I’ve put it off long enough. With all the stupid things I’m willing to talk about on this site, it’s kind of crazy that I waited until now for this topic.

Tomorrow morning at about 7:30, I’m due for a bilateral vasectomy. That’s right, we’re taking the last step towards having no more children. How do I feel about this? Before this morning I was completely fine, no worries. Today I’m stressing out like crazy. It’s probably a delayed reaction.

By this time tomorrow, of course, I won’t have to be stressed anymore. The procedure is very quick and simple, so I’ll be spending most of my day relaxing (or a reasonable facsimile thereof) at home. Hey, I might even be online. Stranger things have happened.

I’m also taking this as an excuse for a four-day weekend. I could probably return to work Monday without problems, but why not turn a chore into an opportunity? Sometimes you have to create your own silver linings.

The Kerezman Clan had quite the weekend this time around. Erica went to the chess tournament held at the Oregon Convention Center from Friday through Sunday. She ended up with a 2.5 ranking (two wins and a half-point “buy”) of which we are all very, very proud. When you figure that this is her first year of playing chess in a competitive environment, she’s done very well for a 2nd-grader. Way to go, Erica!

On Saturday we went to celebrate my grandfather’s 75th birthday. Other than Aunt Jean, we were the sole representatives of “our side” of the family. Granddad’s son Eric was there with some of his family and other relatives. We got to pig out on Mary’s wonderful cooking, embarassing stories were exchanged, and a generally nice time was had by all. We were there for over five hours; in our family that qualifies as a family togetherness marathon.

Sunday was spent with the girls going to the last two rounds of chess competition and the boys going to the office. Alexander and I went around to all of the sales cubes to run the software inventory data collection program John Graefe at Corporate put together. Everything went smoothly, and we celebrated by hanging out in the training room and eating mac-and-cheese. When the girls were done they came to pick us up, and then we rented some videos and collapsed in the living room for the rest of the day.

It was a splendid, busy weekend.

I took Friday off from work to visit OMSI with my son Alexander’s 4th grade class. We got to see the “Brain” exhibit, which was only mildly interesting; we watched a live broadcast from the KOIN 6 meteorology studio; we played in the turbine room a lot. Note to self: family membership at OMSI.

Saturday was spent at home with the kids. Sunday was spent at home with the wife and kids. Great quantities of Heroes IV was played by all. Considerable quantities of 4×4 Evolution was played by some.

We had pizza for dinner on Saturday night, while I prepared my infamous shells-and-cheese dish for dinner last night. Wendi insisted on doing the cheese layering, however. Since she wanted to so badly, I let her use the food processor to grate the cheese as well. That thing’s noisy, but effective.

And now you have the weekend update. I’m sorry it’s not as funny as that seen on Saturday Night Live, but them’s the breaks.

So we got our big wad of cash from the Feds on Friday. The plan is to pay off a lot of those overdue bills and whatnot that have been hanging over our collective head. We hate getting phone calls from collection agencies, man.

We did, however, do a bit of shopping. I needed shoes, Wendi needed shoes, Wendi’s dad needed shoes. So we trekked out to the Troutdale outlet mall for some shoes.

I’m sure you all really wanted to know about the fact that we went shoe shopping. Yep.

Ah yes, before we made that trek we stopped off at the local NoHo’s for some teriyaki chicken. Mmmmm, the best teriyaki chicken dish known to mankind can be found at NoHo’s Hawaiian restaurants. What, you don’t have one in your area? Your loss, neighbor.

On the way home we stopped off to pick up Heroes of Might and Magic IV. I’ll post a full review in a couple of days, but suffice to say that it’s just like the previous Heroes games, only prettier and more complex. This is a good thing.

We also picked up a Carmen Sandiego game for the kids, Final Fantasy VII (which won’t @#$%ing play on our computers since all of our machines have modern video cards installed, dammit), and 4×4 Evolution. I talked Wendi into that one based on the idea that Alex would want to play it with me. Turns out he’s beyond indifferent to the idea. Oh well.

Maybe I should have dropped the 4×4 and FF7 in favor of Might And Magic IX. 3DO hasn’t let us down yet, anyway.

So I decided to see how many sites are using the “Oral Sex Donation” thing from The Brunching Shuttlecocks, so I go to Google and search for that phrase. The pages I find aren’t terribly interesting, but what just now got my attention is the Sponsored Link:

Um… Google? Is there something you want to tell us?

I don’t have many television programs that I watch “religiously.” Unfortunately they all fall on Friday and Saturday, precisely the two days during which our cable was turned off. So no Farscape, no Yu Yu Hakusho, no Cowboy Bebop and no Pilot Candidate.

Waaaaaaah!