I was living the bachelor lifestyle again for a couple of days. Jaime had to go to UVM on Thursday through tonight to attend her Master's classes for VMI. I bowled on Thursday night. We did really well, even though Tony wasn't there and Brad left after the first game because he was feeling sick. It always seems that when we bowl well, the other team bowls even better. And when we suck, the other team sucks too, but not as bad as us. The scores we got this week would have gotten us 4 games on almost any other week, but we only took one.

I didn't make any real updates to the website. I futzed around a bit on Thursday night trying to figure out how to get my search box to be up in the header instead of the sidebar, but my inexperienced attempts at manipulating CSS were futile. I will probably try it again but for now will leave it as is.

I went to Burlington with Chris this morning. He had a gift certificate to the Men's Wearhouse he wanted to use to get a jacket. I went along for the ride. I stopped into the mobbed Christmas Tree Shop and picked up some new Christmas lights, since I know that we will have some duds this year when I put up the lights. It seems like I just barely took them down. I also picked up a pack of blank CDs that I needed and a few other odds and ends. We ate lunch at the Longhorn steakhouse. My French Onion soup was good, but the Texas burger that I got was a disappointment. We were back by about 2:30.

When I got home I cleaned the house a bit and made a couple of shepherd's pies. We will eat one and give the other one to Jaime's grandfather. He doesn't get a lot of home cooking and it is easy to make two if you are making one.

We got our first real snow this week. It hit Thursday when I knew that Jaime was going to be driving down to Burlington. Of course, I hadn't put the snow tires on the Prius yet. So I was a little nervous. I called her at school and told her she should probably switch cars. She swtiched out cars with her mom, and I kept the Prius. Her mom took our Corolla which has all-season tires on it. We were glad she helped us out. I got an appointment for next week to put the snow tires on the Prius. I am going to see if I can buy my grandfather's snowblower off of him to save my back from shoveling this winter.

Jaime and Julie got back around 6:30 tonight. We unpacked the cars and headed out to Morgan. Julie and Travis's new restaurant just opened this week and we wanted to try it out. So I got to finally see the Seymour Lake Lodge. It is their new business venture that they are taking over. It is a Bed and Breakfast with a restaurant, although the restaurant hasn't been open for a while, I think.

The food there was really good. Julie's cousin Keith is the chef, and they have a couple of part time waitresses. I was really impressed seeing as they just barely opened and haven't really gotten into the swing of things yet. Julie got the homemade ravioli stuffed with chees and portabello mushrooms. Jaime had the cocount shrimp and had bacon wrapped scallops as an appetizer. I had some hot wings (drenched in hot sauce with homemade bleu cheese dressing) for an appetizer, and had a stuffed pork chop for my entree. I also got sweet potato fries and mac and cheese for the sides. The sweet potato fries were very good. I think if their food is that good, with the prices they have, they should do well. We are going to see if my parents want to give it a try sometime.

I edited a batch of photos I took of Ryan's Birthday party this summer and am currently sending them to Flickr. Jaime's mom had asked me to put them up there a while back and I have been slacking off. So I was reminded that I needed to upload them after I was so quick to post the pictures I took of Jakob last week. I have hundreds of pictures on my local disk that need to be gone through and uploaded. It is time consuming, but worth it. I like to have them on Flickr in case something catastrophic was to happen to my home computer. At least I would have the back up on Flickr. It is also cool to see people viewing them and other people being able to see them. Plus, it is not very expensive to order prints there either.

I'm going to see if they are done uploading then go to bed.

Our trip to see Jakob went very well. Mom and Dad picked us up and we stopped in Littleton on the way down to do a Wal-mart run. Jaime and I got a bunch of Christmas boxes and tags/tape etc. to prepare us for wrapping presents. We also hit our normal guilty pleasure of rummaging through the $5 DVD bin a ended up getting about 10 more DVDs for our collection. And of course, we had to stock up on kitty litter for the stupid cat. We got out of the store before mom and dad were done shopping. I thought I would be nice and drive the Jeep around to the front of the store to pick up mom and dad on their way out. Dad came out first and headed for where we used to be parked. About 10,000 old people staggered in front of me into the store, so I couldn't get over to him in time.

Jaime and I are heading out to travel down to Loudon to see Jenn, Tom, Raechel, and of course, the new baby, Jakob. Mom and Dad are picking us up in a few minutes. Jaime has a really bad headache now, so hopefully it will get better on the way down.

Yesterday, Jaime participated in a "Hunter's Breakfast" fundraiser and had to get up a 3:15 in the morning. I must have been really tired because I didn't even wake up until 11:00, which is like the first time that has ever happened in my life. I got all my chores and grocery shopping done yesterday because I knew we would be going to New Hampshire today.

We're outta here...