Hooray for Patrick Swayze!

I had a rockin' birthday yesterday.

Hillary and I finally kicked enough of our respective illnesses to venture out and see our friends Bill and Dawn in the evening. Bill made a delicious butternut squash bisque, and we had some homemade... well, let's just call them beef stew Hot Pockets. Very, very tasty.

After dinner, we watched the MST3k version of "Santa Claus Conquers the Martians" (our new holiday tradition) and ate birthday cake. Hillary discovered the joys of the "lovesleep", drifting off a few times during the movie. I also got to reexamine the Venture Brothers, which I had written off after the first episode -- it wasn't too bad, and is probably funnier if you know the characters. I may give it another try.

Booty for the day included a copy of Viva Pinata, the Jones Soda dessert pack (not to be confused with the stomach-churning Holiday Pack), the new John Grisham book (shut up, sometimes I like dumb mass-fiction, okay?), and a cool puzzle-a-day calendar.

Somehow I've wrangled a bunch of phone interviews and stuff this week. I'm supposed to drive down to Birmingham to meet with a recruiter about a position there, and I've had people as far away as Mobile and Sarasota, Florida calling me about jobs. Kind of surprising since it's the week before Christmas, but it's a very good sign that my resume is out there. Hopefully we'll be able to get out of here (the house, maybe not the area) in January.