The Feast!

My wonderful mum gave Rossana and I a great gift this year. Tickets to the Trinity Church Boars Head Feast. Trinity really is a lovely church. Situated downtown across from CSU. I used to go visit it during my brief time college experience. Not as large or grand as some of the Cathedrals I've had the pleasure to see abroad, but it has a great design. Clean lines and not tarted up. A place of peace.

The meal was very tasty, and served promptly. The entertainment was passable and the company was pleasant. When I was asked what I did no one seemed to believe me. I even met the head priest and the director of the church. I didn't push it by telling them that I'm married to a witch and live in a hobbit hole. Weird overload and all that.

If you have a chance to attend I highly recommend it. Costumes are optional but make it more fun. No utensils, hands only.

By the way, this was a few weeks ago not long after Rossana had undergone foot surgery. The weather was brutal that night. Ice everywhere and her foot bound up, just off of crutches. And she STILL looked good. Check out the few pics I managed to grab.

Spending money to ...save money....wait what?

Times is tough. Money is tight. So we're looking at ways to make our pathetic pieces of green paper go farther.

The first was changing our health insurance. Apparently the arrival of the new year is the signal for our insurer to tack on another $100 a month to our insurance bill. This we just can't take. It's gotten to the point of absurdity. But I don't want to have no insurance at all, so we make our deal with the devil. We lower our premiums by accepting more upfront costs. A LOT more. On the up side, when you tell doctors or hospitals you are paying cash, the bill is often lower. The plan is to save the insurance for the really bad stuff.

Car insurance will be next.

Then there's the phone. The local phone lines are so decrepit that we loose 50 - 80% of our service when is rains heavily here. I can't get cell signal in our home (being underground and all) and I don't want to try a call-repeater or change our number (which is tied to our business). The answer? Ooma. Ooma is a VOIP system, like Vonage. But unlike vonage, you buy the hardware once and that's it. Voice quality is also supposedly better. It looks like a pretty sweet system. I bought the base unit and one satalite unit. But I need to get a router working in my office to hook it up to. I also need to test the system with my wonky internet provider. But if it all works, I will be able to change over my landline to Ooma (something Vonage can't do here yet) and start saving an ASSLOAD of money. I'll let you know how it's working in a few days.

The Machine....it WORKS!!!!!!!

Swiss watch found in 400-year-old tomb

Archeologists in China are baffled after finding a tiny Swiss watch in a 400-year-old tomb.

The watch ring was discovered as archeologists were making a documentary with two journalists from Shangsi town.

"When we tried to remove the soil wrapped around the coffin, a piece of rock suddenly dropped off and hit the ground with a metallic sound,? said Jiang Yanyu, former curator of the Guangxi Autonomous Region Museum.

"We picked up the object, and found it was a ring. After removing the covering soil and examining it further, we were shocked to see it was a watch."

The time was stopped at 10:06am, and on the back was engraved the word "Swiss", reports the People's Daily.

Local experts say they are confused as they believe the tomb had been undisturbed since it was created during the Ming dynasty 400 years ago.

They have suspended the dig and are waiting for experts to arrive from Beijing and help them unravel the mystery.

Keen - Pics of shuttle Endeavor

A great set of pics documenting all the steps involved in a typical shuttle mission. Very keen.