thanksgiving number 2 and 3

so. much. thanksgiving. food.

wow, we had leftovers from thanksgiving number 1 twice before even heading out for nashville. i only had to work til about 2pm so i loaded the car, got jake, and drove down to danville to pick lindsay up. we left the car there and headed due west instead of wasting an hour and a half by going back north to lexington. we made good time, had dinner at toots in bowling green as usual (support your local toot's restaurant!!), gained an hour with the time change, and got to mom's around 9:30pm.

we had thanksgiving number 2 at 11am with mom, charlie, brenda joy, and alan. we lounged while our food digested, played some taboo, and then went over to dad's around 4pm for thanksgiving number 3. most of the local collins family was there and i enjoyed spending some time with a guy my 17 year old cousin is pretty serious about (she's growing up fast!). he's a marine and headed to iraq next summer; it was interesting to hear his take on things.

on friday, we played tourist by going to eat at bob evans; visiting the country music hall of fame; eating lunch on 2nd avenue; dropping by mom's work for a visit; and then driving around west end, centennial park (jake had fallen asleep in the car), and dad's new school. my collins grandparents came over for a visit and a late afternoon snack of ham or turkey salad sandwiches (yum!) before we went back to mom's to hang out for the evening. we grabbed some pad thai on the way there because we were sick of thanksgiving food by that point. brenda joy came over and we all hung out.

on saturday, we went to see a movie with mom, charlie, and brenda joy. they wanted to see 'deck the halls' because it was a christmas movie and i wanted to see bobby (by myself would have been fine since the others probably wouldn't have cared for it). however, the times didn't line up so i went with them. i didn't even know danny devito was in it, but i could tell it was one of his movies. odd, black humor and stuff and i just didn't care for it. afterwards, we went over to dad's for some greek spaghetti (yum! one of his specialties) and then we went to a big lighting of the lights on someone's house party (like 200 neighbors and friends and such showed up!).

on sunday, we went over to dad's for a yummy breakfast and then to church with him for a change. there are less and less people i know at mom's church (where i went from about age 15 through college when i was home) and we hardly ever attend with dad. the service was great, the choir was awesome, and the message was delivered very well. afterwards we went to j. alexander's in west end for a delicious lunch. dad's church starts later so by the time we got home to mom's to throw our pre-packed suitcases in the car, it was already after 3 pm eastern time. we skipped the snack of pickles from toot's and pushed on to get on home. we made one pit stop, got the car in danville, and were home around 7:30pm. such a long day!

such a quick weekend!

brand new world

i've had the macbook up and playing music (like a big ipod) for nearly an hour unplugged. i just looked at the battery meter, and there is still nearly 4 hours of battery life left! for comparison, my toshiba laptop maxed out at about 75 minutes of total battery life. boooo!!

have a great day! what are you doing this thanksgiving weekend?

macbook has arrived

woohoo! i'll try to keep you informed as to the progress of:

• copy all mp3s and photos
  
• consolidate docs
  
• install office 2004
  
• install firefox, camino, thunderbird?, cyberduck, firstclass
  
• install bootstrap and pc partition
  
• install win xp
  
• install ootp, logos, openoffice.org?
  
• snag ms photo editor
  

thanksgiving number 1

number 1 of 3 i guess. we visited lindsay's family this weekend and had a great time at the new cabin.

the new cabin is a-ma-zing. luxury cabin indeed. there are 4 bedrooms, but with some bunk beds and pull out sofas, the thing can sleep 14. i need to have some kind of friend reunion and rent it out for the weekend with all of our friends and kids converging on the scene.

we ate a lot of the traditional food and i even had some cranberry stuff that wasn't bad! (it had the taste and texture of breyer's strawberry ice cream.) some of the family didn't bother to show up or call, but what are you going to do? family is still family in my book. you only get one family and you have to overlook their faults and love them anyways. i'm thankful for lindsay's family, for how much i feel a part of their family, and for all that they have done and continue to do for us.

friday night we drove down, sat parked on the interstate for an hour after a bad wreck (the life-flight helicopter parked on the interstate), drove slow through a few miles of one lane construction traffic, and ate dinner at ruby tuesdays. saturday we met with an insurance agent and finally got some real life insurance. i had some while working at the pto, but that ended when i left. then we drove up to the new cabin and everybody and their brother was shopping in pigeon forge. we ate some food, dozed through the end of the ut game and the beginning of the iron bowl and osu/um game. we got home late and crashed and then just went ahead and headed back home sunday morning instead of going to church. we had multiple errands to run and there's no telling when we would've gotten home otherwise.

this next week, we'll be heading down to nashville for the whole thanksgiving weekend. we'll have a thanksgiving meal at each of my parents' houses on thursday and i hope to show lindsay some nashville sights on friday and saturday.

anniversary weekend

ok, i meant to finish this monday, but it's been a busy week at work. anyways, dad came in for the weekend, L and i got to go on a date by ourselves, and i ordered a new toy.

