I would like to take a brief moment to wish each and every one of you.

Over the holidays I burned my right hand. It was a foolish maneuver in which I grabbed for a pan that was just under 350 degrees in heat. There was a sizzle and the blistering has started, but this is not the first time that I have injured this hand.

Let us travel back in time to the early teen years when I was in 6th and 7th grade.

Picture a young Heath (ok, not THAT young but I couldn’t find a picture from middle school), sitting in a trailer at Ligon Middle School - a trailer because the school wasn’t big enough for all the students they had so there were numerous trailers around the property set up as school rooms. This is relatively commonplace today.

It was math class, and I was sitting in an uncomfortable student desk scribing away with my mechanical pencil. It was probably Pentel brand (which I still use to this day). The smells of graphite and number 2 pencils filled the room, along with chalkboard and eraser. The brown carpet on the floor was covered in little bits of rubber eraser after we added things incorrectly and had to fix the answer before turning it in.

All was quiet and peaceful in the trailer. The teacher was at her desk behind us, and the students were busily finishing their assignments. And then, it happened. Like a plot from a bad movie my sense of self-preservation flew out the trailer window and I stabbed myself in the hand with my Pentel pencil.

What I find odd about this is that I stabbed my right hand, and I am right handed, which means that the mechanical pencil somehow found its way into my left hand before the stabbing occurred. This is actually the only part of the story I find odd. Odd?

But wait, it gets better.

Move forward a year into seventh grade. In a trailer. In math class. Busily working on a math problem when once again, it happened. Somehow the pencil found its way into my left hand and I stabbed my right hand again. Again I find it odd that I didn’t stab my left hand, but first switched the pencil.

In both cases it was a completely involuntary action. I didn’t stab myself knowingly, it just happened. So now I have two subcutaneous foreign bodies (graphite and clay from the pencils) embedded in my right palm. They are visible under the surface of my skin…and if you want to get more freaky, they are approximately half an inch apart. Good aim.

Let’s see some pictures…first  you’ll see my entire hand, then we’ll zoom in on the two foreign bodies under the skin near the base of my thumb.

I tried to scrape them out once…but they are too deep and really would require surgery to remove. And so I keep them, as a strange and distant memory of mechanical pencils and junior high math classes.

This one is quick because I can only type with one hand, because I’m a dork.

Traditionally I always make an oven pancake for Christmas day…

Traditionally I do not grab the pan with my bare hand after it has been in the oven on 350. Until today. Apparently I had too much egg nog.

Anyway…the oven pancake was delicious and my right hand is burned in a number of places.

Happy Thursday everyone.

Oh - if you want to see what an oven pancake is, check out this video of my mom making one…

When I arrived at a department celebration lunch today I was presented with a name tag. Not only did it have my REAL name on it, but also my “Elf” name.

That name was Trumpy Brandy Butterstockings.

This got me thinking about the multitude of name generators out there, and so here I present an incredibly frivolous post of name generations. (There are also sites that generate random names like the Dark Elf Name Generator, but these are not based on YOUR name.)

My Elvish Name: Haldamir Sáralondë

Elf Name 2: Nipper Fluffy-Paws

Movie Star Name: Jini Newcastle (first pet / first street)

Transformers Name: Lasercrusher

Pirate Name: Cheatin’ Brett Hornigold

Mexican Wrestler Name: Americano en Fuego

Mafia Name: Fabrizio Rubberneck

The only one I really like is the first elf name… Trumpy Brandy Butterstockings.

Although, I think I’ll stick with Heath.

David and I have just returned from a brief vacation in Cabo. If you don’t know the place, it’s located at the tip of the Baja Peninsula in Mexico. It’s a pretty popular vacation destination - especially for those on the west coast of the states - and features many all-inclusive resorts that provide as much food and alcohol as you want to consume.

In 2006 we went to Mazatlan, which is on the mainland just across the way from Cabo. The experiences were vastly different, and although Mazatlan was not all-inclusive, I have to say that it was much more enjoyable than the Cabo experience overall.

So here is the run-down of our trip…

We left on Wednesday morning and flew through Phoenix into Los Cabos. Uneventful flight and we arrived at the Melia Cabo Real resort in mid-afternoon.

The lobby was very impressive - a completely open room with incense burning in large wicker and wood containers, a comfortable lobby bar with a cornucopia of couches/chairs/sofas, and a very friendly reception staff including bellhops. The check-in process was quick, and we were off to our garden view room on the west side of the facility. I immediately noted that the grounds were about 1/4th the size of the Mazatlan location, but still very pleasant.

The first thing we did was take a tour of the pool and bar area.

As you can see, the place was covered in palm trees and cactus of a number of varieties. The cactus gardens were very impressive and many of them were in bloom. The groundskeepers were constantly pruning and raking areas to make them look their best.

Off to the beach…

The beaches went on and on and on. They were very wide and made up of sand, crushed rocks, and shells. There was no swimming allowed on the first day due to the undertow - flags alerted people as to the “threat level” of the ocean.

Now some thoughts on the next couple of days. The normal restaurants at the resort focused on buffet style eating, and for the most part were pretty good. The very first night we had a delicious seafood buffet with the highlight being Octopus in Garlic. Yum! I can’t speak so highly about the two “premier” restaurants on-site. You received vouchers for those two and for a 5 day stay could visit them only once. The first was Kujira, a Japanese place with food so bad we sent it all back and went down for a real dinner at the beach party. The second was La Terraza - I enjoyed my steak but David didn’t like his at all and thought the wine tasted like it had tequila in it. We decided at that point to stick with the masses and do the buffets which were generally very good, if not better.

For the rest of the trip, save for two things, we relaxed in the pool with some folks we met who are from “West Idaho”. Those two things that pulled us away were horseback riding on the beach, and snorkeling once it was safe to do so. I don’t have any pictures of snorkeling because my camera is not waterproof and the water was pretty rough, but here is a picture and a video from the horseback riding trip…

All in all it was a pretty good vacation. We had mostly good food, great hospitality/service, moderately watered down drinks (although I learned about a new drink that has become my favourite), and generally good weather (although it was VERY windy and somewhat chilly in the afternoons). I’m not sure if I would recommend this specific place again - and we won’t be going back because we like to go to different places each time - but for families and couples this resort is “pretty good”.

We’re glad to be home.

On 6 December (and in repeat on 7 December), I was on-air talent again for KVIE Public Television.

The programs were Roy Orbison Black and White Night - which incidentally was the same program I was on the air with back in September - and Victor Borge’s new 100 Years special. I am a huge fan of Victor Borge, so I jumped at the chance when I saw the on-air schedule for this pledge drive.

Here is a clip reel from the Borge program. It was an absolutely hysterical show, and you’ll see us laughing quite a bit after coming in from break. If you watched it live, you also saw many shots of the phone bank provided by Intel Corporation. I heard last night that the show was so popular, they might even be re-airing our “performance” during prime time. Pretty cool…