After almost 1300 miles of driving this week, we are back home. I love the travelling, but I also love being able to put myself in my own bed, snuggling up with Darla and the dogs.

We thought we were gonna run into some severe weather on the trip back. However, it was smooth sailing, with the exception of one little shower near Sikeston. And, of course, if we passed through Sikeston, we had to stop at Lamberts. As always, the food was delicious, filling, and voluminous! I still think they make the best mess of frog legs of anywhere I’ve ever been.

So, home we are, and home we’ll be for a while. There’s no new travels on the horizon, despite some background wanderlust that’s always thumping in the background of my life. I can’t watch anything that deals with the picturesque western US without getting the itch to get on the road, cameras in hand, and photograph more of this wonderful country I’ve been blessed to have been dropped into.

Grandma’s stay with Mom came to end today, and it was time to whisk her back to Maryville. This was the longest time we’d been able to spend with her in a long time, and it was wonderful to enjoy her being around us for Christmas.

The trip to Maryville was uneventful. Along the way, we stopped at Frances’ place. It’d been a while since I’d seen her as well, and it was great to catch up a bit. I was able to leave a little of my art behind with her, and to me, that’s a great thing.

This was probably the most widespread family Christmas season I’ve had in a very, very long time. Between the Day family invasion and party, and then the Holley family connections being renewed during our trip, well, I’d color this as one of the best Christmases I’ve had in such a long time. As it should be, the gifts were really not the point of the season — it was the reconnection with family, and keeping those roots intact.

Today, PETA people from waaaay east of Chattanooga invaded the Scenic City to hand out “fashion felony” citations to folks downtown wearing fur, leather and other goods that they believe are animal-cruel. The “citations” required the folks to get out of these cruel clothes within 24 hours. It kinda appeared that one of the three folks were actually impeding folks’ progress down public sidewalks, and trying to talk over the top of anyone who had an opposing view. So, I guess they were kinda unlawfully detaining people.

However, to make the detention a little more bearable, PETA sent in the “fashion cops” — two scantily clad gals handing out the citations, leaving the hard conversation to the third member of their group.

Fun to look at maybe, but no one who has no lawful position over me has the right to stop me in public and keep me from going about my lawful business.

The humorous part of this was that they were basing their protest in an area of downtown that is well-known for its homeless population. I suspect those folks don’t have much choice in their clothing options!!!!!

I noticed today that many ‘Net sources are reporting that the iTunes store was a bit overwhelmed with the successful delivery of soooo many iPods on Christmas.

I can tell you that it was true. My niece was trying hard to use her shiny new iTunes gift card to load music on her shiny new iPod nano. Alas, there was no joy in Podville. After many attempts, she was unable to get logged in to use her card.

I’m sure things are starting to quieten down, and the iTunes store is getting back to normal, but it sure makes the recent rumors about the death of iTunes a little premature!

I drove Beck, Sio and Grandma to the Lusk today to visit Dad’s gravesite. This is always such a somber part of my trips home, and there are times when I just dread it. I know that I’ll feel like crap after being up there, but I know I need to keep going too. I need to keep as much of him alive in me as I can, and this is one way of doing that.

This was the first time Grandma had been on that part of the mountain in years. She used to walk all over the top of the mountain a decade or so ago, and it was nice to carry her around up there, and let her see it again.

She and I sat on the bench at the gravesite, and talked about Dad. Becky asked some really innocent questions about Mom and Dad as youngsters, and that opened the gates…. the stories just began to pour out.

It was kinda surreal to me. I mean, I’d sat around I-don’t-know-how-many gatherings with some subset of dad’s family sitting around, each of them telling tales on the others. This was just like that, and really brought back some great memories for me. I mean, with all the brothers Wright gone, there’s just not a whole lot of those reflective sessions happening anymore. Add to that that the stories are all second hand now, and, well…. it’s hard to bump into them anymore.

