Today was an odd sort of day.. We should have been in Nebraska celebrating Thanksgiving with the wife’s family. These festivities were put on hold with the passing of Clarinda’s aunt Elaine. It wasn’t entirely unexpected, as she had been suffering from cancer, but it was a sad day nonetheless. We originally were going to do that gathering this weekend and head all the way home to the ranch for the holiday proper, but with the funeral on Tuesday we’ll be heading out there early and spending the whole week. I don’t think it would be disrespectful to say that in the end it sort of works out for us.

So today, I was heading to the Microcenter to try and mend my broken computer. I experienced a hard drive crash – the irreconcilable kind where it sounds like the heads are actually trying to escape from the drive. After a maddening series of roadblocks, I managed to recover our Quicken data. It had been moved to the desktop computer because the laptop had died and the desktop was, you know, more reliable. My first replacement drive, a 200GB Maxtor, refused to be recognized by its own setup software. It recognized my OLD 200GB Maxtor, but not this NEW one that came in the box with it. I now have a 250GB Hitachi Deskstar (OEM). The Deskstar line enjoyed a pretty good reputation under IBM – we’ll see if Hitachi took over the quality as well as the name.

So yea, I was heading to the Microcenter when Pastor Donnie called. He and a friend were in need of some Hawkeye football action and there was no Big Ten Network to be found. I was able to ease their pain. This was at 2:00. They came on over for the game at 2:30, and I got there at 3:00 thanks to the construction on Metcalf. The game was tragic. My guests called it a ”comedy of errors”. It was comical for a while, but then I was ready for grown-up football time. It never came. I think the “Hawkeye Highlights” section of the site is ready to retire. There won’t be anything to add this week.

I had been invited to play pool with some friends, which I’d declined in order to watch the game, but those fellows came over afterwards to watch some UFC action. Speaking of those guys – one of them mentioned that tonight was day 128 of his complete sobriety. We discussed more details than I’ll share here, but yes – this is a big deal and I’m extremely happy for him and his family! Shortly before all that, Jeff called and invited me out to Buffalo Wild Wings with some friends – to watch the UFC. I mumbled something about watching it at home, and he thanked me for inviting him. I pretty much deserved that.

And speaking of Jeff, he was one of the two friends that had wounded XBOX360s (the clean one). My 360 is currently on the way back to me – hopefully in better condition than when it left. I had gotten the RMA packing materials from Microsoft, and as I was packing it up my 3-year-old says “Are you going to send it back to Jesus?”

…

I know that Jesus solves problems. To be fair, I didn’t really give him a chance on the 360. I guess I could have prayed about it, but I figured I’d just send it off Microsoft since it was a known issue. I explained to her that fixing video games wasn’t really what Jesus did because there were some nice people in McAllen, Texas that had that job already. She understood.