Happy New Year

Cable modem is up and running. Looks about twice as fast as the DSL was, so that's nice.

We barely escaped the record snowfall in Dayton to get to my parents' house for Christmas. We had planned on leaving on Thursday, but when they kept revising the predicted snowfall higher and higher all day Wednesday, we took off work early and quickly packed, and were on the road by 5:00 Wednesday. I wanted to get north of the path of the storm before it all came down. There were already about 5 inches of snow on the ground when we left, and I suspect if we'd waited another hour, we wouldn't have made it. We made it to the other side of Indianapolis after about 4 hours of driving, spent the night, and drove the rest of the way the next day.

When we got up there, we found out that a cousin of mine, Amanda, who's currently living in Chicago, wasn't going to be able to make it home (about 25 minutes away from Dayton) because of the storm, so she came up to my folks' house also. After the last-minute shopping so she'd have something to open, I think she may have ended up with more presents than anyone else. :-)

Highlights of the haul this year: A copy of Murray Rothbard's Man, Economy, and State. The Marx Brothers Silver Screen Collection. A whole mess of Homestar Runner stuff - the Strong Bad Emails DVD set, a Trogdor polo shirt, the series 2 figurines, and a plush The Cheat, which makes The Cheat noises when you kick it. I bought myself a couple of Tom Waits CDs, and a Michael Hedges CD.