2006: A Year in Review

It's been a year, hasn't it? I'm not sure whether or not I'd characterize it as 'good' exactly, but certainly 'interesting'. Let's now take a look back and see what some of the big happenings were in the DeAdder/Bibb world.

January: Shelly and I finally set the date for our wedding after dickering over it for the previous eight months. On the heels of that announcement, we also selected the Fuquay Mineral Spring Inn and 'Garden' as the location where the nuptial vows would take place.
February: Shelly and I take a Valentine's Day trip to Asheville, nestled snuggly in the mountains of western North Carolina. We selected the Inn on Main Street's Forest Room as our base of operations between visits to the Biltmore Estate and general site-seeing. Unfortunately, a chipped bathroom sink 15 minutes into our stay sets the tone for the rest of the weekend.
March: My birthday, and not really a whole lot else. Erika and Jason celebrate with us at Brixx.
April: Amped-up work load and serious studying for final exams leave little time for anything else. Generally, pretty rotten month.
May: Serious knee injury occurs at work. Subsequent petty harassment leads me to seriously consider alternative employment. Also, Shelly finishes her first year of law school with flying colors and lands a summer internship with North Carolina Institute for Constitutional Law. With assistance from several hired (probably) illegal aliens, I move into a spacious two-bedroom apartment.
June: I go under the knife to have my left ACL replaced by a piece hamstring. A few rough nights are largely alleviated by the presence of my parents, my mother in law, and the ever-flowing supply of powerful pain-killers. Erika gets an honorable mention for assistance in driving me too and from therapy and moving an insane amount of Shelly's clothes from her old apartment.
July: Of course you know what this one is! My bachelor party! Seriously, though, I wed the girl God put on this Earth just for me. Shelly and I got married in Fuquay Varina, dodging rain clouds, scorching heat (mostly), delinquent wedding party members, missing ring pillows and Polaroid film, and crotchety wedding planners who feel it appropriate to wear shorts to the ceremony. My friend Jen also marries her beau of four years, Tim, though circumstances prevent us from attending each other's weddings. Most memorable exchange:

"Chris, how do I say this name?"
"It's Collier. Say it 'collie-er'."
"That's not how you say it! It's 'kyle-yer'!"
"But Misty, collies are noble, majestic creatures. You should feel honored
to be named for them."
"I hear what you're saying, but in another way, they're just big
dogs."

August: Our Jamaican honeymoon! Barely surviving a treacherous trip over wretched third-world roads (Brooks later writes a hiaku chronicling our pain), we recuperate enough to enjoy the 'all expenses paid' portion of the trip. Free meals, massages, pool-side service, snorkeling trips- we take advantage of them all!
Most memorable quote:

"'Departures'? But I don't want to depart!"

September: Shelly returns to law school. I renew flagging efforts to find another line of work. A positive job interview with SECU renews my hope, but the job is filled before I can get it. In more weighty news, Erika announces that she's with child, thus explaining the lack of drunken antics at our wedding. Jason fills the role very competently.
October: Free at last...etc. Enough has already been written of my emancipation, though my descendents will doubtlessly seek reparations for my servitude. A new position opens at SECU, and I accept it. Stress level subsequently plummets, and my enjoyment of life increases exponentially. Too, I found this blog to keep people up to date on my comings and goings. Matt and Martha make a semi-annual visit to Chapel Hill, as do my parents.
November: In an unprecedented show of humanity and understanding, my employer allows me a day off that my accumulated time can't cover. I nearly expire in shock. On our trip to MD, I visit Justin and Jen in their new homes for the first time, and unexpectantly catch up with some old wrestling buddies. Then again, you know all this stuff. Things are good, though this is offset somewhat by the midterm election results.
December: Just read my old blog entries, you'll get the idea!
So, all in all, I take it back, I've had a pretty great year, I think! I hope everyone here can say the same!
So, see all of you again in '07?
(And if you're wondering, the colors of the months correspond to the birthstones. Way to crack the code, DaVinci.)

Happy Boxing Day!

