Job
I don't tend to talk about the current job so much, certainly not in unfriended posts...but since I don't write many posts that are friend's only anymore this will be somewhat different.  First of all, the company CEO is - eh, how to put this gracefully? - vengeful and litigious, so I'll try to stick as factual here as I can.

There are better than good rumors that the company has overextended and overleveraged its assets and resources.  The company did not go public in the past year and no private investments were made.  At this point, there is an extreme cash flow problem, and the company has been looking for ways to slow cash from flooding out the doors.  I keep wanting to draw out the explanation, but the basic situation is I show up as a cost on the balance sheet that cannot be directly charged to any customer.  It's not a matter of if my head will be chopped, but rather when they will do it.  Rumors are merely that, but increasingly they point to my time in terms of weeks, perhaps days, not months.

My search for the next opportunity has taken too long, but hopefully my winged escape will still come in the nick of time.

Getting old?
In just about one month I will be leaving my twenties and becoming a thirty year old.  It's funny that most of the time I just laugh it off as a milestone, just an age...no, I'm not all that different than I was yesterday.  Sometimes though, when I'm driving home from work or still up in the middle of the night, the thought of turning thirty bothers me for no reason I can point to.  It just feels like a general sense of unease, but it's not something I can resolve just by pointing at it and reassuring myself.  In fact, I think I'm bothered even more by the fact that it's always lingering out there in the back of my thoughts than I am by the fact that I'm growing old.  Please come and go, 30, so that I can stop thinking about you and go back to feeling settled, stable, and young.

Christmas is about Presents!
Well, maybe not really, but this post is about presents.  There is nothing like seeing your daughter open a gift to find a box of dress-up clothes from her Grandpa AND having her scream out to the room, "It's just what I wanted!"  Similarly, Emily received a riding winnie-the-pooh train that has been a huge hit for her and every little one that has come to the house.  She likes to have Megan climb aboard and then push her around the house on it.  Or vice-versa.  We may have to teach the kids driving lessons sooner rather later to avoid any further chaotic collisions around the house.  Megan and Emily picked out sock-like slippers for Lissa's gift from them.  They were very adamant that, Oh my god, Mommy MUST have these, and I've been just tickled watching Lissa put them on.  Oh, and even Megan has tried them on a few times just to see how cool they are.  Pretty simple thing, and I'm not even sure Lis knew she needed them, but it's been fun to watch how big a deal it is for the kids.

As far as loot goes for us, we kept it pretty simple up until the day after Christmas, when we purchased a nice high-def TV and a playstation 3 and Rock Band.  So far, I have to say that, yes, with component or HDMI cables I can really tell the picture difference on that TV - it is stunningly different from coax or composite.  Two, I love being able to watch HD basic channels on tv, though I wish we got HD for the sporting channels since we get them in our basic service package.  Three, while Rock the 80's and/or GH II may have been my favorite music game to date, Rock Band easily eclipses them all by a wide margin.  Let's see, I get to play with a group of people in a band, I like the songs more, there are tons of songs to download, for the most part there aren't a bunch of stupid who-cares solos, and if I get tired of the guitar I can play the drums or sing (but trust me and be thankful, so far have only attempted Here It Goes Again).  I thought the drums were going to make that game, and I was right mostly, but there's so much more to this game that has me enjoying it more than the Guitar Hero series.

Oh yeah, Ratchet and Clank Future is great, too.  Just maybe, in the shadow.  That one does feel like you are interactively watching a Pixar movie, though.  The other oh yeah is, jeez, I wish I'd known the day after Christmas that job collapse was so imminent.  It wasn't until yesterday that I got more confirmation.

I hope everyone else had great holidays and as much fun with their gifts.  Not so much a resolution, but this year I want to post more so that large gaps, like the six week variety, don't leave holes in my journal of what was going on and why.  A few more mundane entries might be a good thing....not so much with the "oh my god, this happened!" and "oh my god, that happened!"  Happy New Year.