January's Letter 2010

December began with giving Mom early birthday gifts. A BluRay player and all the Star Trek movies on BluRay. We watched the new Star Trek movie and Reuben commented that the sound was more clear. I wasn't even paying attention to the sound. I was all focused on the picture quality. When we watched Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, it was like I had never even seen the movie at all. You can see the stitching in the fabric! I am just amazed by BluRay. I decided to finally get BluRay because they were finally selling BluRay Discs at DVD prices and the players were at a reasonable price too. But BluRay has a short amount of time to catch on because On-Demand Streaming is becoming popular. Luckily, Mom's BluRay player has streaming Netfix. Which means she could watch almost any movie any time for 8.99 a month (not a plug).

Mom, Aunt Pam, Uncle Jim, Reuben and I went to P.F. Chang's for Mom's birthday. P.F. Chang's is an Americanized version of Chinese food; but it's still good. The waitress was fantastic and suggested our meal for us. We made a few modifications, but for the most part we didn't really have to read the menu. Dessert time came and we seemed to not want anything but eventually we gave in and a few of us got dessert.

I also gave Mom a birthday card that I bought her a few years ago but it got lost from moving stuff around. I found it and put it some where I would not lose it: my car's glovebox. The card is about the size of a LP Record sleeve (yes, I know what an LP record is). On the front it says "A long time ago...", in the Star Wars style font. Open the card and BAM, it plays the opening theme to Star Wars. Mom kinda jumped when she opened it. The inside reads "...you were born."

I attended Tech's winter graduation (the college of which I am an alumnus). I went to see four of my friends walk that long walk, but it turns out that there were ten people I knew that graduated. It was quite cold that day and there was some snow on the ground but not a lot. There were about 700 graduates total. I caught up with a good friend of mine, Robby, who's step-sister was graduating. And I got to sport my new suit.

Christmas was nice. It was the first time we attended the Aunt Pam's and Uncle Jim's Christmas party. There were a lot of people there, but they said they usually had more. They give presents to the kids, read the Christmas story, and even have a small music recital. I am not really the gregarious type but I enjoyed watching everyone. When I attend a party I usually hang around for an hour and then sneak out.

For Christmas I gave Mom a customized 2010 Calendar. It contained pictures of our family over the years. I went through six boxes of pictures, scanned about 200 pictures, and made it all in Photoshop. If you are reading this on my blog site, then you will see a sample from it. If not, go check it out. Like now.



I finally got to see a good friend of mine that I have not seen in 5 years. Leah has been in England going to school for the past few years. She developed a British accent. I asked if she could fake an American accent and she could not do it. I also got to meet her British boyfriend. If you want more details, check out the following post: http://tangentdave.blogspot.com/2010/01/from-across-pond.html

Oh yeah, Happy New Year! I hope you didn't miss Palindrome Day: 01-02-2010 and 01-11-10. Although, February 2nd would work to if you prefer the: DD/MM/YYYY format.

Until next time.