We have all been through a roller coaster of feelings this fall. I doubt there is anyone who has not been touched by the financial crisis. Of course it continue to unfold.
Yesterday I heard about a lady pulling her home off the market after being told by a lender that she would have a hard time getting a construction loan for her new home. She decided it would be easier just to stay in her old home.
That story aside, I have to say that I think the holidays came off pretty well.
Retailers might not be happy with how little we purchased, but our family achieved its goal of not having such an expensive holiday. Not surprisingly it turned out to be one of our nicest family holidays. We mostly focused on the new granddaughter who did not complain about her gifts of formula and clothes.
We even managed to stay home and cook most of our meals. I ended up with dish washing duty since the grownup children quickly reverted to children in respect for their mother's kitchen accomplishments.
Even there we comprised a little and tried a pot roast in a slow cooker which turned out great. I am still enjoying leftover roast beef sandwiches.
We really enjoyed our family and aside from them keeping the television on the wrong channels to watch football, I miss them a lot. However, it is often better to end good times on a good note instead of pushing to the point of people getting on each others' nerves.
After the house was empty, we were invited out to a wonderful dinner at the home of some close friends. It was a pleasing transition from a full home to an empty one.
With two large dogs, four cats, and assorted human beings from the age of 5 months to 59 years, it was a challenge to keep everyone happy, but mostly we managed to do that for about a week.
I actually love the way we did our Christmas decorations this year. Our coastal home was decorated in about thirty minutes and put on timers. The Roanoke place was a little more complicated since the kids had to bring in a small real tree over their mother's objections, but it still took less than an hour to decorate. We probably got Christmas cleaned up in little more than an hour in total for both places.
On top of all this, I have a closing this week, which means there are some faint signs of life in the real estate world.
Finally, and this continues to amaze me, we have seen some great football games this year. I know my wife is about to scream from all the football, but all I can say is that American Idol will be here soon. We can count the remaining football games on a couple of hands, but there is no end to American Idol.
Even the weather, at least on the coast, has been very nice. We managed 70 degrees Fahrenheit recently which certainly makes winter a little shorter. Roanoke continues to avoid any serious winter weather so it is hard to complain very much.
For anyone needing a dose of beach, I recently updated my Coastal NC site and posted some wave and beach pictures to my Picasa Web Albums site.
Finally today is the first MacWorld without Steve Jobs. Apple without Steve Jobs, there is something that might be the source of major shock to some Apple fans.
Comments