Christmas is behind us...

Here we are dressed up for our Welcome Home for the Holidays party last week.

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I've been home for 12 days, and am finally to a point where I can relax a bit and catch up. The family obligations are behind us, and it looks like things aren't in too bad a shape at the house.

Flight home was uneventful, although the train ride to Frankfurt was. Franz climbed in the train and made a semi-spur of the moment decision to ride with me to the airport. Made for a nice 4 hours and a good dinner & a great way to be seen off. Texas has been in a cold-snap since I arrived, with nighttimes around freezing and some days not getting much above freezing.

The party was terrific with about 60 people showing up, tons of food, and lots of cheer. We went through 6 bottles of champagne, about 10 bottles of wine, and lots of liquor & beer. I was a bit ticked that some of my coworkers that are a lot of fun couldn't make it, but it happens. Cleanup wasn't bad, but its not quite over. After the party we went right up to Dallas for a holiday break weekend with my family.

That weekend went well, as did this weekend with Chaz's family. Christmas eve we went to the Armadillo Christmas Bazaar, a live-music slash gift shopping thing at the Austin Music Hall, and saw the Texana Dames while shopping. Was something distinctly Austin, and made me really glad to be home.

There've been some other moments that have caused me to reflect on things here, but I'm not going to go into great depths here. Hopefully we can get some warmth outside and I can take out the motorcycle.

I'm glad to be here, and at the same time miss some of my new friends in Munich. There's some politics going on with the work project, so I'm heading back there January 15th, though I'm not quite delighted about it. I had an interesting call from the botique consulting firm in CA that I do some work with. They've got a project kicking off in Hawaii. 2005 may be prove to be very interesting indeed.