Until further notice, I will be posting my blogs at http://thestoeckerfactor.wordpress.com/. My hope is to eventually make this domain, www.wunderhund.com, my site again, but it will take more work than I initially though to get that working without spending additional money. So bookmark http://thestoeckerfactor.wordpress.com/ and start going there for all the exciting Scott news.

Elena had a slight temperature yesterday, and stayed home from school all day with Andrea, who did not have a fever and was studying for her final test in her first year of medical school. The day involved an incident with Elena spraying large amounts of expensive perfume on herself, which then involved a bath and laundry. So it could have been worse - something that smelled badly could have been involved.

So my new blog deployment almost worked. It turns out the hosting provider that I was trying to work with didn't quite handle everything that the blog needed to, so I am looking for alternatives. Until then, it's back to the old one.

We gave Elena her big birthday present today: A new bike. She was pretty excited about it, and took off riding down the sidewalk. It is significantly bigger than her old bike, but she only fell off a few times, and was able to shake it off.

I spent some time at home with her today, as she was home because of the flu, or some such illness. She is almost back to normal, and hopefully hasn't infected the rest of the town with her disease. I feel fine so far, and hopefully it remains that way - Andrea and I are going out tomorrow night.

 One of my daily morning walks in Mexico, I took this picture from Petite Lafitte. It was probably a chilly 70 degrees when I took this. Though it's about 6:00 AM, people have already saved their seats.

 One of my daily morning walks in Mexico, I took this picture from Petite Lafitte. It was probably a chilly 70 degrees when I took this. Though it's about 6:00 AM, people have already saved their seats.

I haven't posted very often lately. I am in the midst of moving my blog to another hosting provider, so I haven't been adding new content. Once I get that finished, I'll get to posting more.

Last weekend was the big event of the winter. Well, for us. It was the College of Osteopathic Medicine ball at The Henry in Dearborn. The weather was terrible, and getting to the hotel, and home the next morning, were awful. But everything in between was great. From the appetizers and drinks at the pre-reception, to the excellent food at the dinner, to the mosh pit of a dance floor, it was a lot of fun.

While rummaging around my mom's basement (which I do occasionally - doesn't everyone?), I found this game:

 This was my favorite board game as a kid. I brought it home, thinking Elena would like to play it someday. She wanted to play it immediately, and it's now her favorite game. Who would have thought that a girl was is mainly concerned with princesses would like to delve into a dungeon and kill skeletons and hobgoblins? And as a bonus, I get to play a game I first played 30 years ago.

As I drove into work this morning, my car's thermometer read -5. But luckily, it had risen to 10 by the afternoon, which was warm enough for a walk at Valhalla in Holt. The park wasn't exactly busy. It's a little cold and everyone hides inside.

Tonight was our sixth and final Christmas party. So sad, but there are only 356 days until Christmas, so start buying me gifts now so all the good ones aren't gone.

'Twas a Merry Christmas, despite the various power outages that meant redirected Christmas parties. And we're half done with our six celebration, with number four being tonight. As for power, we never completely lost it. We had some brown-out type effects, but that was it, so we were very fortunate.

I'll get a little more into our New York City trip later, but if you'd like to look at the raw photos, you can view them on my Flickr page.

I was very late this year in getting the lights up - I blame a late Thanksgiving - but up they are. I discovered that two of our stands are not working, despite my attempts at replacing bulbs, so we're a little light in the light department. But, nothing a trip to Meijer won't fix.

Speaking of fixing, I went to the local clinic because of a lingering cold, so I am the proud owner of a Z-pack. Hopefully in a few days, all will be well - my infection will be gone, Andrea will be done with this semester, and global warming will actually become real and it will be seventy in sunny in Michigan in December.

I hit unique beer number 300 on Monday, well on my way to achieving the dream dreamt by mankind since the dawn of time - drinking 365 different beers in one year. I'm so close, I can almost taste it. And yes, it tastes like beer. The best beer I've had this year has been New Holland's Dragon Milk, in case you were wondering.

We had to put our cat Baloo to sleep on Sunday. He suffered an injury that resulted him being almost completely paralyzed, and it was terrible to see him that way, as well as him not eating or drinking. RIP Baloo, our beer-drinking, dog-biting, tuna-loving cat.

Here is Baloo is one of his regular spots, on Andrea's lap, apparently attempting to browse the Internet.

Another week at the beach is over - our annual cottage stay in Shelby, MI is done for another year. It was a week filled with ice cream, hot dogs, sunshine, and Uno. I had one of the best burgers I've eaten at the Brown Bear (review will eventually be put on Michigan Foodies), and some great fish at Bortell's in Pentwater. And Elena played her first game of Monopoly.

I already miss the hammock.

I had my goodbye lunch here at work - I start a new job on Monday. It's not my last day - I still have a few to go - but I'll take any excuse to go to El Azteco. I'm very excited to start my new job. The last year of doing reports has been rough, and getting back to coding, especially coding I like to do, will be a great change.

Other than a job change, I've been doing quite a bit of cycling. I plan on getting up to 65 miles this weekend. The DALMAC is approaching, so I have to be ready for those 70 - 90 miles days on a bike seat. And yes, it is as uncomfortable as it sounds.