We had quite the Memorial weekend! The weather was excellent for being outside, although not for flying hot air balloons. We headed down Friday night to see if the balloons would take off. After some discussions and wind analysis it was confirmed there would be some flyers! Henry was pretty pumped and Ollie managed to stay awake this year! Henry wanted to stay for the balloon glow, but it was late and two little boys needed to get to bed.

On Saturday I took both boys to see the dog show. It looked like rain, so I was hesitant of going and didn’t want to get the Burley out. We walked down and managed to make it under a tent for the brief rain shower.

Once the rain stopped, we headed over to some bleachers to watch the dogs catch Frisbees… yes our butts got wet! Ollie was getting bored, so we decided to find something else to watch. We made our way over to a lure chase. Basically two bags on a string that goes really fast around some obstacles. It was pretty neat, but they were having some difficulties and Henry was bored with it. We walked around some more, saw a lot of “puppies” before we headed home for lunch.

We wanted to try to catch the balloons on Saturday night, but the deal was for Henry to go, he needed to take a nap (which he didn’t do -.-). Sunday was a different story, both kids napped really well, so we made our way back to Frankenmuth for the evening launch. Unfortunately, the winds were too harsh for flying and the balloons would not be going up. I think everyone was a little disappointed. We headed over to one of the shops and picked up a souvenir, a hot air balloon that hangs outside and spins in the wind.

After trying to get Henry to nap on Monday without success, we headed to the grocery store to get food for the week. I picked up some teenage mutant ninja turtles plates and napkins for Henry’s birthday. He was super excited about this and had to carry them through the store, out to the car, and on the way home. When we got home, he showed Susan and exclaimed “ninja turtle birthday”.

At this point Ollie was still sleeping, but that didn’t stop Henry from trying to show him. After a few “ninja turtle birthday”s, Ollie sat up with a disgruntled look on his face. One more shout of “ninja turtle birthday”, Ollie had a WTF look and went right down to try and finish his nap. I wish I could have caught that on video, it was hilarious!

Our first Thanksgiving as a family of four turned out pretty good. At work, we got to leave early the day before the holiday and I decided we needed some Christmas lights hung in our yard. I headed over to Menards, picked up a few boxes of LED lights that were on sale and went over to the tall pine tree in our front yard.

It was a little sketchy having the ladder leaned up on the tree twenty feet in the air. With the wind blowing and the ladder moving, I did my best to get as much of the tree in lights as I could. I have some plans for next year to make this better, but I’ll have to wait then.

Susan also got out of work early and we headed up to Culver’s for a frozen treat. It was nice to be out just the two of us, if only for a quick stop. We picked up the kids and headed home. Henry was super excited about the lights in the tree.

Last year we brined the turkey for the first time and it was sure tasty, this year was not a letdown, brining is definitely the way to go! After the kids went to bed, Susan and I got to enjoy delicious pumpkin icebox pie.

Yesterday, I pulled out the Christmas tree and it seems we may be looking to get rid of it. There were quite a few bulbs burned out and after I replaced one near the top, the rest of the tree dimmed and that one bulb got super bright. I ended up cutting and re-splicing the wire, it seems to be okay now… maybe we will get a real tree next year!

We hung a few ornaments on the tree and Henry was excited about the Thomas the Train ornament and having the tree up in general. Can’t wait to see what he’s going to be like when we visit Santa (hopefully soon!)

I’ve been meaning to add a new post on here for awhile, just haven’t gotten around to it. 😉 November seemed to sneak up on us this year, maybe its because we’re used to lots of white stuff covering the ground and being very cold. I managed to finish my second ever five mile race the Saturday before Thanksgiving.

I developed an app to help keep me on track during my training for the race. Although I didn’t beat my previous time, I felt a lot better finishing this race then that one. It also didn’t help my time that the course was a lot tougher, a stiff wind that always seemed to be coming right at you (even after the turn-around point) and hilly! I took a quick lead ahead of Susan to put some time between us, and as we passed each other, her words “I’m catching up to you!” was all the motivation I needed to keep going strong!

Susan was on call for Thanksgiving so we watched the game and had a nice little meal for ourselves. Susan made the dessert and I somehow got to do everything else! Waldo has been doing good, he seems almost like another dog now that we let him out by himself. We should have gotten the invisible fence a lot sooner!

