November 30, 2009

Last day before December and the start of the Christmas season. Time to be singing carols and trimming the tree and baking cookies. Speaking of cookies, I spent Sunday morning making my favorite Christmas cookie to enjoy for the next few weeks. Check out the photo

We spent the week of Thanksgiving in Madison, WI with Jo's sister, Kathy. Her other sister - Mary - and brother-in-law joined everyone for the beginning of the week and it was great for Jo to have the chance to catch up on all the family news. Plus I didn't have to talk that much since the three sisters were doing enough for everyone - at least that was my observation. Her brother Bill also came up on the Sunday before Thanksgiving so that most of the clan was together (just missing her brother John from Colorado). The photo is everyone - minus Kathy who was the designated photographer. Going clockwise from the bottom left - Jo, yours truly, Mike, Mary, Sean (Mary and Mike's eldest son who lives in Madison), and Bill.

I had a very relaxing time during our stay, as always, since I spent my week playing computer games, reading books, and napping. Almost in even portions of each. As always, I decided that I could really handle that pace full time and was ready to call up Pfizer and tell them where to send my final check. I did manage a few constructive efforts during the week helping install some new lights for Kathy.

Jo and I met with our architects and got excited about renovating our house in Madison again. We came up with some new ideas to try and get to the laundry room out of the basement as well as some modifications for the third floor guest suite. Had a great time and the architect was incredibly encouraging about being able to get everything we wanted planned out and through the zoning approval process. We walked out very charged about the house and ready to do it now. Which won't happen, but it was nice to get excited about it again.

Thanksgiving dinner consisted of turkey with all the trimmings and was delicious. It is a shame that cleaning up a turkey afterwards is such a pain otherwise I could really see making it more often. Very tasty and there are few things better than stuffing with gravy all over it. Our last day in Madison, Kathy and Jo hit the stores to take advantage of the Black Friday sales while I installed some landscape lighting for Kathy to light up her walkway steps a bit better for visitors. Then it was back home to the realities of work. Our flight home went smoothly which is always nice and we managed to sort through the mail and get unpacked quickly.

Jo then had to turn around and pack for a week on the road in New York. Although with the Christmas windows on display this is one of her favorite times to be in New York - makes her morning runs more enjoyable as she tries to wind her way past all the best windows. I'm in town with a full calendar of meetings to catch up for relaxing last week. This Friday is my group's holiday party. Then, we are planning to put up our Christmas tree this coming weekend and hopefully will get the whole house decorated in the two days we have. Stay tuned for the photo montage.