Happy 2008! It was good to spend some time back home for the first time since I moved down to Mississippi. I’m back in Biloxi now, having flown into New Orleans late on the 1st. It’s surprisingly cold here on the coast, and our house’s heater is struggling, but we should be back in the sixties by the weekend. Work is starting back up: yesterday it was just me and David and Mike in the office; today we added Jody, and I picked Sarah and James up from the airport this evening. In some exciting news, construction is just starting …

Home! And sleeping on an air mattress. Turns out I left and my parents decided to get another Dutch kid. (No, really. Jasper, a Dutch high school exchange student). My flights went smoothly — New Orleans to Charlotte to Roanoke. On the second leg, in the type of ridiculous coincidence that suggests the universe is playing games with us all, I ran into an old UVA friend, Amanda, who was my best friend’s roommate in first year, and who has gone on to get her Master’s and is now working on Ph.D. in English. You’re making the rest of us …

Getting into the culinary swing of the holidays by making gingersnaps for a Thanksgiving potluck lunch at work today (which I see as a training session for dinner) and planning my first attempt at making orange rolls, an excellent family recipe, for dinner with studio friends tomorrow. Aside from all of that, there will be Guitar Hero. Oh yes. Let there be Guitar Hero, and there shall be much rejoicing. Happy Thanksgiving!