I hate falling behind in my writing. I don't like when I'm so overwhelmed with work and life and stuff and crap and minutiae of stupid things placed on my to-do list then forgotten or made unimportant by time.

It's worse when I have all the posts written, because I'm writing, and don't have the five minutes to post them. Or need the images to go with them, and those are so much more cumbersome to upload and post and integrate.

Piled onto all of this are some thankfully life-changing events, some changes that needed to happen. Some of them are frightening, some are happy, and some are just late.

And then, there are the websites I've happened along, and started reading much more than I should be.

Take, for example, Deeply Shallow. I've been reading about Jason's life in Southern California for the last few months, but somehow, hell if I know how, his life dovetailed into a parallel place, and I ended up starting at the beginning (of the current phase of his life, anyway). It's interesting to learn, once again, incredible details of someone's life, told in an interesting, passionate and, well, painfully real way. I wonder if people reading here think of me the way I think of Jason. He's much more open about his stories than I am, though, eh, that should change soon.

We'll see. This would be entertaining, if I weren't so distracted and not posting regularly. Well, for the anonymous reader, anyway.

Mike called work today. He was off at a client's, and wanted to know how we were doing, was Doyle busy, etc.

"Doyle's working like a mad man," I responded. "He's working so furiously his hands are a blur and I can't get a word in edgewise. He'll be done with all of his work, and ours, by the end of the day."

Silence.

"Uh... This I gotta see."

So, here you go, Mike:

It's true, it's true.

I gave Kris a Homer gift this past Christmas.

Gift giving in our house is usually an escalation sorta thing. It started when we passed the shy circling of the dating mating rituals and moved into the "I think I know your tastes, so I'm going to risk rejection by buying you things!" stage. Kris did the most risking: he bought me jewelry (always risky, as I wear very little).

I bought him underwear.

Before very many birthdays and holidays had passed, we were in danger of spending small fortunes on each other. We called a truce on the escalation, and try very hard to keep it on the low come the holiday season.

I failed miserably this past year, with Kris receiving about fifteen gifts. One or two of them being Homer gifts, I'll admit.

There's a Simpsons episode where Homer goes Christmas shopping for Marge and purchased a bowling ball for her. He figures, she won't really like it, so he'll get to use it. Of course, she overlooks the custom holes and the "HOMER" engraved into the ball, and learns to bowl to spite him.

I wasn't nearly so bad, but the periodic table shower curtain I purchased really wasn't on Kris' high-priority, must-buy list.

But, hey, I wanted to memorize the table. And what better way than while sitting on the toliet, looking at the shower?

My plan was to memorize the elements a little bit at a time. I've been drawing out the table once every few days, which is fun. The progression should be interesing.

A couple problems, however, have surfaced, the first being the curtain is backwards when I'm in the shower. I've started memorizing it in reverse, and have to work on imagining the elements in the correct order.

The other major problem is that, well, I don't actually sit on the toliet long enough to derive any meaningful learning time. Everyone should be so blessed with highly functioning colons.

We'll see how far I get. Right now, with only five weeks of studying, I have about 50 of the 111 elements correctly memorized. Patterns abound in that table (like, well, d'uh, it is periodic, you know).

"Do you want to go to Seattle?"

Kris asked me over IM when I was still in Boston. He was heading up to Washington for work, and was going to have dinner with Ben and Lisa. Since the trip was for work, if I also went, we would need to pay for only my ticket. I asked if we could stay overnight, would work still pay for his ticket. When he said yes, I said yes, too.

The plan was to drop me off at the ferry on the drive from the airport to Redmond, and for Kris to continue on for work. I'd spend the day with Ben and Lisa and Jake, with Kris meeting us for dinner and the evening.

Well, our flight was thirty minutes late in departing, which was the buffer needed to divert from the airport to downtown to drop me off at the ferry. I ended up driving with Kris to Redmond so that he could make his meeting on time.

Me. Redmond.

As in Microsoft.

As in, the belly of the beast.

Everyone who knows me and my computer ways knows I hate Microsoft Windows. Mostly, I hate that I can't be productive keeping my fingers on the keyboard. With Windows, everything is mouse, click-based. Pretty much the only way to be semi-productive on a Windows box is to install Cygwin on it, which gives you, well, a Unix interface on a Windows box. There are other annoyances (rebooting to install software or change settings, the BSoD, crappy error reporting interfaces, hidden settings, case insensitive file systems, etc.). I recognize its dominance in the marketplace, but I completely disagree the best technology won that fight.

So, my going to Microsoft is sorta, well, wrong.

Kris mocked me for a while about my heading there, but it's not like I did more than ask the receptionist where the nearest Starbucks was.

"Next building over."

"Can I get wireless there?"

"Oh, we can assign you a wireless account right here."

"Um, I'm not actually in any meeting. I'm here with him. He's going into a meeting here."

"Oh... well... uh... I can't... wireless..."

"That's fine. Where's the second closest Starbucks?"

I spent a few hours in the next closest Starbucks, working, surfing, and relaxing. Although I've spent a lot alone as of late, this trip was more relaxing than I expected it to be.

Kris' meeting, of course, went much longer than expected, and we were late heading over to the ferry. We missed the 5:30 ferry by about 10 cars, having to wait until the 6:30 ferry. Ben and Lisa had food ready for us when we arrived around 7:15.

The evening was wonderful. I love Ben and Lisa and Jake. They're such amazing, wonderful people. It's been months since we've seen them, but the visit was as if no time had past. We had more stories to tell, but it was still as comfortable as if we were still neighbors over for dinner one night.

Ah, how much I still miss them.

Jake's a chubby little boy, terribly adorable.

The trip was much too short, with Kris and I leaving the next morning at 7:00 am to return home by noon to feed the dogs.

Kris and I went to Microsoft today.

Only Kris stayed.