We spent Christmas at my mom’s house. The slot machine was a huge hit. My nephew Corey visited for the first time in years and I got to see his son Keegan all grown up, well as grown up as a 3 year old can be. He’s the same age as CJ so hopefully they can be playmates further on down the line. I also got to meet his daughter Haley Reese and she’s pretty much a clone of him. Sydney had a stomach bug and was carrying around a bucket all day.
On the 27th Sunghee and I picked up a minivan and headed to the Ikea. I got a Docent living room set, so my tv can finally get up off the floor. I cursed Elizabeth NJ, as everytime I go there I’m loading a truck. Sunghee went to get a loft bed for CJ and bed for herself, but they were out of stock so she ordered them over the phone when we got home. One the way home though I thought we hit some salt rocks or something as I kept hearing some knocking sounds. I thought it was from under the car, and I didn’t see any sparks in the mirrors so I figured that the muffler wasn’t dragging or anything. Sunghee thought it was the roof. We hit the Michael Cole rest area and found that part of the plastic weather stripping had broken free and was banging against the back window. It stayed put for the rest of the way so all was well.
The next two days were consumed with assembling Swedish furniture and rearranging the living room. Two of the hinges for the glass doors on my Docent cabinet were broken, but it’s all good because my receiver won’t fit in there with the doors on anyways. The 602’s sound amazing by the way.
New Years Eve was spent at First Night in Burlington. We arrived at 3pm or so and found that we had forgotten to order tickets for Echo with our buttons. We managed to talk our way in anyways. CJ really enjoyed the moving water boat thingy. Next we headed to Memorial Auditorium for Cicus Smirkus but they were all filled up. No problem, we’ll go across the street to Edmund’s and watch the puppet and magic shows. They were quite splendid. By now it was time for dinner. We had reservations at The Daily Planet. I had some of my art on display (thanks to Jenn Karson) a few years ago, but had never eaten there. Boy, what I have been missing. I had the Drunken Chicken and it was fantastic. Next we headed to Church Street and caught the Drums and Dragons parade and after that we headed to the Roxy for Loony Toons while we waited for the 7:15pm fireworks. Well, there were no Loony Toons at the Roxy, at least not when we were there. Instead we had Dinsey shorts which were quite good. I saw Ferdinand the Bull for the first time in about 20 years. We managed to get to the top of the parking deck just as the fireworks were ending.