I completed my last day of work in California on Friday and it was a melancholy experience.  In fact, this whole week has been melancholy.  I feel like saying “goodbye” to coworkers and even places that I may never see again.  For instance, while driving in to work on Friday, I stopped at the local doughnut shop to pick up my last applefritter for my last commute on my last day of work.  That shop helped provide life sustaining sugar during my 3 years in graduate school.  In fact, that shop has been very instrumental in helping me store extra fat to protect against the long, harsh winters of Colorado.  In my mind, I said goodbye to the short Asian baker, as well as his shop, as I walked out.

I spent Friday morning throwing out papers, cleaning up my cubical, and boxing up all the junk I have managed to accumulate during the past 6 years I have worked at Lockheed Martin.  I amazingly have 6 boxes of junk…mostly textbooks I collected during school, most of which  I haven’t cracked open since I finished 2 years ago.

Saying goodbye to my coworkers, my desk, my building, my friends, my family in the area is a melancholy experience because this has been my home for nearly 6 years (as of February 2).  We’ve (or I’ve) contemplated moving since I moved to California, but it’s entirely different to be going through with it.  Packing, planning, house hunting, paperwork, more paperwork, uncertainty, excitement, fear, hope.

Not sure if anyone reads our blog anymore since we didn’t post anything for over 6 months… But, we’d like to wish all our friends and family a Merry Christmas! Eventually we will send out cards, maybe.  This is one of my favorite family photos (taken at our family reunion this summer).  Walgreens wouldn’t sell it to me at first because they were convinced I was ordering prints of a copyrighted photo.  It’s not, but thanks to Walgreens for being so blown away by Rich’s photo cropping and editing skills!  Feel free to comment on any of our recent posts!  It makes me more motivated to write if I know that people are actually reading.  Once again, hope you all have a wonderful Christmas.

The blog is back up now!  We switched to a different server, and it took awhile to get everything back in place.

Adelle thankfully provided a topic for this week’s blog entry ’cause I was stumped.  While at the dinner table last night, Karen forced Adelle to eat a bite of brussle sprouts and Adelle enjoyed the bite so much that she asked for more.  The first question that may have come to mind is, “Why did you have brussel sprouts in you house!?”  My reply is that it’s Karen’s doing.   A few weeks ago, Karen mentioned that she “found” a recipe in a magazine that she wanted to try out.  I’ve had good experiences in the past when she’s tried recipes from a magazine, but seeing the small, nasty cabagges on my plate has caused me to ponder on the state of Karen’s food selection.

A second question that may have come to mind is, “what was Adelle thinking!?  Asking for more!?”  Both Karen and I were shocked that Adelle actually enjoyed the brussel sprouts.  Karen plopped several more forks full on the plate and Adelle proceeded to munch those as well.  It was a major dissapointment to me to see my daughter actually eating something like that.  I thought I had trained her better than that.  Karen is obviously having a corrupting influence on Adelle’s eating habbits.

Actually, the brussel sprouts were alright.  They were significantly better than I thought they would be and adding cheese REALLY helped.

Like many people, I am concerned with our environment and keeping it enjoyable for future generations.  That’s the very reason that I recycle…everything.  It’s better to be safe than sorry with the environment in my opinion.  If it isn’t a dirty diaper, gooey tissue, or food scraps, I toss it into the recycle bin and let the recycling company sort it all out.  Shoes, holey socks, newspapers (we have LOTS of those due to our 3 newspaper subscriptions…more if you include the papers we take from our neighbors), milk cartons, an old dishwasher (spread out over multiple bins of course), wrappers, etc.

Since I am the man of the house, trash and recycling is usually my responsibility.  I regularly empty the trash, but the recycle bin is a different matter.  Our recycle bin (a clothes basket) doesn’t fill up as fast as the trash and I neglect to empty it for as long as possible.  Additionally, a trip to the recycle bin is a 1/4-mile round trip and not very pleasant experience when carrying 50-lbs of paper, cans, bottles, and other random, smelly waste.

