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The only problem with this video is that there’s one person missing:

If only Christmas 2009 could be like this (plus me – I’m hiding in one of the boxes, yeah, that’s the ticket!):

We miss you, Pete! Merry Christmas out there!

Or what I did on my summer vacation. So, it’s been a while since I last posted anything of meaning here. The summer has been pretty good so far. I have enjoyed having my Saturdays to myself, free from the troubles obligations of grad school. I’ve also enjoyed many Sundays watching NASCAR and IndyCar races regularly for the first time ever.

Speaking of TV, let me start by saying that I have now picked up a few series over the past two months. The biggest series I’ve been watching all summer is NCIS. With USA airing 3 reruns back-to-back-to-back every weekday, I started watching the show with Chris when I would get home from work. We’ve completed the first season thanks to Netflix. I’ve even gone so far as to create episode lists in Evernote to check off episodes as I’ve watched them. I have also gotten hooked on Burn Notice, Big Love and True Blood. I don’t know that I will get very far into these shows before I kiss my free time goodbye, but they certainly are entertaining me until then.

At the end of June, Chris and I flew out to DC for NECC 2009, an educational technology conference. While I had my trip paid for by work, we had to pay for Chris to attend the conference out of our pocket. The conference was pretty good, and we got to see a little more of DC once again. If you’re in DC, I would recommend Matchbox – not for their mediocre pizza, but for their delicious mini burgers. While we were out there, we also saw the Independence Day fireworks on the National Mall. I was disappointed, especially when compared to the Taste of Chicago fireworks. Hell, I think even the Septemberfest fireworks were better, even with the historic surroundings of DC. You can check out my Flickr photo set to see what I mean.

Shortly after returning from DC, we spent a weekend downtown at the Omni Hotel for our anniversary. Over the past few years I have stayed at all sorts of hotels, and I was very impressed with the Omni Chicago. For starters, @OmniHotels was quick to welcome us after I tweeted that we were heading to the hotel for the weekend. When we were at dinner the first night, Jennifer Avellana, the Loyalty Ambassador, surprised us with a bottle of champagne and a slice of chocolate cake for our anniversary.

The day of our anniversary, we had a couples massage at Asha Salon Spa at the James Hotel. It was very relaxing, getting us ready for our anniversary dinner. That night, we went to dinner at Smith & Wollensky, with a great view of the Chicago River. Since it was our anniversary, we went all out, of course. We split a bottle of wine recommended by the somelier. The wine was a perfect pairing with Chris’s rib eye and with my fillet mignon and lobster. We passed on dessert because we had stuffed ourselves. Later that night, while watching a movie, we ordered ice cream from room service. The lavishness of the day brought us back five years to our honeymoon cruise.

As summer is starting to wind down, I am playing catch up with several things I want to accomplish before the fall. For example, I am still slowly cleaning my office, a painstaking task that is three years old. I am also prepping my computers for OS upgrades. Outside of my office, I am trying to be social, helping out with Normal Moments publicity (want to buy a raffle ticket for The Little Things in Life walk?), and just enjoying what’s left of my free time. The other day I spent most of the day downtown with Herschell and Liana, seeing the sights, taking some photographs (which I promise will be posted soon). I’m hoping I will have some more days like that before classes start up, because I’m sure that I will once again have zero free time.

Anyway, my rambles have gone on long enough. After I finish assisting Chris with an Access project for RtI, I’m heading to bed.

Yesterday was Mother’s Day. We invited my family over, mostly because my sisters and I are horrible at planning nice stuff, partly because we’re all poor, too. I cooked up the beef pot roast because that’s just about the only nice thing I can make. It was an exhausting 5 hours, but a delicious meal came out of it. Plus, we have leftovers! That’s something that we almost never have when I make this, and that also means that I have dinner for tonight already.

A few funny things happened yesterday. The first: Mel showed up early. The second: Mel asks me, "Since when did you watch NASCAR?" The third and final one I will share: Mel goes, "So what’s this?" and motions around her mouth, referring to my facial hair. For another ten or fifteen minutes, I am the butt of jokes, including Chris repeatedly pointing out that several of her students like what I’ve done to my face. Yup, that’s right, I am the envy of a few high school students. Joy!

We’ll see if I can keep up the blog posts. I’ve got summer break from grad school in about a month, which theoretically means I will have more free time. I might actually have the free time, but I might not choose to blog with it. We’ll see what happens.

From the title of the post, you can guess it has to do with one of two things: appliances that play music, or a nonsensical moving around of appliances. Unfortunately, this post is about the latter.

I have had mega home repair FAIL so far this weekend, and not just once, but three times! There is an update below, from after Jeff came to help Tim and me.

So, yesterday was Mother’s Day. I got my mom a chocolate gift basket-type deal from Hersheys.com. Pretty good chocolate, which included a one pound bar of chocolate with a custom message hand-written on it. Way early in the morning we went to the Mother’s Day brunch at Chandler’s for Chris’s family. That was pretty good, with a hell of a lot of food. My only problem was the one and a half hour maximum seating time, which, thankfully, was loosely enforced. Also, the waffles were a little chewy, rather than light and fluffy.

And then came the attempt to have a nice dinner at Pappadeaux Seafood Kitchen. Read on to read more about my mixed feelings about that experience.
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