There, that's one way of avoiding the difficult task of coming up with a synonym for "Merry Christmas"! Just don't actually post on Christmas! Seriously, sorry, the network I was linking to, contrary to the spirit of the season, abandoned me yesterday.
Now I'm home alone, sans Shelly. And after enough trips carrying things up the apartment stairs to make me feel like an extra in the pre-Exodus scenes of The Ten Commandments, I'm settled down and ready to blog.
We woke late yesterday, around nine, and still had to wait for Shelly's brother to get up, and Shelly's Dad to arrive. Finally, around 10:30am, we started opening presents. Shelly really liked the earrings I got her (her one surprise). On my end, I received a tie, two dress shirts, a pair of dress shirts, a Best Buy gift card, and a book of last years best SciFi short stories.
After our Christmas haul, we all had lunch (more turkey), then Louis left to see other kin, and Michael departed to spread some Christmas cheer amongst Holly's family. Shelly and I relaxed a bit most of the afternoon.
Around six, the two of us drove over to the Kuda household, where we ate yet again. Dan and Carol welcomed us, as did Jason, Emily, newly arrived Savannah (her first Christmas), Stefanie, Julius, Ashley, and Rob. Perhaps you remember them from the wedding? Ashley was the one with the Polaroid camera. We did our gift exchange and received many nice presents, including a towel set and a SNL Best of Mike Myers DVD. During the event, the Kuda's introduced me to a handheld 20 Questions device, which was very successful in guessing what I was thinking. Among some not-very-obvious things it correctly guessed were "star", "violin", "submarine", and "T-rex". Go to the website and try it out- it might surprise you.
After the all-too-brief visit, during which I made every effort to keep Shelly from falling in love with little Savannah and wanting one of her own, we sped back to the house, picked up Mary, and then rushed over to Concord Mills just in time to meet Michael, Holly, and MIIISS-TEE for the 9:20pm showing of Night at the Museum. It was very funny- it might even make its way into our DVD collection when it comes out. The ending was unbelievable, but what do you want from a movie where everything in a museum comes to life at night?
That’s about all. I’ll spare you the details of my ride home, except from mentioning that I made it door to door in two hours flat!
I hope everyone had a very Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas Eve!