Even us die hard recyclers get lazy at times and I dumped it all in nearest trash tonight!  I felt a little guilty, but I was more than happy to be rid of it.

During the Christmas vacation, Karen and I had plenty of time to relax and enjoy life as well as get caught up on sleep we missed during the previous year. Unfortunately, we instead chose to stay up past midnight most nights and inflict mental punishment on ourselves by watching a series horrible 80's movies that I thought were AWESOME when I was younger.  Several of those movies were: Ice Pirates, North Avenue Irregulars, and Lady Hawke.  For no apparent reason, I decided to watch these movies and Karen willingly watched as well.  If you have seen any of these, it is quickly apparent that my judgment of movie quality was sorely lacking at 6 years of age.  In retrospect, a story [Ice Pirates] of their being pirates in space that rob and plunder for ice while fighting with swords is ridiculous and not sound.  Without pausing to actually consider the title of the movie, we watched it and that is 120 minutes of my life I will never have back.  Those minutes were COMPLETELY wasted.

After one of the nightly torture sessions, we started listing the various 80's movies we’ve seen and thought were awesome, but should probably avoid watching ever again.  We mentioned: Cool As Ice, ANY of the Herby the Love Bug movies, Condor Man, Krull, Rad, Dune, and Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure as well as its sequel.  After mentioning Bill & Ted’s, Karen exclaimed, “That movie changed my dad’s life!”  It turns out that this movie is responsible for ushering in the era of hip vocabulary to the Grish household.  It shifted the Grish’s from mundane 70's words such as “drat,” “shucks,” “fiddle sticks” to the trendy 80's slang  words: “dude,” “awesome,” and “excellent.”  I believe that this phenomenon didn’t just occur in the Grish household, but in much of Middle America.  I watched the movie almost every day during the summer break until it mysteriously disappeared.  I think my mom must have “accidentally” thrown it away like I recently did with one of Adelle’s most annoying toys.  Fortunately, due to that summer long training, I was able to quote nearly the whole movie during a special movie day at school in the fall!  Though a horrible actor, Keanu Reeves’ performance in this movie has had a profound effect on society by causing devastation of the American vocabulary for over 2 decades.

Tonight I learned an important lesson: a dishwasher tub WILL fit inside the front seat of my compact car (Saturn SL2 Sedan).  I am continually amazed at how versatile compact cars can be in transporting various objects from one point to another.  During the past 5 years, I have moved 6 chairs and 1 table (2 trips required), 1 recliner, 1 dishwasher tub, and a king sized mattress.  They have all fit IN my car during transport.  Though I have moved the objects, I don’t vouch for the safety of the method.

The story behind the dishwasher tub is as follows…Our previous dishwasher is/was ~25 years old and was ready for retirement.  After patiently watching craigslist for 2 months, I pounced on a new Maytag for ~$210, hauling included.  I purchased it on Monday and installed it on Tuesday, but this resulted in an old, worthless dishwasher sitting on my balcony.  I contacted the county trash removal company that services our condominium complex to schedule a pickup of the old dishwasher (city residents are allowed 2 large item pickups per year).  After mentioning an apartment number, the agent replied that this service isn’t provided to condominium owners and I would have to pay at least $35 to have the dishwasher removed.  $35!  I pay taxes in this city!  I pay for the trash removal service!  Since I am frugal and a Burnside, a solution immediately came to me…I would make the trash removal service take the dishwasher anyway.

As you may have already guessed, I dismantled the entire dishwasher.  One hour with a power drill, pliers, and a hammer resulted in the complete disassembly of the dishwasher.  I scattered the various parts that I couldn’t salvage into the many trash dumpsters in the complex.  I moved the dishwasher tub into my car tonight and I will place it in a dumpster tomorrow morning at 5:00 AM.  Is this wrong?  Maybe.  Maybe not.  But it has been a VERY fun project!  At least I am recycling it.

