Holy crap was work busy today, and right from the get-go at that.  After a bit I decided I had so much to do that if I answered all the phone calls I’d just get pulled in more directions and things would take even longer to go through, so I let people leave voice messages until I caught up on everything else.  I ended up with literally twenty voicemails.  I got through them pretty quickly though, as a number of them were issues that had already been taken care of.

In that time I did take a few minutes to finish up my e-mail conversation with Kristen, which I think we both agree was a good conversation.

Amanda wasn’t very hungry when she got home, but as I hadn’t eaten anything at all during the day I was.  She brought home a couple of muffins that her boss had brought to work this morning that nobody else wanted to take home, so I ate one of those.  It was a cranberry one.  Amanda saw that one had been eaten and thought it was a blueberry, but she was mistaken in that neither one was.  She ate the other one, which was a cranberry-orange muffin.

I talked to my dad today, and he’s trying to organize Christmas plans for our side of the family on Jackson’s birthday, the 23rd, which is a Sunday.  It should work out fine for us, but it’s a bit though for Andra because she’s got Josh’s dad’s family on Friday, she’s working on Saturday, then Jackson’s third birthday is Sunday, she works again on Monday and then she’s going to Josh’s mom’s on Tuesday, Christmas Day.  For us, we go to Amanda’s grandparents’ on Christmas Eve then usually stay at her parents’ that night, do presents the next morning then head to Rougemont, where my parents live.

Andra and I had talked about trying to do Christmas during the week in the days after Christmas Day, but the problem is that Erin, my other sister, who currently resides in Portland, Oregon, is coming to town from the fifteenth I think and leaving on Christmas Eve.  Erin, I love you, but this is the second year that I really wish you had checked schedules with the rest of us.

Last year we’d gotten my family to agree to come down to Wilmington to celebrate Christmas, which we wanted to do since it was our first year in our new house.  Mom and Dad were going to be in Charlotte for Jackson’s birthday then they were all going to drive here.  To accomplish this, we needed Erin to fly in to Charlotte while they were all there or to fly into Wilmington afterwards.  Instead, she flew into RDU the middle of Christmas Day, meaning that someone had to pick her up two and a half hours away from my house.

Anyway.

I was still hungry so I decided to have one of the plethora of steaks in the freezer.  I cooked it a little too fast until Amanda came to the rescue, but it ended up really good.  She was afraid that I’d ruined the pan, but I cleaned it out nicely.

We thought about going out or having some people over tonight, but it was dreary and rainy outside and so we didn’t feel too active.  We caught up on some TV, as usual, although I started dozing off pretty early.

Zach Dotsey