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My oldest brother is getting married today. Congrats to Frank and my condolences to Patti and her family ;-)

Nothing else to say about it really.

I have to admit that I’m an American Idol fan. I’ve watched the show for the past few seasons although I usually can’t stand any of the singers, hardly ever vote and actually don’t ever buy the winners CD’s. This last season, however, was the exception. Taylor Hicks is exceptionally good and Chris Daughtry was definitely above par. My wife picked up both CD’s for Christmas and I’ve been listening to ‘em a bit the past few days. Daughtry is decent and well worth the cost of the CD. Hicks is superb. “The Right Place”, “Soul Thing”, “Gonna Move”, “Heaven Knows” and “Dream Myself Awake” have quickly become favorites and I’m definitely looking forward to seeing more in the future, especially some of Hicks original songs.

Atom Publishing Protocol Draft #12 has been published. Diff’s here.

Well, Christmas was a hit. The kids made out like bandits of course with the six year old getting his first computer, the four year old getting a new collection of baby dolls and the one year old getting a wide assortment of Little People toys and other wonderful things. My wife walked away with some new clothes, some new stuff for the kitchen, a gift certificate to go buy more clothes and a few othes odds and ends. For me a stack of new DVD’s to keep me busy for a while (24 season 5, A Bit of Fry and Laurie season 1, Superman returns, DaVinci Code, Pirates of the Caribean 2, and several others. A few months ago I decided that I was going to start learning French so my wife picked up some CD’s and a English-French dictionary to help me along. All in all some good loot.

Of course, all of that is nice, but the real blessing is just being able to be here around my family. With five generations living within 30 miles holidays are usually quite nice. We didn’t get to spend a lot of time with my folks today because of sick kids (didn’t want to pass anything along to my 94 year old great-grandmother or any of the other kids, especially since my brother is getting married in a week and all of the kids are in the wedding!). But, I did stop in for a short while to say hi, drop off some presents and eat a bit of turkey.

There is a possibility that things could change a lot over this coming year. We *might* end up spending next Christmas in a new house up at Oak Harbor, Washington (on Whidbey Island). Things may or may not work out with that; there is a LOT that would have to fall into place for it to happen. But if it does it will be good in many ways. I’m both excited at the possibility and a bit wary at the thought of moving out of the Central Valley. I’ll keep y’all posted as to how things evolve.

Update: Elias called me today and asked why I would want to move away from the family. We’d only be half moving away from family. My wife has aunts, uncles, cousins and a grandmother who live up within about 30-45 miles of Whidbey Island and her folks actually want to move up there also. We be moving away from my parents, brothers, etc which sucks for me but we’re still close enough to fly down for a visit a couple of times a year.

Update 2: Regarding the **potential** move to Washington, Sam pinged me today and asked if I was going to work for a certain large technology company based in the Seattle area. The answer is a definite no. All I can say right now (because there are still many details that need to fall into place) is that an irresistible real estate opportunity as opened up and we’re exploring a number of possibilities. The fact that I work from home full time combined with the fact that my wife is a Stay-at-home Mom means that we can pretty much go anywhere we want without having any major job or financial disruptions.