After finding a good deal on cyber Monday for a 32″ LED HDTV and hooking it up, I started looking into alternative means to Charter for cable and internet. To get the HD Channels on a 2nd tv we would need to rent another receiver from Charter and get charged five more bucks per month. Charter’s internet pricing was cheaper than AT&T’s for high speed, so I started looking for options for cable. DirectTV definitely had the best 2-year contract deal, but once the 2 years was up, it jumped to a ridiculous amount and I didn’t really want to enter into a contract. The other option, Dish network, was pretty closely priced to Charter and provided more channels, but we’d still have to get two receivers and charged extra per month for the second one (I think it was 7 bucks here).

Then I had a radical idea, what if we ditched cable altogether? I don’t typically watch a whole lot of tv anyway, so after convincing Susan we could save quite a bit of money, we decided to give it a shot.

The first step was to see what major networks were in range of our house. Using a couple tools on the internet, I found ABC to be the furthest one out at around 40 miles. This is important as someone is addicted to Once Upon a Time, no ABC meant no deal!

The next step was to test an antenna with at least a 40 mile range. There’s some pretty neat antennas out now-a days, including ones that are paper thin and can actually look like part of your decor. I saw Best Buy had an antenna with a 50 mile range and figured if I wasn’t able to get all the stations I needed *ahem* ABC *ahem*, I’d return it and for go this great idea. After getting the antenna home and hooking it up to the tv, I was able to get 18 channels (most in HD), including ABC!

One of these days I’m going to actually figure out WTF is up with our coaxial cable wiring. We have a dish in our backyard with three lines attached to it. Our cable box has a 2-way splitter and a 4-way splitter (the 2-way feeds into the 4-way). Inside our house, we have a wall jack in each of the upstairs bedrooms, the upstairs tv area, a wall jack and a line in the living room, a wall jack and TWO lines in the master bedroom. Hauling my old school CRT around I determined neither upstairs jack worked nor the wall jack in the master. Outside there are two sets of three wires cut. One set comes from the satellite and one set obviously goes to the wall jacks. I still don’t know why 2 working lines were needed for the living room and bedroom, but that’s what I got…

Before venturing off into the attic I wanted to make sure I got my wiring figured right. The plans were to keep the one tv upstairs and the other for the master. I disconnected the 4-way splitter from the 2-way and wanted to get one of the lines that went to the master. I must have been lucky as the first cable I tried happened to be the right one. After marking each end of the cable, I saw the upstairs jack was already marked (isn’t that convenient?). I moved the incoming line to the 4-way splitter that way I could hook up the modem to whatever line I wanted and both of the tv lines to the 2-way splitter.

Once the wiring was figured out I was off to get a 50′ line to run from the attic to the cable box. We don’t have a full attic and a tall person doesn’t belong in ours. It wasn’t easy and the A/C unit didn’t make it pleasant going in and out of the attic. Once I started the mounting process I found out there was enough slop that I couldn’t use my ratchet wrench for the lag bolts, no it wasn’t metric because I tried that to and didn’t have much luck. I also thought to myself, gee I better not drop one of these bolts in the 6 inches of blown insulation, but happened to do that at least 5 or 6 times, almost gave up looking for the last one I dropped… 🙁 After a dozen trips in and out of the attic I finally had the antenna mounted. Using an app on my phone, I pointed in the direction I thought would be good and went to program the tv’s. Lo and behold I managed to pick up 22 channels including all of the major broadcasting networks, success! I was really happy to not have to play the adjust, scan, adjust, scan, adjust, scan game!

Along with the antenna, I also got a set top box. I went with Roku XS. It lets you stream HD content to your tv from a few different sources, including NetFlix (which we had) and HuluPlus (which I signed up for, $7.99 / month). So, after taxes and fees and all that fun stuff, we were paying close to $85 / month for cable television, add $5 for HD channels on the second tv and figuring the $8 for HuluPlus let’s say that’s a savings of $80 per month. That’s almost 1000 dollars a year we’ll be saving by dropping cable, I know there’s a better way to spend that money… such as say a new triathlon bike! 😉

Speaking of which, my triathlon training has officially started a couple weeks ago. Watching the Kona coverage (the Super Bowl of triathlons) last Saturday has got me pumped up and I can’t wait to get to the starting line to see how my training pays off!

