This has been a difficult few weeks. I have suffered from tinnitus, a constant ringing in the ears, for over forty years. When I first noticed it, I went to an ENT and was told that there was no cure, and that as I aged it would probably intensify. It took me a year or two to get used to this problem, and for a long time I had trouble sleeping because of it. Eventually, however, I did acclimate to the condition, but I noticed that different conditions would cause it to get worse.

Over the past three weeks the ringing has seemingly doubled in intensity. I know I’ve put on some weight. I tend to do that around now, justifying it with my Santa gig, but it never seemed to affect the tinnitus. But this has been bad, and has really interrupted my sleep. I’ve started taking two Tylenol PM’s each night, something I’d rather not do, but they only seem to work for about six hours.

When this has happened in the past, I can usually expect a good cold to develop in about a week. No cold. Over the past couple of days I’ve been taking my blood pressure, and that seems to have risen. I suppose I should go to a doctor and have him check it, as I don’t trust that I’m taking it properly. It could be that my blood pressure has risen, and that is caused the problem, therefore, once again, I am going to have to try and lose some weight. We’ll just have to see how this all goes.

Yesterday was a bit stressful on the set. It just seemed like we were getting all the parents and kids from Hell. It was one of those days when we couldn’t help but start a discussion on parenting, because most kids don’t get the way they get without parents who are failing at their job. And we sat there and watch those failings unfold before our eyes.

I had this one three year old named Isaac, who seemed like a happy kid, but all he wanted for Christmas was wrestling stuff. Now asking for wrestling stuff is not unusual, but this kid is obsessed with the WWE. Now, if you know anything about the WWE, you know it isn’t something kids of his age should be consuming on any basis, let alone a consistent one, yet this kid assured me that he watches it all the time, and knows all the players.

We had another situation where we had six kids, ranging in age from two to seven. We placed arranged this gang all around me, with little or no problem, except for this one five year old kid (didn’t get his name), who didn’t want anything to do with this experience. No matter what his mom said or did, he refused to even stand next to the chair. I swear, she worked with this kid for ten minutes, trying everything she could think of to get him to just stand there. It never happened. She eventually just gave up. I suppose you can’t fully blame her, as the other five were perfectly content, but she did spend the majority of the time just trying to coddle the kid, offering him bribes, pleading, etc. It wasn’t until the very end that she actually got a little stern with the kid, and that didn’t work either. I don’t know. I suppose some of these kids are just demons in disguise.

Maybe the most frustrating moment came when I was presented with a business card that we have been instructed to give to everyone who visits the set. Background. Whenever a visitor asks for a cell phone for Christmas, I always make them promise not to text message anyone with it. There is a long shpeel that goes along with this, but I will spare you. In any case, I’ve gotten a rep because of this, so the entire crew, plus many of our visitors, know my feelings about texting. Well, this card is for “TEXTSANTA”, some company that sends “Personal Text messages from Santa Himself”. Just that quote proves my claim that texting causes illiteracy. But there is a catch, something not advertised on the card, anywhere, in any form. Parents who want this “service”, get to pay $5.49, plus an extra buck if they want it sent on Christmas day. But, hey, one dollar goes to the “March of Dimes”! grumble, grumble, grumble…

But, the day wasn’t a total loss. I’ve got a fan named Gabriel. She is this cute little three year old blond girl who always shows up on the set dressed as cute as a button. Her mom brings her by so she can “add to the list”. It’s really cute, and she is a darling.

Tuesday was a better day. I had a little guy named Matthew (3), come and visit. He was very happy and we had a good time. When his Dad picked him up off my lap, he informed me that on Wednesday, Matthew was having surgery. He was having tubes put into his ears, his tonsils removed, and his adenoids removed. O good. Tears. Now we have the crying Santa.

Later on I had my annual visit with David (5). David has downs, celebrates Christmas all year, and Santa (me), is his favorite person in the world. I received more hugs in those few minutes than I can remember ever having in that length of time. He is just an excited, happy bundle of joy. More tears.

The trail of tears was broken some time later when Emma (5), jumped on my lap and proceeded to discuss everything that was on her mind at the moment, which was a lot. She has one of those smiles that light up a room, so it wasn’t difficult to get her to smile for her pictures. We have little tricks to get the kids to smile. We use the usual “say cheese”, but we also have them say “jelly”, and “stinky feet”. Anything to get them to provide us with a giant smile. We really didn’t need to go through all of that with Emma, however, I did it just to be funny. She gave us a giant “CHEESE”. She giggled her way through “JELLY”. But when we tried to get her to say “stinky feet”, she looked at me, gave me a silly grin and said, “NOOOOO! You sound like pappa. He’s goofy!”

Ah well, it is almost eight and I’ve got to get ready for today’s edition of “The Further Adventures of Santa Claus”.

**EDIT Thu Dec 3 23:24:15 UTC 2009 **

Hey Everyone, we are about to run the last alter job that we need to on our database servers. This will effect userpics / scrapbook / vgift images for the next few hours. Have no fear, your images aren't lost, there is just a really intensive process running on the servers which store the information for mogilefs. Thank you for your understanding and all the LJ love...