It’s been nearly a month since Christmas and my body sugar levels have dropped substantially and are now halfway between “Jittery” and “Calm.”  I firmly believe that corporate America pushes chocolate during Christmas because it combines two great productivity boosting ingredients: sugar and caffeine.  The Christmas season was really special this year.  I was off for 18 consecutive days and managed to go to sleep by midnight only 4 times.  Additionally, I AMAZINGLY receive only one article of clothing this year…a coat from my mom.  I didn’t get socks, shirts, pants, underwear, hat, shoes, or a belt.  However, Adelle did receive some pink pajamas that have a VERY noticeable resemblance of the Ralphy’s bunny-suit in the Christmas Story.

Adelle turned 2 on December 29 and that means she was actually able to appreciate and enjoy Christmas…and enjoy it she did.  She had her first, second, and 18th sugar high during the vacation..one for every day I was at home.  Karen relented on curbing Adelle’s sugar intake and I proceeded to fuel the fire.  By December 27, Adelle was saying, “I need a cookie to feel good.”

On another note, I’ve been looking for ways to boost my productivity now that the effects of chocolate are starting to wear off.  I’ve found the book Upgrade Your Life to be an excellent productivity boost.  The book is a major award I won for submitting a suggestion to www.lifehacker.com .  If you don’t feel like spending $25 for the book, there is a companion website to the book at www.lifehackerbook.com and is a condensed version of the book.

As I stumbled into the shower this morning, I realized I had eked the last drop of soap from its bottle the previous morning.  I REALLY dislike having to turn off the shower, grab a towel and dry off (I decided to skip that part and just drip all over the mats), get the magnet on the other side of the bathroom to open our child protective locked cabinets, and then hunt around for a new bottle of body wash.  After fumbling amongst the NUMEROUS products obtained through Karen’s couponing work, I pulled it out only to be frustrated again by the shrink wrapping that had to be removed before use.  Grabbing the only sharp item available at the time, I learned Gillette razors work equally well for cutting into shrink wrapping as they do my face and scalp.

Anyway…it was at that time a statement Karen made in passing several months before rattled through my brain.  She said, “I really like the smell of this body wash,” while holding up a name brand bottle, the very bottle I had just extracted from the depths of my sink cabinet.  When I opened it and sniffed at the bottle top, a very distinct odor touched my nostrils…Off brand mosquito repellent.  This caught me off guard and I sniffed again only to be greeted by that same familiar scent I remember so well from fishing the lakes and streams of Montana.

While I thought upon the phenomenon that my wife actually likes the scent of mosquito repellent, I realized that I am the envy of all fishermen.  My wife actually likes the smell of mosquito repellent!  I can’t believe it!  I am soooo very lucky.  Two benefits come immediately to mind: (1) I know she isn’t a mosquito that will be sucking my blood (since she isn’t repelled by the body wash) and (2) this is going to cut WAY down on my cologne bill ‘cause Off is only $5.99 at Target or $9.99 for the jumbo size at Costco!

If you have never flown on a busy day or to a busy airport, a holding pattern is a maneuver designed to delay an aircraft already in flight while keeping it within a specified airspace.  In other words, you fly around in circles until the control tower lets the pilots land the airplane.

I have found this technique to be very handy while at Costco.  For instance, I stopped by Costco on my way home from work (4:30 PM) to pick up a rotisserie chicken for dinner and there were none available.  The next batch was still roasting and wouldn’t be finished for 20 minutes.  Since I had time, I started wandering around the store.  Before long, I noticed I was following a zigzagging path through various isles.  After reflecting on the experience, I realized the path brought me next to each food sample stand.  I had meatballs, crackers with cream cheese and sun dried tomatoes, garlic bread, cup ‘o’ noodles, popcorn (3 flavors!), orange chicken, guacamole, and other yummy treats.    Mmmm…sample stands.  Sample stands are one reason I will keep my Costco membership, ‘cause if I am ever homeless, at least I won’t be hungry!