Flickr has a feature that allows you to see your most popular photos. And with a whopping 69 views, this is my most popular photo. And it’s not Reggie. It’s Buddy.

This photo was taken one of my very first visits to meet Beth and Paul in July 2005. Reggie didn’t come along until late October.  I was completely enamored with Buddy. The rest is all history.

I have thousands of pictures on Flickr, and this is the one that’s popular. Go figure.

I got myself to bed early enough last night, about 10:00. It took me a little while to fall asleep, but it didn’t take long for me to get myself into a nice dream.

**RING**

At 12:24 AM, while I’m sound asleep, my phone rang. It was our customer support center (the people who help our customers) saying that the website was down. Great. As I’m pulling myself together, my first thought was whether or not this needed to be dealt with right away. The guy on the other end of the line said that Europe would be waking up soon, and he was right. I guess I didn’t need to ask that question. Our customers access our support site via the main website.  I got logged into the VPN and fixed the problem. By about 1:00, I was ready to crawl back in bed. Reggie, on the other hand, had other plans.

You see, in Reggie’s little mind, we were awake. That means it’s time for potty and kibble. Shit. He had already been outside while I was fixing the website. I gave him a treat and went back to bed. He took a few minutes, but he settled in.

This morning was rough. I didn’t want to get out of bed, and I was running a bit late. To make the situation worse, I couldn’t find my wallet. Thinking I may have left it in the car, I ran out to see if I had. Nope. Upon coming back in the house, I’m greeted by Reggie, who is now standing on my dining room table. “BAD DOG! BAD! BAD!” I yelled at him. Then I picked him up and set him down on the floor. I found my wallet, on the dresser, right where it is almost every morning.

Work was surprisingly productive. I’m hoping for a good night’s sleep tonight since I have rehearsal tomorrow night. It’ll be a fun rehearsal as we’ll get lots of new music for the March concert.

I’m taking part in the Flickr thingie called 365 Days where you post a new picture of yourself every day.

So far, all of my pictures have been taken with Photobooth on my Macbook, but eventually I’ll break out the real cameras.  I need to get creative with this.  I’ve seen people taking part in this, but when I saw Allan and Clarke doing it, I thought I’d play along, too.

I’ve been off since leaving the office Wednesday at noon. That was New Year’s Eve and the big snowfall. I go back to work tomorrow.

Last night, I slept like a baby under my new comforter. It was absolutely glorious.

Today, I’m going to continue cleaning the house, which has been an absolute wreck, and I’m going to attempt to make a good split pea soup.

It’s not a bad way to wrap up the super long weekend.

For Christmas, I told my family not to buy anything that would take much space in my luggage since I was flying home. I encouraged them to buy gift cards.

Did my sister listen? Of course not… Now my sister and her gang have this habit of buying something that I think I’m going to hate. Only then do I realize that it’s pretty darn cool. Case in point, the Magic Bullet. I use it for all kinds of stuff. This year, they bought me a Mukka Express.  It’s a stovetop cappuccino maker. They had one on their stovetop, and I laughed at them, calling it a unitasker. Funny enough, they had one wrapped up for me under the Christmas tree.  I said I’d reserve judgment until I actually used it.

Today I used it. It’s kind of cool, provided you drink a lot of cappuccino. (and I don’t)  But it’s pretty cool, and I’ll certainly give it some use. It’s no Magic Bullet, but it’s got a home in my kitchen.

My parents gave me cash for Christmas. The original plan was to put it toward my trip to Europe in the spring. However, something a little more practical came up. In one of my moves (either Pittsburgh to Providence or Providence to Boston), I lost my down comforter. How does one lose a down comforter? I have NO idea, but I did. So I was on a mission to find a replacement.

Macys had an “Almost Down” comforter from Calvin Kline on sale. I like this thing because it’s got a microfiber filling, meaning it can be washed in the washing machine. Not only that, no geese were killed just to make my comforter. Then I found the duvet at Kohls that actually matches my sheets. That was kind of exciting. And expensive. Shit, the duvet cost a small fortune on its own. And wouldn’t you know that when I got it home and washed it, I found bleach spots on the duvet. It’s pretty likely that this was my own fault, even though I didn’t have bleach near the thing. However, I did bleach some whites about two loads ago, so it’s most likely my fault. I’ll get a new one on overstock before too long.