For all of you patiently waiting for an update, here it is! I meant to do this sooner, but unfortunately Zelda was consuming a lot of my time (ok not that unfortunate =P ) and I’ve been busy with Christmas stuff too (like surprises for the wifey!) The first of these was to come a couple weeks ago… During mid-November tickets became available for Dow employees (and contractors) for a Ray Charles tribute, “I Can’t Stop Loving You”. I figured this would make an excellent Christmas surprise for Susan and the scheming began. I figured we would go somewhere romantic to eat and head over to the Dow Event Center in Saginaw to watch the show. I made reservations at a place I’ve been to (not ate at, but stopped in for some wine-walk tickets) and was able to book a table next to the fire place (doesn’t get any better than that). Of course I mentioned to Susan to keep her plans open on December 9th and to figure out something dressy to wear… well then the questions came. I played it cool and managed to get her to think we were going to Mount Pleasant, when in all reality we were going to The Atrium in Bay City. During my planning, I remembered way back in June, around Lori’s wedding, Susan had mentioned she really wanted some beach glass earrings. I thought about driving all the way back past the “End of the World” to pick up the earrings she liked, but couldn’t see myself doing that and decided to hit the internet. I found a site that had Lake Erie beach glass jewlery and ordered not only a pair of earrings but a necklace too! Everything was coming together, until Susan comes up to me the day before saying she has to play at 4:30 PM mass on Saturday (sigh… thought I said keep your plans open). So she called the church and said she wouldn’t be able to do it, alright… one bullet dodged. The day has finally come, we start getting ready when Susan realizes she doesn’t have any shoes to match her dress or pantyhose to wear (didn’t I say get something dressy to wear a month a head of time… women…) A quick run (quick so we could make it to dinner on time) to JCPenny to get pantyhose (and shoes while I was waiting ever so patiently in line). The person ahead of me wanted to ship something and the sales associate that should have been helping me was helping her co-worker sort out what the customer wanted (I think we waited 20 minutes before we could actually check out…) The rest of the night went unhitched. We got to the restaurant on time, Susan really liked the beach glass jewelery and we managed to survive going to Saginaw late at night (though the parking ramp guy was kinda scary) and enjoyed a fantastic tribute to Ray Charles. As for the rest of Susan’s presents (she must have been a good girl), she’ll just have to wait and see…

This last weekend was also pretty fun. We went to the DeHate family Christmas party. Boy was it an adventure to get out there. Being internet-savy I decided I’d mapquest the directions. Mapquest marked the path and the maneuvers and I thought we were set. We grabbed the directions and headed on out. We’re doing good until we were suppose to turn right onto old M-30 N. We turned on an old M-30 road but that must have been south because it dead-ended after about a mile. We get back onto M-30 and continued heading north. After about 10 minutes we see the road to turn on for the next step and did so (I still don’t know where old M-30 N is, unless M-30 just changed into it). This is where it gets tricky, the road splits and there is only about 5 or 6 street signs with different names on them and arrows pointing every which way. We took a guess to go right and we guessed wrong, but we did get a nice scenic view of the area (needless to say Mapquest had let me down). Finally we got back on track and managed to miss the turn for their driveway. Luckily no one was on the road and I just backed up and we headed down the driveway (which must have been close to a 1/4 mile long). We got to see my family, eat lots of food, and had a really good time. We got to play the panthose reindeer game. The objective was to blow up balloons (there were all kinds, long balloons, big balloons, and water balloons) and fill the pantyhose with them. The first team that could get the pantyhose on someone’s head and to stand up (like reindeer antlers) and sing Jingle Bells won. Our team was really close… we had the pantyhose full of ballons and standing up but the other group had already started singing. Probably a good thing as I was the one elected to put them on my head (whew…) Susan’s group couldn’t seem to get the balloons in the pantyhose (probably should have had a girl doing it…) There was also a gift exchange at the end that went by birthday (starting after Jesus’s birthday). The presents were laid out on a table and each person got to pick one, according to what day they were born, and open it up. If they didn’t like what they got they could exchange it with anything that had already been open (kind of neat idea). When it got to my turn, I somehow picked out a 6-pack of beer (lucky me… :\ ), though I’m glad I didn’t pick the “man” gift my aunt got. I ended up exchanging the beer for a set of Nascar mugs. Susan must have sniffed out the M&M’s… as she picked out the gift that was almost a pound of M&M’s (she got to keep them). It was a pretty fun-filled occassion. When we were ready to leave, we were of course blocked in… We got the car moved and were on our way. Only one problem… there were enough vehicles there to the point I couldn’t turn around and ended up backing the whole way out the driveway (that was pretty exciting…)

