Merry Christmas, In Pictures

First we flew with Crowley (for essentially the first time*) on AirTran to Detroit.  What a difference between Southwest and AirTran, it’s hard to believe they’ll be co-operating soon.  I think we need a new designation for airlines:  “Low fare, high cost”.  We drove to Lansing and then to Munster the following morning to be with Aimee’s family.  The full complement of pictures is available here:  Christmas 2010 Photo Album.

Once in Munster, we opened gifts with Aimee’s parents and had lots of time to kick back and catch up a bit.

That evening, they graciously hosted the extended family for dinner and dessert so that we would get a chance to visit with everyone.  Megan drove in for a visit and a lovely lunch at Jalapenos: “The Hottest Mexican Restaurant in Schererville”.

  

 

We ventured back to Lansing in time for the traditional trip to Roma Bakery and Deli.  We were there for about 2 hours as we ordered some of their finest imported meats, cheeses, and homemade desserts:  salami (Genoa and Oldani), prosciutto, hot capicola, soppressata, and lots more. 

  

Also had a delicious lunch there and then homemade dinner before visiting with the Blundys and Sarah and Matt. I have no pictures of that but if I were to describe the scene…  “some old friends, catching up in the basement over wine and heavily fermented honey while Crowley cowers in the corner” … would about sum it up.  It was a nice visit!  Aimee worked on a scrumptious cherry pie the next morning and they turned out great!

 

Few trips to Lansing are complete without a trip to Georgio’s and Beggar’s Banquet in East Lansing.  We met up with Matt and Allison for brunch on Christmas Eve at Beggars.  They weren’t busy for we lingered over Bloody Marys and coffee and got to catch up for a while.

We celebrated the Solemnity of the Nativity of the Lord at St. Gerard, 6:30pm edition.  Aimee and I posed with [a very bored] Crowley in front of the stocking array and Christmas tree. 

When it comes to online tools, I’m a “Google” kind of guy for the most part (Gmail, Calendar, Documents, and of course Picasa).  However, Windows Live Photo Gallery 2011 is refreshingly easy to use.  I’m not ready to convert just yet but I used their “Photo Fuse” tool to create the family picture below and was quite impressed.**

Overall we just had a great visit – food, family, friends, festivity, and a feline-like dog.

 

I hope everyone has a great year-end.  Aimee and I will be visiting Veni, Vidi, Vici for their Prix Fixe NYE dinner following mass at IHM. 

Coming soon to a blog near you:  I’ll take an in-depth look at analytics from our blog visitors, how often they visit, where they visit from, and more…

Footnotes:
* I flew with her from Minneapolis to Chicago when she was 8 weeks but I don’t really count it because neither of us really knew what was going on.
** Also, I’m using Windows Live Writer to create my posts now because the Blogger interface is just not flexible enough.

Getting ready for Christmas Vacation!

First, Crowley would like to share some Christmas photos of her.  As always, more are available in the Crowley Album on Picasa.

Second, Tonight is the Star In The East Christmas concert at IHM.  The concert is free and open to the public.  Aimee and Jeff will be singing my arrangement of “I Wonder as I Wander” for two voices, piano, and orchestra.  I’ll also be playing a Paul Tate arrangement of “Bring a Torch” for piano and flute, among a few others.  Hopefully I can get a recording to post.

Third, here is a video of Aimee and I decorating the Christmas Tree here.  I mixed in a recording of her singing “He Shall Feed His Flock” from Messiah.

Christmas Tree in Atlanta

Fourth, we leave for Michigan tomorrow!!!  We are flying with Crowley for basically the first time (she flew when I first got her but everything was so new at that point…).  We will be visiting with family in Lansing and Munster, most of whom we haven’t seen since June.  Also looking forward to visiting Matt and Allison, Sarah and Matt, and hopefully Megan during this time.

Lastly a brief warranty update (for those who care):

1. The Nerd Herd at Best Buy did in fact manage to fix Aimee’s fried laptop by replacing the memory and reconnecting the hard drive.  Being out of town, my first comment back to Aimee was to check if they put back the same amount of memory that we sent it in with.  They did not.  For over a week they’ve been “looking for it” and finally today decided to order in the missing 2 GB.  Best Buy, your warranty repair was good; your integrity and ability fix a wrong, not good at all.
2. Ed Voyles Acura had our car for a known warranty navigation replacement.  They didn’t bother to order the replacement unit until they had our car for a day.  We pick up our car and I call to check on the status of the order a week later – it hasn’t been ordered yet.  When it comes in, we bring our car back in, they do the replacement but, come time to pick it up, there’s no disc for the navigation system.  So we wait another week and a half for that to come in.  To top it off, I’ve asked them address our poor fuel consumption while they have our car.  After giving the stock answers on tire pressure, weather, driving habits, and maintenance,  I receive a last ditch effort to quiet me in the form of a decade-old service bulletin from Acura about how fuel economy tests are unrealistic.  The EPA agreed and required new mileage ratings in late-2007 and our car is still 30% below those lowest numbers.  C’mon, pay attention Ed.  It’s enough to make you need some wine and Drunken Goat cheese!
3. Canon – I decided to “take a limb” (as Aimee would say) and send in my 15-85mm lens for factory repair because it seemed to have some optical variability and lack of sharpness in certain circumstances.  I was right!  They fixed it and cleaned it all up, no charge.  Nice job Canon!

