A post in which I am as good as gold and better

Well maybe not quite that good, but close.

I was up at 3:30am again this morning (yay.  not.) and finally went back to bed at about 5am for an hour of restless doze before I got up to go to work.  I had a cigarette with my coffee this morning.

I had free lunch today, courtesy of the credit review department, which was nice.  A plate of nachos certainly puts a better face on things for me.

After doing my regular work, I got to work on ISO today.  I pretty much have to have it done this week, and I made some headway today.  It makes me cranky as hell.  The sheer dildonicness provokes periodic vociferous expostulations.  The format is very user-unfriendly, and of course the complete project is a waste of time.  But I got some of it done.  Resignedly.

Leaving work, I went by CVS, and managed to get out in a little under an hour.  That place makes me crazy.  There were nine people in line at the pharmacy, FIVE people behind the counter, and ONE freakin' register open.  Grrrrrr.

The main reason I stayed was that I after much wrestling with myself, I had decided to go ahead and send Brenden a gift card this year.  I have sent him a gift card every year since the Great Schism occurred, but haven't heard much back from him.  My idea was to keep some kind of link, and to let him know that I haven't forgotten about him.  After this year, though, I seriously thought about just letting it drop.  I didn't even get a thank you card from him last year.  I didn't get a Christmas card from Cindy and Paul.  Cindy never called, emailed, or farted in my general direction during my battle with cancer.  I could have died. 

In the end, this was the reason I did it anyway:

1) I don't think kids should have to pay for the sins of their parents.
2) I don't want Brenden to think I forgot about him.  I haven't.
3) Paul said that he and Cindy would send Eve some new pictures of Brenden for Christmas, and she is just living for that.  Whatever my feelings, I didn't want to do (or not do) anything to mess that up. 

So I got Brenden a gift card, and sent him his own Christmas card this year.  I don' t know if he'll get it or not (Paul swears he gets all of his mail - Dad is skeptical), but I tried.  That's all I can do.  Short of just driving down there (and possibly having the cops called on me) I don't know of anything else to do.

After a supper of salad and broccoli (see, how good can I BE?) I got to work on Christmas cards.  I purged the list a little bit this year, but still ended up with 46 cards.  That took the evening to do.  There were no Christmas specials on tonight, so to help my Christmas-y mood, I put in one of the movies I got for my birthday, The Stingiest Man in Town.  This movie had been lost, apparently, but was restored and released on DVD last year to great ballyhoo.  A Christmas Carol is my absolute favorite Christmas story, and I'm a rabid Basil Rathbone fan, so this seemed like a must-have.  Sadly, I think there may have been a reason this movie wasn't preserved.  It was pretty bad.  But it was fine to write cards by, so I tucked in and made it happen. When I finished I took them to the main post office to mail because my cards were going out so late this year.

I returned home, terribly impressed with my own virtue, and went to bed.