Since I used that tonight, originality demands that I come up with something else tomorrow. I quake as I consider the Herculean effort of thinking up an alternative!
The Good Lord has truly blessed me this evening by allowing me access to the wireless network from the comfort of my mother-in-law’s living room. It’s not exactly raw outside, but who wants to sit in the dark on a dank sidewalk?
After the previous blog entry, Mary took Shelly and I to Frank Liske Park up the road here in Concord. The park boasts acres of rolling hills, a modern recreation building, swing sets, and an amphitheater, of which we availed ourselves to none. (I’m not sure if that last sentence is grammatically correct and it’s bugging the heck out of me). Instead, we headed straight to the large lake in the western end, where, months ago, we encountered scores of ravenous, aggressive honkers, one of which bit Shelly, sending her screaming for cover. Alas, there were only half a dozen of them, and they didn’t seem very hungry. I had been more interested in the dozen or so Pekin ducks I’d seen the last time, but we couldn’t find them anywhere. This slightly depressed me, as I know they can’t fly away and their disappearance likely meant they’d suffered an unhappy end. Seeking an answer to the puzzle, Mary asked the park ranger, who, it turns out, has quite an affinity for the ducks. Our report of their absence worried him, so he drove his van around to the side of the lake, set down a few dishes of grain, and called "C’mon guys...c’mon guys!" To our astonishment, all 12 of them emerged from a hidden spot in a waterside grove of trees, crossed the lake, and started stuffing their bills with grain. The sight of such healthy, well-cared-for Pekins lifted my spirits as few things can.
Now that I’ve written 247 words wholly devoted (again) to waterfowl, I’ll continue telling you about Christmas Eve.
Shelly and I woke today at 5:30am to the sound of Mary banging pots and pans and preparing for today’s feast. Being the loyal, helpful progeny we are, we closed the door and ably returned to sleep for another three hours. Once the streaming sun beaming through the window made further sleep impossible, we rose and did what we could to help her- in my case, moving dozens of chairs down from the second floor. And not the light, folding metal chairs either; the big, robust, hernia-inducing wooden chairs. With arms.
Around noon, everyone began arriving. Uncle Charles and Aunt Linda came in from Charlotte, with the afore-mentioned Collier twins, Misty and Christy. Aunt Mary (that’s "Murry" if said around a mouthful of cookie) and Uncle David arrived in from Rock Hill, SC with their previously-unmet daughter Allison, who lives in Myrtle Beach. Uncle Mike came, as did his son Michael, daughter-in-law Mandy, and their kids Michael and Madison, who was recently a flower girl, and the best one ever, if certain boasts are to be believed. Shelly’s father Louis lived up to his promise and came too. Rounding out the crowd were Mary, Shelly, Michael Bibb, his girlfriend Holly, and myself. So, yes, for those keeping track, there were four Michael’s in attendance.
The main course was prime rib, which ended up being prime indeed, though slightly bloody. Charles was in charge of doling it out, and under his administrations, I took a healthy splash of meat juice, thwarting my evening plans of spreading Christmas cheer among unfortunate canines, which now seemed too risky. Other courses included mashed potatoes, cheese and crackers, a vegetable platter, green beans, biscuits, corn, and probably others I’m forgetting. One thing we didn’t have was ice, since the icemaker picked today of all days to go on strike. Guess who got sent to the store to pick up a couple of bags? Yep, that’s right! Who da man? I da man. My trip was delayed a few moments by the inexplicable absence of my shoes, but after shaking down Misty (who has a history of such thievery), I remembered Shelly had put them away in the closet.
After dinner, we all played Dirty Santa (that's San-TA, not San-CHEZ, Matt and Martha. We know how you roll). On my first turn, number ten out of sixteen, I unwittingly chose a frilly, sexy bathrobe. After much ribbing, Allison had mercy and relieved me of it. My replacement pick of a girly winter cap, gloves, and scarf did little to alleviate my feelings of insecurity. Thankfully, my mother-in-law took interest in them and traded me for a nice coffee sampler set from Starbucks.
There were a few illnesses, so everyone left fairly early. Now, only Shelly, Mary, and I remain. They’re watching the Nutcracker Suite in the other room, and even in the interests of love and Christmas I can’t force myself to join them.
That’s about all for now. I will probably make some familial calls tonight and get to bed early. Santa might not come if he catches me up!

Road Blog!

I’m writing this from my trusty laptop (ie portable) computer in Concord, NC! More specifically, the front sidewalk of my mother-in-law’s house, which is the only place I can pirate- ah, borrow- a signal. And you thought you’d be spared the torment of my blog over the Christmas weekend...
So, just to catch you up on yesterday, I went in to work for what I was sure would be a hellacious day. I was pleasantly surprised, although the seven people lined up at the door at 8:30am didn’t bode especially well.
The morning got off to an unhappy start when LaToya asked me to help clean the fish tank in her office. For any of you who know my history with aquatic life, you probably can guess where this is going. Anyway, after successfully teaching her how to ciphen water, I proceeded to vaccuum up the dead plants and assorted detritus in her tank and change out the water, taking special care to make sure the new water was the same temperature as the old (they’ll get ick, doncha know?). Regrettably, despite my efforts, both of her fish perished shortly thereafter, cause unknown. Some things never change. My penchant for unwittingly killing fish is apparently one of them.
The rest of the day passed more or less uneventfully. Carola and Denise both bought presents for me (photo coasters and travel coffee mug, respectively). We all rocketed out the door at maybe 5:35pm. Arriving home, my next task was to burden the car with a load of presents worthy of ol’ St. Nick himself for the trip to Charlotte. Consistent with all holiday travel this year, we left Chapel Hill in a downpour, gaining Concord (a suburb of Charlotte) at about 10pm.
This morning Shelly and I woke up late, about 9am. Showing off Shelly’s Christmas violin (yes, she knows about it; you try hiding a musical instrument bigger than a harmonic in a two bedroom apartment), a family member of her’s who shall remain nameless broke a string. Shelly was fortunately oblivious of this fact, so once her and her mother departed on a grocery trip to Walmart, her father Louis and I made an emergency trip to a local music store to get it repaired. This turned out good for several reasons. One, the string breaking was probably my own fault, as I’d tightened and loosened them several times, which is apparently a big no-no. Two, the reason we couldn’t get the bow to work was because you need to put something called Roslin on it so it will grab the strings. So I learned those two crucial bits of info, got new strings, and got the violin tuned, all for less than twenty dollars. Why can’t this store be in Chapel Hill?
Well, that catches us up! Shelly is making us lunch and I want to go spend some quality Christmas time with her before those mischievous Collier girls get here tomorrow!

