An incredible reason to be thankful…
the arrival of Bjorn William Anderson, born on Thanksgiving evening. (Pictures will be uploaded either late Friday or sometime Saturday, when the new father has a moment to get to his laptop.)
Thankful to be away from the big city
As I sit here in a small coffee shop run by friends of my parents, catching up on the news from outside this small community in northeast Wisconsin, I am grateful to be far removed from large populations bent on being the first in line to buy whatever item must "absolutely be had." I have to admit that there are times the deals are too great to pass up; that is why I am thankful to be in a position where I can't even be tempted to stray from home in the hopes of finding the "deal of the year," only to become frustrated by long lines and rude behavior. Every year I am amazed how the behavior of this day of bargains stands in stark contrast to the day before -- one where we give thanks for what we are blessed with (not what we desire to have) and for the people who surround us. I wish those good tidings could last longer than the scant 24-hours on the fourth Thursday in November.
my newest obsession
So I probably should have posted about this last week, but what can you do when your life is as busy as mine? [Enter laughtrack here.] Anyway, my Dell laptop, which had treated me well for several years, finally saw the end of its tired life about three months ago. I tried everything short of replacing the motherboard to revive it, but it was having none of that. Thankfully, I had my work laptop to keep my fingers busy and my connection to the internet without cords, but I didn't want to play around too much with that laptop for fear of putting it into a catatonic state that would definitely but a kink in my productivity at Logic. So I slowly began looking at laptops. In all honesty, I was really just looking at one -- the Apple PowerBook. The question remained, though, do I go 12", 15", or 17"? When I would spec out my ideal laptop, I realized that when I added all the features to a the smaller varieties that I would "need", I was getting very close to the price of its next bigger sibling. But then a miraculous thing happened; Apple decided to condense it's PowerBook line by offering all the higher-end features as standard across the board. Now there was less of a choice. But I still wanted to be sure.
So a week ago Friday, Janna and I headed to the Apple store to give the notebooks a test drive. Immediately, I realized the 17" was just too big. It felt clumsy and cumbersome. The 12" was just too small. But, like Goldilocks, the 15" was just right. The only thing that kept me from buying it that night was that I couldn't put a larger hard drive in it at the store, like I could online. So I went home to "think about it." I lasted until Sunday night before actually placing the order (I am rather proud of myself for taking that long to decide).
Last week was excrutiating as I waited to receive the email notifying me that it shipped. Apple was claiming that it wouldn't arrive until Monday, November 14 and I would have given just about anything to receive it before the weekend. However, thanks to the wonders of FedEx, I didn't have to do anything. My laptop left Shanghai at 11:34 AM on Wednesday, November 9, stopped in Anchorage and Indianapolis along the way, and arrived at Logic Product Development at 8:58 AM on Thursday, November 10. Simply amazing!
Well, needless to say I am enjoying my new toy. I hope that it will serve me well over the coming years -- though I really have little doubt that it will be just fine. The only problem is that I may not enjoy going back to my Windows machines quite as much as I once would have.
“Sozzled Elks”
Matt, my roommate, showed me this news article last night and it just made me laugh. Also, no one can write headlines and captions quite like the British.
Loft Tour
This last Saturday I went on the Twin Cities loft & condo living tour with my friends Ryan and Jen. It was so much fun to dream big as we visited each new model. Obviously, some were nicer than others or met our expectations more precisely, but they were all pretty amazing feats of architecture and design. Of the 8 or 9 that we visited, The Groveland and the International Market Square stops had to be my favorites. I have always dreamed of living in a loft-style home at some point in my life, I just don't know if I can ever afford the $250,000 and up pricetags that come with them. But, hey, ignoring those pricetags is what dreaming is all about.