Recently me and Susan decided to apply for grad school at good ol’ Tech. Susan got her acceptance letter yesterday and mine came last week. It doesn’t look like we’ll be getting any funding so that’ll probably be a no go… I finally beat Zelda the other day and man I thought I was going to be disappointed. The boss of the last dungeon was super easy to beat and I thought that was the end of the game, well it wasn’t… there was still one more boss to go and man was he tough (which made it rewarding to beat). I forgot to mention above Susan had made Taffy Apple salad for the Christmas party. Well, it was so good we decided to make it for our work Chirstmas parties (both yesterday). The plan was Susan was going to make it Monday night for both of us to take to work with us on Tuesday. She wasn’t feeling very well and somehow I got the job of making it. Mine didn’t look nearly as good as the one Susan had made earlier, but everyone at Dow Chemical seemed to like it. Dow Corning on the other hand, didn’t seem to appreciate it as much (oh well… I tried…) After work yesterday I decided to try and get some of our packages sent at the UPS store. The line was almost out the door when I got there and I subjected myself to this again today. Though, I didn’t get puked on yesterday (or today) and that made me happy. As I was waiting in line, yesterday, I decided I’d fill out the form indicating I had three packages and where to send them. As I was going up to the counter to get one, I see this milky white liquid spraying to my left. I turn only to see this poor kid throwing up and luckily I was out of the projectile’s path (but just barely…) The poor little guy just kept vomiting and everyone felt bad for him (never thought the UPS store could be so exciting…) I did managed to get 2 out of 4 packages shipped. Your probably thinking that’s not too good, well I forgot to grab one present for the package (they box everything for you) and Susan wrote down the address for the other one to the point where I didn’t know what the road name was… That’s why I went back today and managed to get everything shipped out (without any puking…)

The weekend went by way too quickly. After finally getting out of work on Friday (my job has gotten to be quite boring), I ran a couple of errands and picked up a bottle of champagne for later that evening. After eating I surprised Susan with the bottle… We put in Lake House (pretty decent romance movie, gotta love Keaneu Reeves acting, or lack thereof), snuggled on the couch and sipped champagne in our flutes that we got from Beth and Matthew. It was a nice relaxing night.

Saturday, we got almost all of our Christmas shopping done and had quite the experience with a couple of sales associates at Wal-mart. We printed off three 4×6″ prints at the Kodak printing machine. Written clearly above (I know because I went back and checked) was 28 cents a print. A logical person would think three prints at 28 cents each, a total of 84 cents plus tax (as you might have guessed, logical is a hard concept for Wal-mart to grasp, or simply put, the wheel’s spinning but the hamster’s dead). We took the two slips (yes… two slips, one slip was for two printouts and the other slip for one printout… this is important…) We finished the rest of our shopping and proceeded to the checkout. As per typical Wal-mart there wasn’t a whole lot of checkout lanes opened (hmmm… Christmas season is upon us, let’s have fewer lanes opened!) and we had well over 16 for the express lane. When we finally got to check out, the sales associate greeted us (yes… some don’t and you can actually provide feedback on the credit card swiper machine, but that’s a different story…) She began to swipe our items after which I handed the two slips for our pictures. As she swiped the first I noticed a sale of ten dollars came across the screen. I thought, whoa that seems pricey and sure enough the second slip also came up to ten dollars. At this point I mentioned to the sales associate, “Ten dollars for a 4×6″ print?!” Her face went blank; she shrugged and said “I don’t know”. So I asked again and she went through the same dumbfounded actions. I thought, okay this is getting me nowhere and figured if I wanted something done I better not deal with her. After paying the ridiculous amount of twenty bucks for three pictures, we went over to the service counter (after I ran back and checked the sign…) We showed this other sales associate (after again waiting in line) our receipt that had two (this is where it gets tricky) items labeled ‘PM 4×6″‘ with a price of ten dollars each. We said we had three pictures but only two slips. This sales associate was like I only see two items not three (yes, but this receipt only shows we had two slips, and one slip had two pictures on it…) Sigh, after about ten minutes of trying to convince her we actually did have three pictures (we did show them to her) with two slips (guess the hamster had a jolt or something) we managed to get our money back. An after thought of this occurrence was, gee I could print a thousand pictures get one slip and it’d only cost ten dollars (better try this quick before they fix the machine 😉 ).

