1…3…5…7, 1…3…5…7, UH. That means something to bandos.

01/03/05 means something to me. It was my 26th birthday, which (as someone pointed out to me) means almost nothing. It’s more than halfway to fifty, so that’s something. Hopefully my auto insurance will go down some more. That’d be nice.

It’s been a great holiday run, but it’s been busy. A week and days at home, a short hop back in CU, and a few more days in Indiana and Chicagoland have finally passed, and I’m back home. The house is trashed, all the clothes are dirty, the TiVo and Netflix are patiently waiting for attention, and I’m tired. Would I do it again? Of course I would. It doesn’t change the fact I’m tired. I have gifts to play with and thank you notes to write.

We went to the Blue Chip Casino in Michigan City, IN where I ended my craps run $10 up after losing almost $100. It was neat. I also stood next to a guy betting the Don’ts and learned a few things. Back at Casino Viciwek, I also played the Don’t and made over $300 in play money. I think I might have a new craps strategy.

My Illini are perfect going into BigTen play at home Wednesday night. 14-0. That’s more games than the rest of the conference, and we’ve won it all. There’s no way we will go the entire season without a loss, and I don’t anticipate one tomorrow, but damn it’s a good feeling. Football bowls are fun to watch too… maybe the Illini will be in one next year.

Mom called yesterday and said that Winston’s blood work came back low, which is not a good thing. This happened before that brought him to the ICU and almost death. We’re keeping an eye on him, but I know chemo is nasty stuff. He’s a fighter, though, so he’ll pull through.

TiVo released their TiVoToGo software this week, that lets you take content off the TiVo and watch it on your desktop or laptop. I think it’s pretty neat, and we’ve been waiting for it a long time. I’m waiting for my TiVo to get the update (they’re slowly introducing the update to measure support load, etc.) but I’m hopeful it will be cool.

Oh, and the pipes that feed water to the washing machine in my house are leaking, leaving big puddles on the floor and wet drywall. I’ve got them turned off for now until I can find where the leak is to even start to search for solutions or call a plumber. I can’t go without doing my laundry, but I don’t want yet-another-January bill. This comes right after the Maxima had its 30,000 tuneup (or, rather, half the tune-up because I didn’t have $600 to spend on preventative maintenance.)