The Nays Have It!

Thanks to everyone who contributed! It's good enough for me that the lot of you got a laugh out of it. And yes, Danielle, I'm pretty sure anonymous was indeed our mother!
So, on to other things...
Shelly and I bought and decorated a Christmas tree this Saturday. I keeping with tradition of the last two years, we named it. This year it's called the Party Tree. If Blogger cooperates, I'll post a picture of it here. Yay! It worked! And here I thought I was going to have to tell all of you to use your imaginations!
The following day, the two of us attended services at the Church of the Good Shepherd in Durham. After church, in celebration of Shelly's newfound freedom, we played our semi-annual game of Risk. (The two of us love this game, but frequent issues with pieces being thrown and boards toppled over in anger have led us to curtail our Risk intake). Huh... I just learned Risk was invented by a Frenchman.
This time, however, we managed to fight each other to a relative standstill, with Shelly controlling Africa and Europe, and myself possessing North America and Australia, with Asia and South America disputed.
After numerous bloody campaigns for Greenland and Iceland, my native populace grew impatient and I was forced to sue for peace, in the hopes that Shelly and her massive armies would leave me alone. What actually happened was that the two of us noticed a flight of honkers landing on the lake and eagerly rushed to feed them; we were at a pretty even spot and decided to call it quits in the interests of marital bliss.
Later on, at some point in during the weekend I can't now pinpoint in my mind, we watched You, Me, and Dupree. Hysterical! See it, precious! And afterwards make sure you watch the 'Spoof Trailer' in the Special Features portion of the DVD!
Well, Law School Melissa is here, having spent the day with Shelly, and they both want me to come watch a movie, so my time here is up. (That last sentence sure had an over-abundance of independent clauses, didn't it?). I'll write again, later on this week.
Oh, but I did want to welcome Josie to my readership! ;) Jen and Tim couldn't have picked a cuter puppy. Let's see if I can REALLY push my luck and post three pictures tonight... nope, sorry Jen! Blogger rejected you again!

A Tribute to Signature!

At the risk of picking up the mantle of obsession thrown down by my cousin Steve (who, during his short-lived college pursuit, wrote two separate essays detailing his desire to beat up his old hockey coach), I've written a poem for my old employer, Signature Special Events! It is reproduced in its entirety here, set to the scheme of "The Night Before Christmas". Please enjoy, and if you'll all do me the favor of posting a comment addressing my question at the bottom, I'd really appreciate it!

T’was the night before Christmas,
And all through the land,
Hundred thousands of dollars
Would never change hands.

No contracts were writ on
The most grand sale of all,
And once the job’s over,
Clients don’t return calls.

"These crews are all lazy!"
The big boss would scoff.
"Three weeks working straight,
and they want a day off?"

"They aren’t committing to us,
And it’s causing strife!
I give them a paycheck-
They owe me their lives!"

"Next thing you know,"
He said with a stomp,
"They’ll get hurt on the job,
And file worker’s comp!"

"Such advantage they take!"
He raged on at length,
"They’ll want a week after surgery
To recover their strength!"

