Five Things I Promise Y’all I’ma Gonna Blog About Soon

On Friday the 21st of this month, I came home from work feeling extremely run down, but that’s pretty much par for the course for me heading into most weekends. The difference this time was that when I woke up on Saturday it was fairly obvious I was besieged by some kind of crappifying illness, and under my wife’s strict orders I bailed on a Christmas party and generally took it easy. I did not come anywhere close to shaking it off over the course of those first 24 hours, so on Sunday morning I took myself to a local urgent care facility, hung around waiting for a few hours, and ultimately was diagnosed with Type A flu (boooo) and prescribed Tamiflu (huzzah). The rest of Sunday continued to be miserable, but at some point on Monday (Christmas Eve, in case you have so-quickly forgotten) I rallied and was able to contribute to the present-wrapping and whatnot. By then of course we had called off the family gathering scheduled for Christmas Day at our house, which was for the best but still a bummer. Nevertheless we celebrated the grand present opening with the kids and then the next thing we knew it was early morning on Boxing Day and I was getting up to go back to work.

I spent that one day at the office as planned, then came home to find that my wife had taken a bad turn. Unlike me, she had responsibly gotten her flu shot earlier in the season, which you’d think would render her immune to what I had brought into the house, but apparently that immunity has limits. I bailed on work the next two days in order to let her rest while I watched the kids (Thursday) and continue to wait on her while the kids were at daycare (Friday). Saturday was more of the same, but by last night it looked like my wife might be, if not out of the woods, at least getting close to a point where the edge of the treeline was remotely perceptible. I should hasten to add that I don’t mean out-of-the-woods in any danger-zone sense, although the flu can be scarily serious for pregnant women; she’s been well clear of hospitalization territory and the baby has been active and happy. But the misery (of not being able to sleep, or breathe, or think straight, or get warm, or stop aching) has been real enough.

At any rate, I’m back at work today, and last I heard things were under control back at the ranch, which is gratifying. But in case you were wondering why the blogging blackout had been in effect for the past ten days, there you are. S has been crazy. If I had had two more days in the office in the past week and a half, I don’t know if it would have made an overly large content-producing difference around these parts or not. But I do know that there are quite a few things clanging and clamoring around my brainpan waiting for me to have a decent chance to post about them at length. So, as the year draws to a close, allow me to present a brief preview of posts in the works and coming soon:

1. 2012 Pop Resolutions As always I will, at some point, refer back to some things I had resolved to do this year and fess up as to whether or not I actually kept them. As always, this will turn out to be a mixed bag. But in spite of that predictability, I still find this compellingly worthwhile every year.

2. Christmas I just gave the I-got-sick/she-got-sick rundown of the holiday span above, but there are a few other noteworthy observations from Christmas which can be recorded here before we move on fully into the new year.

3. The Dark Knight Rises, The Wild Bunch, etc. For example, my wife very awesomely gave me the Nolan Bat-trilogy on Blu-ray for Christmas, which means now I have finally seen The Dark Knight Rises. And I have a few thoughts about it! I also saw The Wild Bunch for the first time recently but have yet to put together a proper review for it. And who knows, by the time I’m firing on all cylinders here I may have absorbed another flick or two along the way. The point being: movie write-ups, and lots of ‘em, count on it.

4. 2013 Pop Resolutions In addition to getting caught up on everything I’ve neglected lately, ‘tis the season to look to the future. And as with the review of last year’s resolutions, the enumeration of the coming year’s goals and self-imposed obligations is a tradition I intend to keep here.

5. Upcoming Theme Months Plus, I already have some ideas for some pop-culture themes which will prop up some vague organizational structure on a monthly basis for the blog. Well, one or two anyway, which I’d better announce soon before January and February get away from me. After that, Baby #3 is due in March and all bets are off!

However you choose to ring in the new year tonight, I hope that bidding farewell to the last twelve months and welcoming what’s yet to come brings you peace and happiness. At the very least, you can drift off to sleep in the wee hours of 2013 secure in the knowledge that I will still be here, yammering on and off about inane movie and tv and book stuff (plus the ongoing, undecided craziness contest between the world of small hyper children and the world of DoD contracting), for a good chunk of the foreseeable future. Like I said, at least until March.