In a funny kind of way though, this was very healing for me, and I’m really happy that I travelled over to Lusk to see him. I have a feeling that the dread and darkness may be a little less next time.

Beck and I arrived safely on The Mountain last night. A safe trip, but long — made longer by some goofy traffic SE of Nashville. I couldn’t figure out what was going on, but we ended up in a line of traffic that must’ve been close to 10 miles long. And, with that length of traffic stopped, every car in line started to try moving at their own speed. So, we crept along, sometimes at 25mph, sometimes at 70mph. Weird….

We’re here safe though, and spending time with family. That’s the best Christmas present of all….

We’d planned church this morning, and before going, decided to let Sio open one of her Christmas gifts. There was a method to our madness. Beck and I picked her up her own Bible, including getting her name embossed on the cover, and figured that our church’s Christmas Eve service was the place to break it in. She was thrilled, and I believe she’ll find a lot of good guidance from it.

Our service this morning was full — full of folks and full of functions. We had a baptism, singing of carols, and took the Lord’s Supper. I can’t remember the last time I’d been in a service where the Lord’s Supper was offered…. I know it’s been a long time. It was a terrific service, very uplifting and worthy of the season.

We’ve spent the rest of the day preparing for Morgan’s brood to arrive a little later tonight, and getting the eats ready for the Day family Christmas, which we’ll be hosting tomorrow night. That’s always a good time, and I’m sure tomorrow will be no exception!

The folks at MacHeist have been running a deal all week, with a bundle of eight 3rd party Mac apps for $49. The cool part is that 25% of the gross would go to charities of the purchaser’s choice. BTW, I chose The Nature Conservancy.

The goal was to reach $100k for charity. To incent folks, at $50k for charity, they’d add another app to the bundle, and then at $100k, they’d open up another app. Well, as of this writing, the MacHeist folks have almost $175k for the charities selected by the purchasers, with about three hours left in the promotion.

This is very cool, and everyone wins. The coders of the apps get some exposure for their apps, the charities get money, and I get cool apps. This is a great concept, and I sure hope the MacHeisters come back and do this again next Christmas!!!!

Once upon a time, I was quite the audiophile. I babied my Japanese virgin vinyl albums, taped them, and cleaned and cleaned and cleaned by trusty albums to keep them safe and playable. I even invested in a linear tracking turntable to minimize the wear on the grooves as much as possible on the few occasions when I spun a platter. If there was a way to promote long life of my grooved friends, I was all for it.

A little bit of coolness has hit the turntable market, making my machinations look primitive now.

I found a new turntable that uses no stylus whatsoever to play the album. It’s done by a frick-in’ laser (with apologies to Mike Myers). ELP Corporation is marketing a laser turntable that promises to deliver audiophile quality without the use of a stylus. For you, they’ll sell it for $15,000.

Fifteen kilobucks?!

To top it off, they even have a declicker that can be added to cut out the pops and crackles in realtime. That’ll set ya back another $2800.

So, for slightly less than $18k, you can listen to your vinyl in as pristine a fashion as is possible. I know there’s a bunch of audio pundits out there that talk about the “warmth” of analog sound — vinyl and tubes — and I wonder if this combination of devices puts you more on the warm side of that equation. You are, after all, reading the vinyl, but there’s a whole bunch of electronic matter between the disc and your ears.

While this is cool, and at one time would’ve absolutely mesmerized me, I think I’ll be able to find it within my soul to live without this latest Japanese beast. It is cool though, and may bring some old vinyl some new life.

…Which is to say, this morning we got up, and the heat was out. Again. Urgh.

I called the 24-hour answering service around 6am, woke someone up — which I’m sure will ensure us terrific service! — and told them that the heat’s doing the same thing it was on Sunday and Monday. I was assured that someone would be out “in the morning”. I assume that meant today, but who knows.

I don’t mind things breaking down (too much), but I do mind having the same work repeated on the same part after only 36 hours or so.

We’ll see what today holds…