on friday, i swung by best buy to pick up a universal laptop power adapter ($89!!) since a friend checked out my power cord and said it was transmitting zero power. when i got home, i tested the new cord out and the power light came on for a second. however it went off just as fast, never to appear again.

dad was still on his way into town so we headed out to meet him for dinner at macaroni grille (mmm yummy). we snagged bruster's ice cream on the way home and hung out for the rest of the evening.

on saturday, we ventured back to the cottage cafe to show dad our new found down home breakfast. it was yummy again. we watched cartoons at home for a little while and then (for whatever reason) we went to wal-mart at about their busiest time of the week to get a few things. what fun! we got home, jake laid down for a nap, and we started getting ready for our big date by ourselves after a bit. we figured if we left for dinner at 5pm then we could catch a 7pm movie instead of a 9pm movie (we just ate a light lunch). we went to yamamoto, a japanese hibachi place that we hadn't tried yet. i had a nice plate of sushi and we both had the filet - so velvety smooth and tender! afterwards, we went to see will ferrell's new movie: stranger than fiction. we both really liked it. it was cool to see ferrell in a different type of character. jake was excited to see us when we got home :-)

on sunday, we went to church and then went to cheddar's (a local bar and grill that's supposed to be really good). it was pretty good, but i'll have to try a few more items before giving it the thumbs up all the way. dad took off monday as well so the afternoon did not consist of dad having to hurry on back to nashville. it was nice to just be able to hang out for a little while longer. jake fell asleep on the way home from lunch so he only napped for about an hour. dad helped me do some commish stuff for the fantasy fantasy baseball league i'm in (see bsbl on the right sidebar). in the evening, we played dominoes while watching a movie (just friends - eh.) and then we introduced dad to our sunday night shows.

on monday morning, since both the power cord and power connector on my laptop were apparently shot, we ordered a new macbook! i had been waiting on the new intel core 2 duo processors to be announced and what do you know, at the same time, they bumped the ram to 1 gig and the hard drive to 80 gigs! and they lowered the price! anyways, i can't wait to play with it. the intel processors on macs allow you to be able to install windows on a separate partition so i now have a more workable solution for running my logos bible software for school. i'll probably move all of our music (and photos?) over to it and it will have a little camera for video chatting too!! grandparents, get yours now!

happy anniversary to us!

4 years today! i left work early, got a dozen roses, and surprised lindsay for lunch (we work an hour away from each other; 30 minutes from home in opposite directions). good times!

i love my family

picture time!!
click 'continue reading...' to see my beautiful family.

GO VOTE

yes, i used capital letters.

i got to the polling place at just a shade past 6am and it took about 20 minutes because they didn't get the second machine (the touchscreen one) running until right after i finished voting. after i nagged her enough, lindsay went as well and i found out it was actually her first time to be in this type of voting booth (the standard one to me). when we went together in november of 2004 (with 8 month old jake in tow), we used these weird old voting booths that i think actually punched a hole in a ballot.

anyways, get out and vote today!!

weekend

not too busy, just a good weekend with the family.

we had a pretty good weekend of relaxing and hanging out as a fam. while on campus last wednesday, i ran into a former co-worker who had started around august. we were building a friendship and then i left. anyways, he invited us to come over and have dinner with his wife and four kids under the age of five (yep, read it again. big families are cool.). we had an awesome time, they're all really sweet, and jake played together awesomely with the other kids.

on saturday morning, we had breakfast in nicholasville at a diner like place that is always packed with cars. after eating the food, we realized why - yum! the place was very sociologically interesting to me. it seems like its our own 'cheers' type place. almost all the patrons were male and looked like they came there multiple times a week. i'll have to go back and see if i recognize any of the same faces. after we got back, lindsay went out to a wedding shower and i worked on hw. in the afternoon, we watched the lsu-ut game. it stinks to lose, but it was a good, close game. i'll take a 2-loss season after last year. now about that arkansas team...

saturday evening, we watched 'the breakup'. it was alright. standard mass-market chick flick faire, but vince vaughn was kinda funny. a lot of men are from mars, women are from venus kind of dialogue.

sunday was church, then lunch at a fast food place we'd never heard of but sounded pretty good. jake and lindsay rested while i worked on some more hw and then we got ready for some pictures. a friend at our small group is doing some pro photography and we had him do a family photo shoot for us in a park in our subdivision. i think we'll have quite a few good pics out of it. sunday evening, we watched the last episode of a grey's anatomy netflix disc so we could return it (season 2, episode 5 - the one where george does open heart surgery in a stuck elevator. the episode i was looking for!), 7th heaven, desperate housewives, and brothers and sisters. yes, a full night!

looks can be deceiving

it's not as warm as it looks outside today.

standing at the window, it's sunny outside with a nice fall breeze. stepping outside, the breeze blows you over while sending a chill up your spine and chatter in your teeth. it's a pretty day, but it helps to have a little coat of some kind.

the week is going good. the beginning of my weeks are so busy that the rest of the week is pretty restful. i think we're already past the halfway point in our classes. it goes so fast! i've got some end of semester projects so i really need to be thinking about those.

how has your week been?