But big boss was grumpy
For one other reason-
The company was light by
One worker this season.

"What was his problem?
What got in his hair?
Six weekends, one comp day-
Wasn’t that fair?"

(See, big boss, he viewed things
With many delusions,
Which voiced, to employees,
Caused muchas confusion.)

The absent, he’d left
For a lighter workload.
Without endless frustrations
Making one wish to explode.

A place with no boss
Who’s often profane,
Yet runs down the hall, phone in hand,
When one does him the same.

A place with no weekend
Nor overtime work,
Where, if one can’t do it,
They’re always the jerk.

But this time of year,
The absent forswore
To forget all the bulls—t
That went on before.

"It’s time to forgive,"
he said to himself,
"The stuff that I went through-
For the sake of my health."

"At least I’m not there now
Twelve hours a day,
That god-awful phone chirping,
For the sake of low pay."

So on this blessed Christmas,
The cusp of New Year,
May this poem of farewell
Bring on some good cheer.

Shelly is dead-set against me sending a Christmas card with the enclosed poem to my former coworkers. What do all of you think?? I'll let your votes decide the matter, as an early Christmas gift to all of you!

A New Year, Free of Harrassment

My dental appointment will be January 2, 2007 at 1pm. I'm sure everyone can breath easier knowing that.
I had an idea for a really great blog entry; everyone would have read it and quickly found themselves rolling on the floor in hysterics. A short time ago, however, I ran it by Shelly, who tabled the entire project. You'll just have to take my word for it that it would have been great. Cold comfort, I know.
Actually, I think I might be on to something here. Instead of coming up with things to talk about, I can just tell you that I came up with them but that I can't post them for some reason. It sure sounds like a lot less work! Something tells me though that my readership might plummet from an audience of roughly six to maybe one, which would be me when I check the blog later at night to see if anyone posted messages.
Speaking of Shelly's exam, after spending all that time making the outline, Shelly found she had no paper on which to print it. Calling me as I left work, she asked me to walk across the parking lot to Eckerd's to pick some up. They didn't have any, nor did Harris Teeter. So I did what any loving husband would do and drove to Target, taking the back way to avoid traffic. Two wrong turns and 10 minutes later, I managed to get back to 54 which I took to I-40, which is what I probably should have just done in the first place. I came close, but fortunately managed to not run out of gas. I tell all of you this in the hopes that, next time I'm accused of not doing some tedious chore around the house, you'll all vouch for my 45 minute Odyssey in service of THE OUTLINE. So, if you're bird-watching, or plotting to poision those yappy dogs one house over, or hidden in your basement, trembling in fear 'cause you're the only white guy on the block, or barricading your bedroom door with the dresser in a fit of pique to keep your husband out, or running yourself ragged trying to keep all three kids happy, or thinking up new ways to work the word 'Narsil' into your next conversation with me, or contentedly sipping coffee from your new Star of David mug, the next call might be me, asking you to remind Shelly of the infamous paper escapade, and to cut me a little slack about the laundry/dishes/vacuuming!
Shelly now is quite amused that I didn't know she could take the gargantuanOUTLINE into the exam tomorrow. "Why did you think I was spending all this time on it? Did you think I was a total idiot?" I mumured something about how I thought she was going to use it to study, which only served to amuse her further. "You thought I was spending all this time making the outline, so I could start studying at 8 o'clock at night? And why did you think I made a table of contents?" I had no answer. Now she's wondering what it is I'm writing about, peering suspisciously over my shoulder from across the room.
Have a good night everyone! Talk to you Saturday!

Here I am, all in a good mood, ready to blog away, and what catches my eye on my home page but this. Here's an interesting passage:

Neither DNA Security or Nifong — who has come under intense
criticism for his handling of the case — explained Wednesday why the DNA
findings were not reported immediately to defense lawyers, as is required by
law, or why they were not turned over to the defense until October.