Sunday was a pretty fun filled day as well (I know, it ranks just a bit higher than going to Wal-mart and having the fun I mentioned above… just a wee bit of sarcasm). We went to church and as Susan said after choir practice last Monday (she plays her violin in church) St. Anthony’s/St. Joseph’s Parish have a thing for O Come Emmanuel. Just about every song sung had the same music behind it, just different words (even the Alleluia… this is going to be an exciting advent… well I guess it’s better than no music at all). Afterwards we stopped for a bite to eat and headed to Grandma’s house (over the river and through the woods, well sort of). Me and Susan took part in the annual frosting of the sugar cookies and had a pretty good time visiting, frosting, and eating any cookies that were “accidentally” broken (a rules a rule…) We managed to get back just as the third quarter of the Lions-Patriots game ended. Somehow the Lions were keeping up against the once World Champs. Of course if I were the Patriots and I saw the Lions put the 2nd string quarterback in as a wide receiver I wouldn’t know what to think either… I’m not just saying once or twice, but I guess Josh McCown played quite a bit of wide receiver and he did make a couple of catches as strange as that may be… Well after the Lions got a safety I was thinking, oh boy wouldn’t that be something if they win (at this point they were up 18-13). A turnover and another field goal for the Lions (21-13), and I was getting pretty excited. Somehow the Patriots managed to stomp down the field, go for two and tie the game. The Patriots then come up with another touchdown and pull into the lead. After the kickoff the Lions turned the ball over again (this makes the third one this game for them) and I thought eh it’s over now. But somehow they managed to get the ball back again (Patriots now had three turnovers). I look to Susan and say two plays and Jon Kitna throws an interception. Sure enough just like clockwork, two plays and tada an early Christmas present for the Pats… those stupid, stupid Lions. Feeling a little disappointed, I flipped on Zelda (which made the thought of the Lions losing another game by seven points or less go away) and got to play a few hours. I made dinner (lemon chicken, always a favorite) and watched Law & Order and went to bed in anticipation of another exciting week at Dow (doing not much at all…)

I hope everyone else had a good Thankgiving, I know I did. We started off on our Turkey-Day break bright and early Wednesday morning. Me and Susan drove (mostly me… ok all me =P) down to Farmington, MO to visit my folks. The trip was suprisingly uneventful, though there was a half-dead deer still kicking in the middle of the interstate. We didn’t even get lost either, well except for the slight detour in Inidianapolis (got to drive by where Peyton plays) and missing one of our first turns. In the end it took us just under eleven hours to get there. I brought the Wii and had that hooked up, I think everyone was impressed (told you it was worth camping out for!) Joey Joey Joey had a happy Thanksgiving as he and his mighty Dolphins bested the Lions (I thought they always win on Thanksgiving…) Aside from that dinner was excellent. The turkey was deep fried and Susan made candy-yams and chutney. The turkey was delicious and the yams were good (albeit a little sugary) and the chutney was good (if you like cranberries…)
Before going, me and Susan decided it would be fun to go to the zoo and check out the Anheuser-Busch brewery. We spent all day Friday at the zoo and had a good time. We even got to see the baby elephant (someone was getting anxious about that…) The brewery was neat to see, there were even a few clydesdales hanging around, but I would have liked to seen the bottling plant in action. We also learned how the “professionals” remove a tree by using a jack-hammer (not even joking…)
All and all it was a pretty good break, I got to play a lot of pool (and Wii when I had a chance). I learned how to play a pool game called “Melvin” which is pretty neat until you figure out how to shoot the balls (then it gets pretty lame shooting the same shots over and over again). We ended up taking more stuff back with us then what we left with (yeah… it’s my junk, but hey it’s mine!) The drive back was a mere ten and a half hours (we made pretty good time, no turn-arounds in Indianapolis). Other than that, just trying to get back into work mode after a nice relaxing break.

