Back from vacation

I've been neglecting my blog a bit since we got back from the holidays. For a couple days, I was still recovering from the Fiesta Bowl. Then last night, I had the noblest of intentions to write something about visiting our families over Christmas. Unfortunately that was pre-empted by the season premiere of Beauty and the Geek (and is it just me, or does the CW/WB/UPN have the best reality shows?) Anyway, as you can see, I was much too distracted to write anything.

Well, here I am, sick of writing cover letters and needing a little break, so I guess it's time to tell you all about where Anne and I were over the holidays. We've fallen into a pattern over the past few years of seeing one of our families for Christmas and the other's either the week after or in January. This year, it was my family's turn for Christmas, so we headed up there on the train the Saturday before Christmas.

(For those of you who are interested, we did manage to hold Hobbitfest II a couple days before leaving. The menu was virtually the same as last year, although I had a beef pie instead of lamb. I'm way into the grass-fed meat after reading The Omnivore's Dilemma.)

When we're in Reno for Christmas we always do Christmas Eve dinner with my parents then head up to my aunt and uncle's on Christmas to have dinner with my mom's side of the family. It was great to see everyone, and we even got to see my mom because she came up from Vegas this year. The only drawback was that the smoking ban in Nevada apparently doesn't extend to my parents' house, so I started to develop a respiratory complaint that would follow me the rest of the trip.

The morning after Christmas, we caught a plane to Portland, where we rented a car and, after making a brief stop to visit Sarah and her kids, we headed for Eugene where we met Anne's mom and aunt. We spent the next couple days at her aunt's house in Marcola, a tiny town about 30 minutes outside of Eugene. There wasn't much to do, but she does have satellite TV, including a set in the guest bedroom. I'm really glad we don't have a satellite because I would watch TV all the time. I saw a lot of European soccer and also VH1's countdown of the top 20 metal bands of all time. (Iron Maiden placed a respectable third.) The only drawback of our time there was that her five cats predictably exacerbated by respiratory issues.

Our next stop was in Aberdeen, where we stayed with Franz and Ann. (Franz is the German fellow who gave a toast at our wedding.) They live on 17 acres of land outside of town, and it's always a treat to stay there and wander in the rain (because it's always raining) through the Douglas fir and hemlock surrounding the house. My aforementioned respiratory complaint peaked while we were there, so I also slept a lot.

We came home on the 30th, and after getting cleaned up immediately headed out on the town. We decided to economize this year on Christmas gifts, so our gift to each other was dinner and a concert that night. We went to the new downtown Oakland location of Breads of India for dinner, then headed to Yoshi's to see McCoy Tyner in concert. Yoshi's is one of the coolest places on earth to see live music -- it's a Japanese restaurant / jazz club -- and the concert was great. (How could it not be when there was a living legend on stage?)

We had a pretty low key New Years, having gone out the night before, and I've been spending the time since then trying to get back in the working mood, which has been helped by having a couple postdoc / job application deadlines next Monday. Speaking of which, I should probably go.... Next: New Year's Resolutions, 2007 edition.