Oh, you’d like to send us a Christmas Card?

Recently, I’ve had several people freely admit to “stalking” us (it’s not stalking if you’re putting it out there) to find our Atlanta address on the internet.  To the best of my knowledge, it’s not out there.  So here’s a little riddle to deduce it for yourself:

1. Our street is named after our 5th president.  Once you figure that out, go ahead and append “Drive NE” to it.
2. Our address number is the year you get when adding one century to the year our 5th president left office.
3. Our apartment number is four digits and adheres to the following rules:
   • All four digits add up to a prime number.  Let’s call it 17.
   • The third digit + the fourth digit equals the two-digit number you’d get by concatenating the first and second digit.
   • The second digit is half the third digit.
   • The third digit is less than the fourth digit.
   • The fourth digit is often the most difficult to move independently of the others.
4. You know the city and state.  The zip code you can find by Googling the result of steps 1-3.

Here’s a little Christmas card from us:

* Crowley saw a squirrel as we took this one but it was the best take got (of like 30 pictures)

Chicago Weekend II

The Christmas party and concert season is in full swing and it so happened that many of our annual Chicago parties and concerts fell on the weekend of December 3-5.  So we figured it would be a good weekend to take a flight up to Chicago and spend it with our friends. 

We arrived just in time to hop in our Avis rental (their computers were actually functioning this time), get into the city, and go to our 5th consecutive Deck the Hall concert at Old St. Pat’s.  The OSP choir, made up of 75 vocalists, was conducted by Bill Fraher and accompanied by the 30-person Metropolis Symphony Orchestra.  The group performed to sell out crowds for three exhausting nights in a rows and did a very nice job.  It was especially strange for Aimee to be a mere listener this year.  Me, I’m more or less used to it.

The festivity of the evening was augmented by new-fallen snow and a late night of catching up at the Neary’s.  It was quite liberating to consume much wine, knowing that we only had to make it down the hall at night’s end.  We were most grateful for Michael and Joanna’s hospitality (and that of Miles actually).  Hopefully we get to return the favor when they come to the south to celebrate MLK day.

Saturday started with massages (and a chance to catch up with Meg) followed by lunch at Mayan Palace with Sara and Kristen.  It’s always to return to the palace where, not 50 yards distance away, I lived in my first apartment in Chicago, next to Sara and Kristen!

Due to some just lousy planning, we had to miss our annual dessert party in Skokie.  David and Maryjoy – we’ll be there next year to visit, pick up some new recipes, and meet little Theo. That evening Mark B hosted a very generous and thought-filled evening of dinner and socializing.  We got to reconnect with some old friends and meet a few more ND connections in Chicago.  I’m so glad we were finally able to make his Christmas dinner, though I learned my lesson about being the farthest traveled guest.

We had to make an early departure to get to Courtney and Frank’s home for a) their annual post-Deck the Hall party and b) our slumber party.  As is typical, we were treated to their warm, festive, yet comfortable décor, delicious food, new wine vintages, and this time, their guest bedroom.  We are so fortunate to have their friendship!

Sunday morning naturally brought the occasion for brunch.  Our selection was Gioco – good because I knew it wouldn’t be terribly crowded (though I don’t know why) and because they take reservations.  Aimee’s dad and sister made the quick drive over from Munster to be with us and our friends.  Sunday afternoon naturally brought the occasion for some group shopping in the “adult sleepwear” section of Target.

Made ya look.  Anyway, then Sunday evening we joined the choir for mass at Old St. Pat’s.  All in all a decent mass, despite a fiendishly out-of-tune Steinway and a little slip up while the presider sang the mass parts (on the bright side, it’s always nice to be personally recognized in the middle of the Doxology). 

After a late flight, we landed in a chilly-but-significantly-warmer Atlanta, ready for a trip to Austin, final preparations for the Star in the East concert, a piano lesson, a Paul Tate concert, Christmas shopping, and a trip to Lansing!  Busy times.  Fun times.