I don’t have much to write about today, but it should go mostly unnoticed since most of the frequent edpaffjr.com readers (or at least the commenters) are on their way to Kansas City for the weekend. I’m sure I’ve mentioned it enough times on here, but incase you missed it there are almost 30 Cincinnatians already in, traveling to, or preparing to leave for Kansas City. I’m sure we are going to have an awesome, but busy, weekend!

For everyone else out there, since I won’t be able to tell you in person, have a nice start to the New Year and I’ll see you sometime in 2006…

I’m back at work today, boooo! The good news is that I feel a ton better today, yaaaay!

Once I finally got up yesterday I concentrated on getting all of my remaining concert ticket stubs scanned and into my database. I’m so glad that I can finally say that I am finished with this project. The scans will appear on the details page for each show (if I have a ticket stub for that show).

Once that was done I began my cleaning project of the office, followed by all other rooms of the apartment. We pretty much have everything cleaned and ready for the Cincinnati invasion this weekend. I also took some time off to get my new Sirius Satellite Radio hooked up in the apartment. I also have the car kit to get installed, but that will have to wait for another day.

Finally, no update would be complete without a little talk of fantasy football. One of my leagues is completely over now, and I finished in 4th place out of 14 teams! In another league, I am battling for 3rd place with Kim this week. As I mentioned earlier, the final league is being scored manually so I still don’t have the results from this past weeks semi-final games. The good news is that the worst I can do is another 4th place finish…

I used my second sick day of the year today. I was up most of the night with various symptoms of a cold or flu. I took a couple of Tylenol PM’s and finally slept until around noon today. I am starting to feel much better. Hopefully I have more to write about tomorrow. I need to kick this before the weekend starts…

The drive to Cincinnati was uneventful, and we arrived around 2AM EST. We quickly got some rest, in preparation for a busy weekend.

Friday morning came too quickly, but there was much to be done. We started off at Sears where Kim and her sister Bobbi had arranged to get a group photo of the six Hais children. It was going to be a Christmas gift for their parents, making it even harder to coordinate. Overall it went pretty smoothly, and turned out to be a great gift!

From there, we spent the afternoon at Perfect North, our first snowboard outing of the season. I picked up where I left off at the end of last season, and went an entire day without taking a painful fall. I still fell pretty often, but never had one of those sudden falls that makes you wish you never even attempted to snowboard. I cannot wait to get back out and do it some more.

After Kim’s brothers were sore enough, we dropped them off and then headed over to my parents house. We had a lovely Christmas dinner provided by Chipotle and then opened gifts. :) Afterward, my dad, brother, and I headed down to Paxton’s where my buddy Ken was bartending and Jon was drinking. We closed down the bar and then headed home to rest up.

Saturday started off with a little last minute shopping that Kim needed to do, along with lunch at LaRosa’s. We then headed over to my Aunt Stef’s house, to hang out and watch the Bengals game. Of course my goddaughter Emma was there. She is getting so big already, and can almost walk all on her own. It was a great time! I just wish the same could be said for the Bengals game…

My dad and brother were both at the game, along with just about all of my cousins on the Paff side. This made for a very interesting Christmas party after the game, one that will be remembered for years I’m sure. :) We went from this party to another one over at Kim’s parents’ house, for the Hais family Christmas. Since only a couple of people had been at the game, this party was much livelier. We even had some air hockey and ping pong tournaments going on in the basement.

Christmas morning was spent opening gifts with Kim’s immediate family. Later on in the afternoon we headed to my Grandparents’ house for a kegger…I mean Christmas party. My family had an extra keg that was still leftover from Pig-Fest and it made a very welcome addition to the Busch family Christmas party. We had to leave in the middle of the gift exchange there to make it to yet another party. This time it was at Kim’s aunt and uncle’s house for the Diersing Christmas, which was another great party!

Yesterday morning we woke up and soon enough we were back on the road to Kansas City. The nice thing about this drive was that it was completely free. We got so many gas gift cards for Christmas that we should be set, at least until next year!

My mom has some pictures of the various parties on her site.

I spent most of yesterday attempting to secure a gift for Kim. She’s already heard the whole story of my day so I don’t have to worry about ruining any surprises. At lunch time I headed out to The Jones Store to pick up a peacoat that we saw a week or two earlier while looking for other gifts. I wanted to get the grey color (they call it Tin) but could not find it in the right size. In fact I couldn’t get any color in the right size. The nice lady there found a grey one at another location of The Jones Store and told me that it would be reserved for me.

Knowing that I was going to pick up the coat after work on my way home, I gave up searching for other options. Turns out that I should not have given up. After work I swung by the other location hoping to get in and out very quickly (including the gift-wrapping). The lady at this store could not find my coat and told me to hang on while she helped another customer. After what seemed like a half hour, she was finally done checking out this other guy. She then runs all around the store and comes back telling me that they don’t have the right size. She tries to sell me a different coat that costs much more, but I was not having it. At this point I was already a half hour late to pick Kim up, so I gave up and left the store. Needless to say, I don’t think I’ll be returning to a Jones Store anytime soon.

