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!