Fairly Symmetrical

So yes, we're back in Austin again. Of course, I'm popping out to Phoenix later this week, and working the weekend, but it's all good because it means I get Jen's birthday as comp time.

I have the ROTK EE. And it is good. :)

The drive up to Louisville was seriously the least fun drive I've ever had in my life. Things were going great, a little rain, but I was bopping through Arkansas with the radio going when the temperature dipped below freezing. The road froze pretty much immediately, and then the rain turned to snow, and we had hard packed snow on top of ice on the roads. And then we had a shitload of cars in the ditch, the median, and occasionally the trees. It was a very convincing argument against buying an SUV, I'll tell you that much--all the cars I saw off the road were upright, but none of the SUVs were still on all four wheels. It took me 4 hours to go 90 miles just west of Memphis, that's how bad it got. The best part is that there wasn't a single snowplow or salt truck that I saw in Arkansas, and the ones in Tennessee were spreading salt (by which time it was below 18° F--genius, guys) but not plowing (very helpful...) Eventually, after about 9 hours of white-knuckle snow and ice driving, I gave up and sacked out at a Motel 6 (whose manager was kind enough to waive their policy of one dog per room). By the next morning TN and KY had managed to plow one lane (note: not always the same lane. I'd drive 15 miles in the right lane, then have to dodge over to the left lane for the next 15 miles. I bet the semi drivers were even more delighted than I was) pretty much the whole way. So the trip ended up taking about 24 total driving hours instead of the 16-17 it would have had the temperature stayed above 32. Lovely. But at least I survived it unharmed.

It was a nice vacation, though. I got to see my family more than I expected, which was nice; I especially liked hanging out with Ryan. Christmas day was busy as anything; Jenny's whole family came over to my parents' house for dinner, so the place was pretty packed.

I think my favorite was New Year's Eve, though; we headed back out to my parents' house and hung out with my mom and my dad's mom, drank a lot, had a dinner consisting entirely of appetizers and cheesecake, and played 4-person Gamecube games until 1 in the morning. It rocked. :)

So we're here, ready to start the new year. I hope everyone else's holiday was good, and everyone had fun.

Tonight has been spent repairing our Tivo; the hard drive is dying, and it's just barely out of warranty. So I took the opportunity to crack it open and put in a new hard drive, 3 times larger than the old. :) I also dropped a new drive into our server (the old, small one being full) and a new power supply into my desktop (the previous one having died in like October), so it's been all about Mr. PC Repair Man tonight.