The media, for the sake of objectivity, are restrained from drawing the obvious conclusions: 1) To many people, eager to jump on the 'rich white kids commit hate crime' bandwagon, had too much invested in the case for it to go away that quickly, and 2) Nifong had to keep the solid evidence of the players' innocence hushed up until after he got re-elected, which the geniuses in my county obligingly did last month. It was already pretty obvious to most people that the players were innocent or, at very least, the case against them was never going to hold up in court, but the fig leaf Nifong kept pointing to was that there was additional evidence tying them to the crimes. Guess what? Now we have that evidence, and it exonerates the players even further. So, just in case you're just tuning in from last March, the story here isn't about a woman getting raped, it's about an opportunistic DA wanting to get his face in the national news.
Hmm, now what was I going to tell you before I went on that tangent?
I had my knee check-up Monday. Dr. Dellaero checked it out, and told me I look as good at six months as anyone he's seen. Since they were able to save all of my meniscus, there's a good chance I will avoid arthritis later in life, which is definitely good news. If you're interested, here's an article about the knee I found on wikipedia... ok, I didn't think so, but it was worth a shot. He wants me to start training on sprinting, cutting, backpedaling, and sudden stopping, which will bring the joint up to about 90% by about June. If all goes well, I can rejoin Jason on the raquetball court sometime around March. It's not like there will be anything major going on in his life at that time, or anything!
Everyone wish Shelly luck on her Business Associations exam! Everyone who's taken it already is saying it's horrible, and even now she's slaving away, writing her outline and memorizing terms. The professor has apparently gone out of his way to make the exam difficult. Oh well, it's not like he has anything else he could be doing...
Hmm, well, after inspecting his web page, maybe it is better if he spends his time harrassing law students. Anyone joining an organization called "Mayors for Peace" should be kept busy as much as possible. 'Cause we all know mayors are reknown for their foreign policy experience... It's kind of like "Plumbers for better textiles" or "Stockbrokers against whaling".
On another note, maybe there is something to global warming after all. It's going to be 70° down here tomorrow! Somehow, I think the consequences will be more along the lines of "Chris doesn't wear undershirt to work" rather than "Ice caps melt, yet Earth still inexplicably freezes", as in Day After Tomorrow.
Alright, I have to go. I have...er...ironing to do.

Two Hostings

We hosted Danielle and company last night. After a rip-roarin' day of house-hunting (see what I've started?), Shelly and I had the pleasure of dining with my sister and her family. It was her first visit to our apartment and Shelly got many compliments on her decorative abilities. Shelly also prepared a giant roast with trimmings for our culinary enjoyment. Do I have a great wife, or what?? (Although I'd be remiss if I neglected to mention how I incurred Shelly's wrath in procuring the roast when I innocently asked 'Are we done yet?' after a mere 35 minutes in Food Lion).
Blogger, for reasons all its own, has chosen to deprive you of pictures of this event.
In other news, God hasn't smiled upon me today.
First, Shelly wanted to attend King's Park International Church this morning, where she attended sometimes during undergrad. After dilgently pulling up directions to its new location, we burst through the doors right at 11am, only to discover that the service had started at ten. Disheartened by our spiritual delinquency, we were forced to return home, where I read the story of Jesus' birth for us both instead.
Second, we just finished watching the season finale of The Amazing Race, where models James and Tyler came in first. They have thus proved for all time that a fruit-fly equivilent intellect, vocabulary that doesn't go much beyond 'bro' and 'dude', and a game plan that can be summed up as 'Dude, follow the car in front of us' are no handicap to financial success. Lord, could I have died happily not learning that lesson. (See what happens when I miss my weekly spiritual uplift?)
Today, Shelly and I also played host to a...well...host of fowl on Farrington Lake. Having two loaves of old bread, I walked over to see if there were any Canadian geese (honkers, we call them- Shelly does a decent impression of their trademark call). I caught a glimpse of some and raced back to get Shelly and the loaves. Once the two of us arrived at the pier, we discovered that 'some' didn't quite cover it. We counted 51 geese, all of whom seemed very happy to meet us. Then, in the middle of the resulting feeding frenzy, a score of seagulls descended on us, snatching the bread out of the air and diving in the water to retrieve any they missed. This was all the more astonishing since we'd never seen seagulls anywhere around here before. And the worse part of all? I didn't have my camera.
Back to the grind tomorrow. Hope everyone had a great weekend. I go for my six month check-up for my knee tomorrow, so I'll let you know how that goes.