Okay, this entry’s gonna be kinda long so hold on to your hats… Last weekend, the weekend before Halloween… I know I should have put an entry way back then, but anywho… Susan’s folks came down to visit and we went to Frankenmuth. I somehow “lucked” out and got to be the driver. It was a nut house, especially if you try to go the wrong way down a one way in a parking lot (in my defense, it wasn’t marked clear at all). After finding a spot to park at the Bavarian Inn we met up with Susan’s aunt, uncle, and cousin. Last February me and Susan met up with her aunt and uncle and went to Zender’s and the indoor water park. Zender’s and the Bavarian Inn have a speciality dinner (better be… it’s like 30 bucks a plate) where you get a full course meal brought out to you. I was really excited because the chicken was so salty at Zender’s that you couldn’t hardly beat it, needless to say it was really good (and probably really bad for you). Unfortunately the Bavarian Inn’s chicken wasn’t quite as salty but they did have orange sherbert twist for dessert which was pretty good (and the rest of the meal was good too!)

Well if you go to Frankenmuth, you better stop at Bronner’s (open 361 days of the year…) Lucky me I got to try and find a parking spot again. As I was scanning the lot for a space, a minivan driver decided since they were bigger than me, they owned the lot. After a couple toots on my horn they backed down (they were trying to back out into me…) After that little escapade (no harm no foul), me and Susan went on a hunt to find a “Our First Christmas” ornament. After looking at the personalized ones we decided a laser engraved one would look really neat (I was gonna take a picture of it, but the fact it reflects the camera makes that kind of difficult, you’ll just have to stop by at Christmas to see it =P). The engraving process is pretty sweet, they use a laser to cut the design we picked out and it took all of about 5 seconds to finish. The ornament also comes with a light you can hook up to your regular Christmas light string (now all we need is a tree). After we got our ornament and paid for it, it was time to round up the gang (I think everyone was at a different end of the store). Eventually everyone found there way to the South entrance, except for Susan’s mom. She was lost and had to call Susan’s dad to rescue her. As they made their way back to the South entrance, it was time to go. All and all a pretty exciting weekend.

Halloween, the night of ghosts and ghouls and most importantly, candy! Wanting to save a few bucks, I decided getting candy the night before Halloween would be a good idea. I bought about 12 bags of candy for 2 bucks a piece, saving almost a dollar on each bag (yeah I know I’m a smart shopper). I probably went a little overboard on the candy, as we didn’t know exactly how many kids we would be getting. We also got our pumpkins the day before Halloween (and we got a good deal on them too!) Actually, I’m not so sure we got the best deal as my pumpkin was starting to rot on the bottom. I figured if I flipped it over it’d be alright, but it still looked pretty sad. We picked up a carving kit and Susan made an owl, while I took the easy road and finished mine in about 20 minutes start to finish (I think she put in atleast 2 hours… and I quote “It doesn’t take that long, it’s easy.”) Besides… my pumpkin made hers look better, a good pumpkin by itself is alright, but put it next to a sad one, presto, it becomes magnificant! We did get quite a few trick-or-treaters, though I was dishing out the candy by the hand full. We set up a couple of chairs on our porch and after it died down (and someone couldn’t take the cold and wimped out) we came in with about half a bag of Twix bars and a handful of other candy bars. The next day I come home anticipating biting into a chewy, chocolatey, caramel candy bar, I found out there were none left (someone had eaten them all, and not just one or two or a few, but like two dozen, thus she got her new nickname, Twixie).

This weekend wasn’t too exciting, except for the Lions won and da Bears lost (aw poor Rexy lost to Joey Joey Joey). My jobs going pretty good, or shall I say I have a lot todo. Today I had a meeting to review the protocol I was working on the past 3-4 weeks to validate the system that will be going in. I only have to rewrite pretty much the whole thing by the end of the week. Oh and I have class all day tomorrow and Thursday… luckily I can work some overtime this week and if the need be next week (I have a full week of class next week, all day long…) Time and half here I come! (sometimes it’s good to be hourly) I did interview with a company last week about a job opening. That job sounds pretty exciting and I’ll be “the man”. The guy that is currently in the position is leaving and no one else can fill his shows at the company, so they’re looking to hire someone to do everything (sounds like a phat paycheck to me, cha-ching!) I dunno if I’ll get a call back as they were looking for someone with a ton of experience I didn’t have, but it was a fun interview nonetheless. I’m gonna cut myself off here as I still have quite a bit to do tonight (new Heroes tonight, “Save the cheerleader, save the world”, check it out at 9 on NBC).