Boulder to London

Wow…I can’t believe it’s been a few weeks since I’ve put anything up.  I guess I’ve been out of town a bit, busy with work and getting ready for the holidays.  On the out of town and work bit, I spent the last two weeks in Cork, Ireland which appears to be a lovely place, however as usual, I got to see the hotel and the client’s office and little in between.  To make it worse, we’re approaching the shortest day of the year and in Cork, this means it is definitely dark when you leave in the morning and dark when you return.  The project is almost done other than a workshop the first week of January, so I’ll have to return in the summer months to really get to know the place.

On the getting ready for the holidays front, Melisse and I went out and found a tree yesterday to put up in our living room.  The first notable thing about the tree is that it was sold as a 7 foot tree, which really means 4.5 ft tree with 2.5 feet of bare trunk extension with no branches anywhere near.  The second thing about our tree is that it was very heavy and we decided to carry it home so we wouldn’t have to wait the 4 hours for it to be delivered.  We only live a few blocks from the place we got it, but it took both of us to haul the thing home, get it through the front door and into the stand.

We haven’t had a tree since the Christmas we spent in Fort Collins in 2006 when we got all the snow.  Last year we had a tiny apartment and were going to Barcelona for the week of Christmas anyway.  The year before, we were in our place in Boulder and spent Christmas in Costa Rica.  I’m feeling very good about being a bit more settled to the point where we could actually put up a tree and get a few decorations for it.  Melisse’s brother G.R. and his girlfriend Samantha are joining us for the next few weeks and we’re excited to have some family around.