students and adults fighting to get the presents that they wanted.  The game took about an hour and a half at least.  The hot gift this year was Best Buy Gift Cards.  I ended up getting a Day Spa set that my mother-in-law brought to the exchange.  Kip was super wonderful and got me the cute snowflake blanket that I wanted.  After the party, we came back to Kip’s parents’ house to celebrate Christmas with his family.  Scott and Jake got me a really cute pair of shoes that I just loved, but they were one size two small.  Kippy got his DS as I’m sure you all already know.  I got my DS from Kippy during our Christmas that we celebrated together.

Christmas Eve was spent driving from Kip’s parents’ house to my parents’ house.  That night we played a small version of White Elephant where my mom re-gifted a bunch of things she needed to quit storing under her bed.  It was funny to play with my whole family.  There were like four or five different candles.  Sunday was Christmas, and we opened our stockings first thing in the morning, followed by a special Christmas church service.  After a huge lunch of ham and cranberry sauce and tons of pie.  After lunch we opened our presents and played for the rest of the day.  Monday was pretty uneventful, but Tuesday night we went to Dixie Stampede at Myrtle Beach to see the Christmas show.  Kippy had never gone to the Dixie Stampede so he got to have his first experience with the yummy yummy food and the pretty pretty horses.  We were on the South Pole side of the theater right up close to the stage on the front row so we could see everything.  It was totally awesome and hilarious.  One of the characters was a red-neck reindeer hunter.  He was really funny.

Now it is New Year’s Day, and we are hanging at Kip’s parents’ house.  Kip has tomorrow off, and we will be un-decorating from Christmas and returning out little apartment back to normal.  I hope that everyone had a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, and now we don’t have to hear any more about the Merry Christmas Happy Holiday’s controversy.  I always said Merry Christmas anyway.

I know I haven’t posted in a while, and I’m sorry to keep you all waiting. We have had a very busy Thanksgiving and Christmas season already. For those of you just starting to read this blog, Kip and I are newlyweds, and this was our first Thanksgiving married. It is sometimes said that new brides have the need to attempt making a big Thanksgiving dinner for their new husbands. I did not have this desire, I did however attack the area of dessert.  I made two pumpkin pies from scratch, including the crusts using my grandmother’s recipe, and a turkey army.  Both of my deserts were huge successes at the Robinson Family Thanksgiving dinner on Thursday, so that makes me happy.

We came home from his parents house Sunday afternoon. Kip had planned on going for the Christmas tree on Monday night, but since we got back so early, we went ahead and went to two different tree lots and picked out what I think is the most perfect Christmas tree ever!!! You have to understand that I have never had a real tree due to my mother’s allergies. We carried the tree up two flights of stairs and placed it in our living room. That night we hung lights and the ornaments that I have been collecting my entire life.  We also hung two ornaments that we just purchased as our two first ornaments as a married couple.  That night I also decorated our mantle with figurines and candles. The tree lot guy gave me some of the branches from the trunk of our tree to use in decorating around the apartment as well, and I’ve been trying to find places for them to go. On Monday I went by Wal-Mart and picked up tinsel to add a little sparkle to the tree and it just makes it shine!!  Unfortunately we are still short one tree topper.  But we’ll hopefully get one soon!

Tonight, Kip and I finally had the right staples that fit into our staple gun, and we were able to decorate the porch of our apartment. There are blue twinkle icicle lights across the top, a strand of plain white Christmas lights wrapped around the corner pillar, and these new snowflake lights along that banister that twinkle and sparkle and look totally awesome. Kip took Punky for a walk afterward and got some pictures of the lights. I think that we are like the first ones in our apartment complex to get lights up outside, at least the first that I have noticed. I hope that everyone else is enjoying the holiday season as much as I am. Merry Christmas!!!!

I officially can’t stand teenagers who think they should still be allowed to trick-or-treat.   Kip and I live on the third floor of an apartment building and I understand that not all children will climb that many steps for candy, but a few did this year.  We had a total of two groups come by.  The first group was a bunch of cute kids dressed up with their mom, or some adult figure.  The second set came about forty-five minutes later, and they came in the form of two boys, not walking together but one leading tthe other.  The leader was a much older boy who was taller than myself, and looked like he was in high school.  I thought nothing of it at the time.  We recieved no other trick-or-treaters for the remainder of the night.

As a way of showing people that we were giving out candy, we made a little flier and taped it to the door saying that trick-or-treaters were welcome.  I also took my adorable little pie pumpkin that I bought to be festive for the fall season out on the banister so that people below might see it and think to come up.  Well, only moments ago I realized that I hadn’t brought my pumpkin back inside, and I didn’t want anything to happen to it (like it freeze over night) as I was planning on using it to make a pumpkin pie from scratch for Thanksgiving.  Well, when I openned out door and looked right there, I was surprised to find that my pumpkin is no longer sitting there on the ledge but missing.  I even took the time to look over the banister to see if it had been smashed.  However, there are no remains of my cute pumpkin, it is simply missing.  I’m sure that a lot of you are sitting there saying to yourselve, “it was just a pumpkin get over it.”  But it is the principle of the situation that iritates and upsets me.  I put that little pumpkin out there as a sign of politeness and welcomeness, and someone had the odacity to steal it.  Take it from right in front of my door and leave me with nothing.  To top it all off, tied to that little pumpkin was a very cute little ribbon that at one time was attached to Punky’s pony, and my mother had added it to the pumpkin to make it look even cuter.  They not only stole my pumpkin, but the decorations that had been added to it.  I spoke earlier about the teenage boys that felt that they were in need of candy so badly that they had to go around asking for it (not even in costume I might add) because I am relatively certain that they are the ones that felt it neccesary to steal my pumpkin.  I say I’m relatively certain because Punky made no more outbursts toward people outside the door after those boys left and we didn’t hear anybody upstairs after that.  I realize that those people who are responsible for the pumpkin disappearance will doubtlessly ever read this post, but I feel that there are people out there reading it that will sympothize with me in my loss.  Now I have to hope that Harris Teeter is still selling pie pumpkins so I can purchase another one before Thanksgiving and make my pie.