Merry Christmas!

Yes that's right, no happy holidays here... Why is that? Because I honestly don't know anyone that is a faith other than Christian (or formally Christian now agnostic), so why I should be all PC with my holidays? :)

So I hope everyone is having a great holiday this year, after all this is the most joyous time of year right? As for mine, well I suppose it could be better... Actually it's be a hard couple of months, but fortunetly I've had plenty of over zealous santa clausing to do which worked wonders as far as keeping my mind off of things and keeping me sane. I won't bore you all with every little detail as to why it's been hard, but I suppose I will mention the bigger things.

First and formost: Mom was diagnosed with breast cancer just recently. On the positive side, the tumor they found is small, and it appears that the cancer has not yet spread. She just had her surgery last week, they removed the lump, plus 2 lymph nodes. While they haven't had a chance to perform a biopsy on the lymph nodes, they did say that they didn't look cancerous. While obviously they need to do a biopsy to make a final determination, I take great comfort in the fact that it doesn't look bad right off the bat. So it looks right now as if the treatments should be this surgery, then a few rounds of radiation (pending biopsy and follow up exams).

Secondly: I'm still spending the Christmas season single, this one is really my fault I suppose. I really haven't been looking for anyone until just recently. I suppose deep down I was hoping something could happen with someone I care for very much, but it just isn't ever going to. So I'm now in the process of trying to move on and find someone else. So far I've only been on one date, which to be perfectly honest didn't work out well. I guess in this particular case it ended up being a good thing, in retro spect she's different enough from me religiously that it wouldn't work. She was Jewish, I'm Catholic (for anyone that some how didn't know that already). I guess on the one hand you could say Judaism and Christianity aren't all that different so it should work, and I suppose on some level you would be right. But on another, when I actually went out on the date I started thinking about all the little traditions I like and would love to do with my family that just wouldn't happen if I married a non-christian. Silly stuff like how when we were kids, my siblings and my self would sing happy birthday to Jesus holding little cupcakes with candles in them. Small, yes, silly perhaps, but totally cute and worth continuing. So I suppose now that I have that experience out of the way I'm going to continue looking for someone I can share my life with, only this time I'm looking mainly for Christians of some sort, that's where I'm going to draw the line with pickyness, I don't care what type it's all basically the same if you ask me.

Besides that everything else that's been going on that might be negative is stupid little stuff that frankly isn't worth mentioning in the least because to be perfectly honest I wouldn't care all that much about it if it wasn't for issues 1 & 2.

But, it hasn't been all bad... Just last night I had a get together with Joe, Laura (and their cute little one Eddie) plus JR, Chris (JR's friend from his cookie Christian school), Elizabeth and Justin. It was a great night, we played x-box for a bit (which died then came back to life later that day), played some Cranium Wahu (or whatever it's called) and some Trivial pursuit. There was plenty of Pizza, beer and snacks to go around and a great time was had by all. Looking like Thrusday we're going to have our official christmas party over at Joe and Laura's, after that I'm off to visit my parents for the holidays which will be a very nice change of pace for me at this point.

Also, as always I've made some Home Theatre changes since I've last posted. I've had HD DVD for a while and have been totally loving it, but with a huge sale a while back on the Toshiba HD-A2 player I decided to sell my X-Box HD-DVD and replace it with the Toshiba stand alone. Over all, great upgrade... It does boot a tad bit slower than the x-box (ok, a lot slower), but it's more reliable and if/when I upgrade my sound system to one that supports HDMI I'll actually be able to take full advantage of High Def audio. Also, because I couldn't stand to miss out on Blu Ray exclusives, I very recently picked up a Samsung BD-P1400 blu ray player. It's a basic model as far as what it supports. It does have Internet for firmware upgrades, but it doesn't support PiP functions, and it won't support Web Enabled special features. But at least now I can play blu ray movies. As of right now I have 30 HD DVD's (more to come Christmas) and 12 Blu Ray's 5 more coming as part of a 5 free movies for buying a blu ray player promotion. I do very much still prefer HD DVD to Blu-Ray, especially give the fact that *EVERY* HD DVD player can do PiP and Internet special features while not all blu ray players are born equal. I guess either way, no matter who wins this war I'll have a basic player to take advantage of high def movies with.

So, as for my blog its self... You may have noticed the formats getting all messed up recently. For some reason after I upgraded to the final version of Live Writer my blog format started getting messed. So far I don't know what to do about it, so if you guys could be patient for now that would be great.

Anyway, I hope everyone out there is having a great holiday, certainly better holidays than mine so far! At least this year I got to upgrade (generally) the gifts I got everyone for Christmas which makes me happy. I really do love giving, it makes me feel great and I hope everyone else feels the same way... Particularly those of you giving to me this year! lol, just remember everyone, HD DVDs! ;)