On my drive home I called every Jones Store in the area hoping to find something, but I had no luck. An entire city of Jones Stores was out of what I wanted to buy, even after saying that one was reserved for me. So frustrating!

So I picked Kim up and we headed out to dinner at California Pizza Kitchen. After a drink and some awesome pizza I was feeling a little better. We spent the rest of the night packing and making copies of NOW 2005. My goal of 30 CDs is almost done, we only have to cut out the covers for around 10 of them. Be sure to find me this weekend in Cincinnati if you want a copy. We are leaving at 4PM today to make the drive back.

Merry Christmas!

We hung out with “the kids” last night. We started off wrapping gifts for their mom and their two younger twin sisters. We had some pizza for dinner and then Kim and Bianca needed to study. Dominique and I finished up wrapping all of the gifts, while watching episodes of Friends. On the ride back to their house to drop them off, we gave them each a little gift and Uno Attack! as a shared gift. That game looks like fun, hopefully they bring it with them on an upcoming visit so we can all play together.

The rest of the night was full of making copies of NOW 2005, while watching TV and having a couple glasses of wine. I’m up to about 15 copies of the CD, and we are shooting for 30 total. That means I’m about half way done, and I have one night left. Between finishing these up and packing, I’m sure tonight will be real busy.

Its playoff time for fantasy football leagues! Perhaps that will make these updates more exciting. :) So far I am 1-1 in the playoffs. One of our leagues is going to be scored manually by our friend Sharkey, and since he is currently in West Palm Beach, the results have not been announced.

Let’s talk about my victory first, as it was a pretty big upset. The win came in the league that I was doing the worst in. I finished the regular season in 7th place and defeated the 2nd seeded team by six points. I am now in one of the semifinal games, and will be playing Mr. Mike Pavia.

I lost my game in the other Yahoo! league pretty badly. I came in as the 3rd seed and was whooped up on by the 2nd seed. This week I will be playing in a battle for 3rd place against the 4th seed, that’s not too bad.

I also had a hockey game last night, and we actually won for a change! We are off for a few weeks, some are calling it the All-star Break…

After work on Friday I stopped and picked up a couple of six packs of winter seasonal brews and a pizza from Papa Murphy’s. Joel, Amanda, and Maria all came over and we had a little party to start off the weekend. I gave out my first copy of NOW 2005 and also helped Joel fill up his new iPod nano. It was nice to hang out with all of them again, since we hadn’t seen them in quite some time.

The mixing of all sorts of different beers on Friday night didn’t sit with me to well on Saturday morning. I only got out of bed once before 2 or 3, to make breakfast and to eat a little bit. Eventually we had to get out and finish up some Christmas shopping, and I also needed to shop for a sweater for a party that night. My buddy Rob from work was having a bad holiday sweater party. We found the perfect sweater for Kim a couple weeks ago at a local Goodwill, but had yet to find one for myself. Kim’s sweater was a bright blue with multiple snowmen sewed on with lots of beads and glittery things. After searching many racks at a Salvation Army store, we finally found a pretty good one back in the women’s coat area. It was more of a zip up fleece with all sorts of animals and snow flakes on it. Words cannot describe the outfits at this party, so hopefully someone took some good pictures. The party was a great time though, even though neither Kim nor I felt 100%.

We spent Sunday morning and afternoon cleaning up the apartment. We realized that we wouldn’t have too much time between now and when almost 30 Cincinnatians will be at our place during the New Years weekend. Our shopping is done (besides one more item for a gift exchange), the apartment is clean (enough), and we only have four days of work this week (woohoo)!

Last night we took Dominique and Bianca to the Big Brothers & Big Sisters Holiday Party. They had food provided by Chili’s, all sorts of games to play, a talent show, and a DJ to dance along to. I think the kids liked dancing the best, I enjoyed the free food! :)

After dropping them off later in the night, I attempted to make brownies for our work potluck lunch today. After making the batter and putting into a large pan, I read the cooking times and realized that it would depend on using a 8×8 or 9×9 pan. The pan I used must have been 13×9, so I just sort of winged it from there. They turned out to be pretty thin, but they sure do taste good!

I got a present from work yesterday as well, a new 19 inch flat panel monitor. I guess it was finally my turn to be upgraded from the bulky CRT. This just makes me wish that I had one of these at home…

Here ye! Here ye! My compilation of songs for this year, NOW That’s What Ed Calls Music 2005, is done! I finished it up last night and have been working to spread it to all of my friends on the net. Some of them enjoy the CD in their own home, while others use it as a Christmas gift to their friends. I wonder what these friends think of the gift, and do they often wonder who this guy Ed is???

Back on topic though, if you want to download a copy, now you can. New this year, I have a BitTorrent available to allow for much faster downloads. If you are familiar with this file sharing method, I encourage you to click here and begin to enjoy the tunes! If you aren’t a tech geek and you would prefer to download it the old fashioned way, you can do so here. And finally, if you have never heard of these compilations before, what’s wrong with you?!?! Check out this page to see all of them that I have produced.

As always I will have hard copies of the compilation with me soon. The next week or so of blogs will comprise of me talking about Kim and I making copies of the CD. Chances are if I see you in the next couple of weeks, you can get your hands on the CD without downloading a thing.

Enjoy!