Thanksgiving with the Ray's

Thanksgiving at my house went really well this year. My dad came, and Allison's mom and dad were here, and my friend Steve Zarella was here too. Steve and I have been spending Thanksgiving's together for over ten years now. He and I went to college together, were roommates for a while, and since he's from Massachussetts, he isn't usually able to go be with his family for Thanksgiving or Christmas. So I've always tried to make him feel welcome with my family.

My wife picked up the ham from Wal-mart. I was a honeybaked spiral cut ham, and was very good, even though we put the glaze on the side instead of on top. And I can't recommend too highly that you think about getting a fried turkey from Popeyes Fried Chicken. It was seasoned to perfection and couldn't have been easier to prepare--you just put it in the oven with a couple cups of water and heat it for an hour and a half or so.

Daddy made cornbread dressing. Allison made deviled eggs. It was a nice meal. We listened to Arlo Guthrie sing Alice's Restaurant. (A tradition that dates back from me and Steve driving to Bonham for Thanksgiving at my parents and listening to KZPS play it every Thanksgiving.)

After everyone went home, I spent the evening playing Fable on the X-Box and gradually getting sicker and sicker. I have another in a seemingly endless series of sinus infections, which usually make me worthless for just about anything other than a moan or two now and then.

My wife's planning to leave me with the kids today and go shopping. I'm sure she'll be gone forever and I'll be miserable watching my daughters, who are also both sick with a runny nose. Sigh. And I've got to do the dishes...

Slashdot

If you're a techie and you're interested in the latest techie news, then there is no better resource than Slashdot.org. You can find news here about Linux, Star Wars, Legos, games--pretty much anything a nerd would like is fair game. I recommend checking them out.

Russ Martin, the Batmobile and Me

This is a cool picture--it's me and Russ Martin in front of his Batmobile replica. This was taken over a year ago at the Western Warehouse. I listen to Russ Martin every day on my drive home from work, and he never fails to make me laugh. It's a rare radio personality who actually makes me laugh out loud. And this is not as insignificant a thing as you might think--it's actually pretty important to laugh. So thanks, Russ.

Blog Directories

Blog directories list and organize blogs by category. I thought a list of the directories where I've submitted my blog might be useful to other bloggers, so here you go:

• Globe of Blogs - Blogs from all over the world, indexed by topic, and also indexed by location, hence the name.
• Popdex - Ranks and updates top blog links every hour.
• Eatonweb Portal - Searchable, well-organized directory of weblogs.
• Bloogz - Search by keyword in five different languages.
• DFW Blogs - Blogs from the Dallas Fort Worth area. (Wylie is a suburb of Dallas.)
  
  

  

  

  

And I've submitted to the Open Directory too.

Getting Ready for Thanksgiving

It's Wednesday morning, before dawn. The wind is howling outside the window. I guess it rained all night. My wife brought home groceries last night for Thanksgiving, and I carried them in for her. Of course, it was drizzling rain and cold, so I was soaked. No hot chocolate to be found either.

If you ever watched Hee-Haw growing up, you'll probably remember a recurring bit where the cast members would yell, "What's for supper, Grandpa?"

Grandpa Jones would always list off about 20 different food items that would presumably be popular mostly in the south. "Well, we got blackeyed peas, and buttermilk biscuits. We got fried chicken and mashed potatoes with cream gravy. Blah blah blah."

Funny stuff, this. So here's my holiday version: "What's for supper on Thansgiving, Randy?"

We're having a deep-fried turkey and a ham. We're having homemade dressing and gravy. We're having mashed potatoes and gravy. We're having green bean casserole and yeast rolls. And we're having pecan pie and pumpkin pie for dessert.

Allison, Maddie, Mary and Drew

This is my wife and my three kids.

Drew in his Football Uniform

My son Drew in his football uniform.

Randy and Maddie

This is a picture of me and my daughter Maddie. I'll post more pics of me and my family soon. (mostly of my family, since I don't photograph well.) I just learned how to use the function to post a picture a few minutes ago.

Welcome!

Welcome to RandyRay.name. This is Randy Ray's official homepage. Here you'll be able to learn all kinds of cool stuff about me. This post is just the beginning.

I'm a 34 year old father of three who lives in Wylie, TX with my beautiful wife and kids. I have a full time job, but I'm also a part time webmaster with a wide variety of projects in the works. (Be sure to have a look at Letters from Bill, which I'm publishing to the web on behalf of my friend Bill Castleberry.) I'm also an avid poker player and a DMOZ editor. I have a degree in Literature from the University of North Texas, and am a pretty good juggler although I haven't practiced very much in years.

When I get the time, I like to go see local country music artists, especially Brian Burns and Brian Houser.