Time for a little catch up on things that I’ve missed for one reason or another.
First off, this picture was taken when Miranda was visiting a couple weeks ago. This is her little girl Lorelei, who just turned 1 year old on the 24th of December! She’s a really sweet little girl, and it was great to be able to see her again when they came through.
While I was up in Anchorage, I was able to do some running around and visiting my old haunts, and I took a few pictures while I was there. I took this shot of the mailbox just because so many people don’t seem to understand why I’m so thrilled to be in Seattle now. Well — see all that snow? Piled up almost all the way to the bottom of the box itself? That’s why I like being in Seattle! :D Not to mention the temperatures that suddenly dropped down into the below-zero range one night. Admittedly, there are other reasons…but that’s a very prominent one. I got to slog through more snowdrifts in the weekend I was up there than I’d thought I’d even see this winter…ah, well, I’m back in 40-degree weather now. Enough whining.
Anyway, I got a pretty decent shot of Candice while we were in the car. I dunno if she’ll try to kill me or not when she finds out I put this picture up, but I thought it was worth doing. She’s actually still up in Anchorage right now, but is flying back down here tonight. Being able to spend Christmas with her was very cool, but we were both looking forward to being back in Seattle. Both of us are much happier in a bigger and warmer city — more to do, and better temperatures to do it in.
I wanted to stop by the mall where TimeFrame used to be while I was there, so that was one of the first places we hit. First surprise — the whole thing’s blue! Baby blue, even! Ugh. Then I get to the doors, and they’re remodeling the entire inside of the mall, too, so everything’s all ripped to shreds. The doors were unlocked so I went ahead and wandered in to take a look. As I was walking down the hall, there was a banging at another door — turns out it was Rob Thomas, my old boss. His dad Brett (the owner of TimeFrame) was there too, so I got to spend a couple minutes talking to them. They both seem to be doing fairly well under the circumstances — they’ve scaled back to a 5 employee business just focusing on oversize color and lamination, and I think they’ll do a lot better that way. The impression I got was that they’re much better small business owners than big business — so even though the failure of TimeFrame was a blow, I think it’ll most likely be a lot better for them in the long run, and they seem to be realizing that also.
Saturday I spent first with Candice and her family for dinner, then we went out to ‘Koots and I was able to see a few of my friends — some of whom I hadn’t even told I was going to be there! Richard, Rachael, Stacey and James all showed up, and I also ended up running into Jason (an ex-roommate), Gillian and Jason Buck (old friends from the clubs), and even Courtney Ramsay (who I went to high school with)! Candice also found her friend Nick, and he apparently approves of me — always a good thing.
Since I’d had dinner with Candice and her family on Saturday, she came over for dinner on Sunday. I’m pretty sure my family liked her — if nothing else, she and Dad got caught up in conversation thanks to their common interest in religion. While I’m nowhere near as schooled as either of them when it comes to that, it was fascinating to listen to. After that we went back over to her house and hung out for a while, then after hitting VI for some late night munchies, I ran her back home and crashed out again.
Last-minute shopping was the order of the day for Monday. I picked Candice up and we headed out to brave the insanity of the 5th Avenue Mall on Christmas Eve day. Luckily, it wasn’t quite as bad as it could have been, and we managed to emerge relatively unscathed. After shopping we headed over to Candice’s friend Nick’s family’s house so that she could see him and his kiddo (Josh? I’m so bad at names…). That evening we went to Christmas Mass twice — once at Candice’s church, Gloria Dei Lutheran, and once at mine, Christ Church Episcopal (which is currently meeting out of member’s houses during the search for a new building…the page I linked to is somewhat out of date). In between the two, I got to go with Candice’s family to a party at their neighbor’s house — between dinner with her family, the party at Nick’s family’s place earlier, and this party, she got to parade me before a whole ton of people this weekend! I’m pretty sure I didn’t make too big of an ass out of myself at any point, though.
Finally, we made it to Christmas Day. Kevin had brought his friend Aart down from Fairbanks, and Candice came over after her family was done with their morning Christmas rituals, so we had a nice round of presents getting opened. Before Candice had to go back to her family’s house for Christmas dinner, she, Aart, Kev and I were able to duck out to Son of River City Billiards for the annual rounds of pool that Kevin and I have been doing whenever we had a chance for the past few years. Believe it or not, I even won a few games — even a couple without a scratch on the eight ball giving me the win! I was stunned! After Candice took us back home, she left, and dad finished up our Christmas dinner. I had to do a bit of an eat-and-run, unfortunately, but once I had some food in my system Kev ran me out to the airport.
With all the various troubles as of late and the resultant extra security at the airports, they’re recommending that travellers show up 2 hours early. This ended up working out really well for me — there were so few people travelling on Christmas day that as I checked in, they were able to bump me up to the next earlier flight, so I ended up flying out at about 5:45pm instead of 6:42pm! The flight down was bearable (but after the flight up, I don’t think I’ll ever be quite as blase about flying as I used to be), and because of the switch I was back in Seattle an hour earlier than I had expected. I caught a cab back up to my place…and that about catches up the Christmas weekend.
It was a lot of fun, and seeing friends and family again was great…but I’ve gotta say, I’m so glad I’m living down here now. Seattle is definitely much more ‘me’ than Anchorage ever was. And that’s it for now….