It's Saturday Morning, Boys and Girls!

Thus meaning that last night was Friday. And as usual in the DeAdder household, NC Chapter, that means we have a movie review this morning! Last night's selection was The Omen with Liev Schreiber and Julia Stiles. (Incidently, I don't know whether this is intentional or just one of the myriad of issues my computer is having, but if you hit the 'Enter the Site" hyperlink in my link above, the creepy music continues playing even after you close the window. Even a trip to the Windows Task Manager can't seem to quell the Beast).
Anyway, it's a good enough movie, if relatively predictable. I don't know whether it's a tribute to my deductive abilities or to my volumous intake of motion pictures, but I correctly predicted the ending about 45 minutes out. Also, if you're expecting Hollywood to even make an attempt to accurately reproduce Revelation prophecy, you'll be sorely disappointed. The Seven Trumpet judgements are bastardized beyond recognition, and verses are taken out of context and out of order from all over the book, along with insertions wholly of the writer's creation. But if you were expecting accuracy from Hollywood, you probably have naivity issues anyway. We'll just have to wait for Mel Gibson to tackle it.
In other news, NCCU Law School apparently now properly schools its outgoing students for either side of the law! Shelly received this email yesterday, which I felt momentous enough to reproduce here:

The School of Law received a call yesterday from Captain Ingram of
the Campus police regarding a former law student, Tiffany Stokes.
For security reasons, she has been banned from the entire campus and is considered a threat. Please contact Campus Police immediately if you see her. Please pay particular attention to opening the door for
people you do not know. Law students should have swipe cards to get in the building. A photograph of Ms. Stokes is attached and also available at the receptionist's desk a the front of the Law School. Again, Captain Ingram has stressed that Ms. Stokes should not be taken lightly.

As a certain pair of current (ie, not banned) NCCU law school students might say, "That's so NCCU"!
Ok, my sister is in town, looking at houses in Durham and Fuquay Varina (where a recent, momentous event took place), so Shelly and I need to visit the local Target to get dinner ingredients. Have a happy Saturday, everyone!

A Deluge...

...of news. If it were anything so simple as a conventional flood, I'd be asleep on some driftwood and probably at peace. Grab hold; this is going to go fast, as a lot has happened in the last three days, and I'm tired and running a fever right now so I'm going to plow through this.
Item 1: Congratulations to Erika and Jason on their baby girl! No, the big day hasn't come yet (when it does, I'll research and find some super special feature and use that on my blog); rather, they've found out the sex of the baby. I've heard girls are easier on the front end and harder later on, so in 14 years when Jason catches her sneaking out a window to jump on the back of her waiting beaux's motorcycle, I'll remind him that at least she was easy to toilet train! Oh, and sorry, bro, if you want to keep the family name going, you'll just have to give it another try! ;)
Item 2: Law School Melissa and Shelly successfully studied on Sunday, despite a sub-par order of Chinese food for dinner. She was also gratified to receive her Channuka present.
No, we didn't chintz out and just get her a cookie, but I was forbidden from posting the resulting picture of her opening her Star of David coffee mug. Censorship is alive and well in Farrington Lake!
Item 3: My sister is coming to visit with her progeny, brood, posterity, and heirs (see here if you think I've lost my happy mind). This will be her first visit down to Chapel Hill. She is thinking of moving down here, and the area can always use another DeAdder (even if that is just a maiden name)! She'll be in town over the weekend, and I can't wait to see her!
Item 4: I'm in Orientation training for work this week. This involves a commute over to Wake Forest Road, which I'm not thrilled about, but I get reimbursed for the gas mileage and I get out just a little earlier. Unfortunately, that disrupts my experiment to see how long I can go without getting gas (I'm going strong from November 15th). I might just have to start over when the training is done.
Item 5: The next person who asks me if I've gone to the dentist, or made an appointment, or even mentions medical professions specializing in teeth just might get their Christmas gift returned. Like the old Washington Post commercial says, "If You Don't Get It, You Don't Get It."
Item 6: I'm tired and am done with this entry. Go watch Dr. House save a life.

