Okay, I'm back.

Time has passed and some things have happened, but none of them are earth-shatteringly exciting - I swear.

Jesse was here to visit and we did a lot of driving around and looking at things and watched him take a lot of pictures. He's got a fancy new Canon PowerShot G9 and can't seem to put it down. Now he's in China for an undetermined amount of time, but he was excited and happy to go.

We had Thanksgiving at the bakery with my boss, co-worker Emily, her husband and some more of Shannon's friends. While it was nice have a big meal and do something other than work I helped with a lot of the preparations and most of the clean up, so it was kind of like being at work. There were two turkeys (one brined, one not), sweet potato gratin, gravy, mashed potatoes, some other stuff, and a bunch of pies - of which only three slices were eaten.

Emily had her baby. A little boy named Ethan Danger - healthy, content, home. I still haven't met him because I've been sick for the past week and decided a week old human probably doesn't need this.

George has put in something like 53 hours at work this week starting and finishing up the $10,000 shoebox. He tried to sucker me into sanding but it was no use. His boss called last night to tell him how good it looked. It's the kind of thing that I can't even begin to describe but hopefully he'll get some pictures of it before they bring it to the client.

We're slowly getting into the Christmas spirit here in the land of drab drizzly winters. We've been cranking out gingerbread people and houses at work, sugar cookies shaped like candy canes, Santa's hat, and snowflakes - which, interestingly enough, everyone here calls a star. To celebrate the birth of our fair Jesus we're thinking about hitting up a different beach this year, maybe south of here, possibly Santa Cruz, possibly for two days and a night, or maybe we'll just do a beach day trip. We haven't accepted the possibility of rain, but no one wants to be at the beach in winter when it's raining. Regardless, we'll be with Liz and maybe Iran and Anu? (nudge nudge)

I'm trying to figure out how to make Flickr and Blogger talk nicely so I can put more pictures up with less hassle...