Hey LJers,

I just wanted to let you all know that we are going to be performing some mogilefs maintenance over the next few days. We will be upgrading our current version to latest stable as well as changing some db config information to better handle the amount of files we are currently hosting. This shouldn't cause a big impact on site stability, but you may see some minor delays with userpic / scrapbook images appearing or other requests associated with our mogilefs. We would love to not have that happen, but unfortunately with some of the steps we need to take we have to cause a delay with images. I figured this was a better solution than taking down all of LiveJournal because well lets face it, we all need our daily LJ fix ;)

Thanks,

Tags: mogilefs, upgrade, userpics
Current Location: Jumping out of a perfectly good plane
Current Mood: dirty
Current Music: Bad Religion - Stranger Than Fiction

backpacking
Want to embrace your wanderlust on the cheap? If you're high on adventurous spirit, but low on funds, this community can help you plan a trip to anywhere. Offering plentiful tips on how to travel light, you can post about inexpensive hotels and youth hostels if you're into urban exploration or discuss camping gear and mosquito netting for the great outdoors. Hitch your backpack, pitch your tent, and carpe diem!

This has been an interesting Santa season, even though there hasn’t been a lot of unusual interactions. Much of it has to do with internal politics, and not worth spending time writing about. But, as mentioned earlier, I am spending my Mondays on the Santa set at the Regency Mall, in Racine, Wisconsin. It is a very long day, which includes an hour and a half drive in the morning, then another hour and a half drive return trip, getting me home between 10:30 and 11. Then I get another 5½ hours on the CherryVale Santa Set on Tuesday mornings. By Tuesday afternoon I am one tired ThunderClaus.

The Regency Mall is a very slow mall. Their daily sales goal is about a quarter of my home mall, so not much is expected. It gets rather boring, and the minutes, particularly in the evening, move very slowly. I brought along a couple of puzzle books to pass the time, but I spend much of it fighting off the urge to fall asleep. I only have three more days to play there, and, as we draw closer to the big day, I’m hoping things will pick up.

Yesterday, however, I received a visit from one of my favorite families. Jim and Michelle Owczarski showed up with their young son, Edward. While we were not able to get him to smile for his picture, which is not unusual for one so young, he didn’t cry or go into hysterics, which would be quite normal for one so young. Kids between 1 and 3 are usually not very happy to visit with Santa for some reason, especially if it means having their picture taken. But Edward was great. We took a long time to help acclimate him to the situation, and eventually we had him sitting, calmly, on my knee. He is a good lookin little fella, and I invited him to Bristol auditions next year. Dad, acting as his agent, declined the offer, informing me that this is an experience that would have to wait for about 14 years.

Among some of the more interesting gift requests I have received of late, came from Brandon (5), who wants a gum ball machine and a popcorn maker. Miranda, (3), wants five real dogs and a moose.

Last weeks “Cute Kid Comment”, came from Bella (3), who, as she happily described her Thanksgiving Day experiences to me on Black Friday, told me how excited she got when her Dad “shaved the fur off the turkey”.

I've now posted every day for a month. I'm not sure if I'd even done 30 posts total before this month.

I've got some plans to do a lot more posting next year, although it will primarily be about hobbies and projects. It won't all be here, and I won't cross post everywhere, but I might note when new stuff is up.

That's it folks. NaBloPoMo is officially over for me once I write this one post. While I am always happy to be reminded why I still like LJ even though Facebook tends to get the majority of my cyber time, I am once again reminded why I don't post every single day. Sometimes I just don't have anything worthwhile to say, and it's really hard to post when all you have to post about that day is your laundry... or the tedium of your day job... or worse yet, absolutely nothing because I didn't really accomplish anything noteworthy during the 18 hours or so that was supposedly conscious for. So, until next November, you can expect my posts to be fewer but hopefully more meaningful. I'll never abandon LJ altogether, but this scraping the dregs of thought from my addled brain on a daily basis has got to stop.

Thanks for reading. Hope I didn't drive you to insanity with my inane posts. ;)

Tags: nablopomo
Current Mood: satisfied

bookfails
Planning to do your part to help boost the declining publishing industry this holiday? Better check here first. Sure, there are plenty of folks who post glowing reviews of their favorite books. But what about the epic fails? Compose and/or discuss snarky, incisive critiques on the books you despise most.

Tags: bad books, book reviews, bookfails, epic fail

foundphotos
Ever stumble across a frayed photo in your grandmother's attic? How about a faded picture tucked in the sleeve of an old novel at a used book sale? This is the place to post them. An amazing, eclectic collection of photographs sure to delight anyone with a penchant for history or nostalgic memorabilia.

Tags: foundphotos, vintage photography

note_to_cat
Having trouble conveying the concept of accountability to your cat? Now you can share letters to your significant felines and give public witness to your declarations of love and domestic negotiations. Whether you want to publish an apology for falling short on your cat-nip obligations or you need to raise a delicate hygiene issue.

Tags: cats, note to cat, pets