Oh What a Beautiful (Weekend) Morning

I invariably find other mornings drab solely for the reason that I spend them indoors at work. This is true even though I largely enjoy my job and don't have to drag myself there kicking and screaming.
In my inbox this morning, amongst the myriad of job offers for $6 clerical positions from Monster and adds for Viagra, an email from my cousin Susan caught my attention. Apparently her and my uncle Dave went to the opening of a new Chick-fil-a and didn't walk away with only this lousy photo.

Instead, the industrious duo walked away with 52 free meals. I report that not as a subtle invitation to ransack their home and steal the promised banquet, but only as a reminder that there's a lot of free stuff out there, if only you know where to be at the right time. And also, in no small way, as a congratulations to the two of them.

In other news, Shelly and I watched The Davinci Code last night. For anyone who hasn't seen or heard about the controversial movie (and book before it), Blogger doesn't have any kind of spoiler prevention method, so just don't read the rest of the paragraph. The plot is that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene, had children with her, and wasn't the Son of God, only a great prophet. The Holy Grail is actually her coffin and documents proving her relationship to Jesus, which could be used to compare against the DNA of His living descendents. The Catholic Church is aware of this and always has been, and for 2000 years has waged a war against the guardians of the grail in order to destroy their proof, or at least keep them quiet so they don't blow the lid off the pack of lies the Church has been telling the last two millenium.

This was obviously going to make a lot of people mad anyway, but when Dan Brown, the author, prefaced his book by writing "All descriptions of artwork, architecture, documents and secret rituals in this novel are accurate", he threw down the gauntlet on the roughly 2 billion people worldwide who consider themselves 'Christians'. Christian researchers subsequently tore his claims to shreds. See here, here, here, and here for a few examples.

Since most of this happened between the time the book was published and the release of the movie, filmmakers had to make a few revisions. In the book, Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks) and Leigh Teabing (Ian McKellen) are equally dismissing of the belief in Christ's divinity before the Church proclaimed it hundreds of years after His cruxifiction; in the movie, Langdon hotly dissents when Teabing makes that claim. Also, the book makes a lot more to do about the "Sacred Feminine", the idea that, before Christianity, most religions primarily worshipped powerful female deities. The movie barely mentions this, as someone subsequently pointed out that the Romans, the most powerful culture of the Ancient World that pre-dated Christianity by several centuries, worshipped the very masculine Jupiter as their principle god, and the Greeks before them made supplications to the even more philandering Zeus. The movie makes a sly reference to this by noting that Romans worshipped "male spirits of nature in addition to the sacred feminine" (quoting from memory). Otherwise, the topic is largely dropped, preferring to focus on the Church's killing of witches as evidence of their oppression of women. Even there they had to make adjustments; the book hugely overstates the number, so the movie writers had to backpedal by making Langdon quote '50,000' with Teabing adding 'some say a lot more than that'.

The puzzles and riddles that made the book a best-seller are there, but in diminished form. Shelly and I both felt it lost something in the transistion to the big screen. Hanks, though, turns in a great performance (I don't think the man is capable of doing anything less), as does Ian McKellen. It might still be worth seeing if you can take the plot with a huge grain of salt.

Now that I've given a lengthy movie review that no one asked for, I think I'll go. I should have a relaxing day ahead of me, except that I need to do a little cleaning. The recent cold weather committed mass genocide against our porch plants, and I need to lay them to rest in a dignified manner (can you say pair of scissors and a trash bag?). Law School Melissa is coming over tomorrow to review for exams with Shelly, and she demands nothing less than a pristine study environment.