The end of the semester crunch

The CFO’s semester wrapped up last week, leaving finals as the only thing standing between her winter break.  That meant that the weekend was full of grading papers and preparing the final exams.  Despite that pile of work to do, shopping for a Christmas tree took top priority on Saturday morning.

Since we now typically travel over the holiday, having a real tree isn’t ideal.  I grew up with a real tree (often times one way too big for the room it was in) and I really, really, really didn’t want to go artificial.  I enjoy the “hunt” for a tree and love the smell of a tree inside the house.  Last year, we were really busy and we decided to try not having any tree at all, but it didn’t really feel like Christmas without one.  We literally had a pile of presents in the living room without a tree. 

So, I finally came around to the see the benefits of the artificial tree:  No watering and we don’t have to worry about it dropping all of its needles while we are out of town.  We went out shopping for an artificial tree and found a contender at our first stop.  We liked one that was on display, and it was on sale for over half off, so we went to see how many they had in boxes.  Zero, zip, nada.  I went and asked a sales associate if they had any more in the back and he said, “No, all of the trees that we have are right there.”  His manager overheard the conversation and said, “I think we got one more of those in last night, call to the back and see if it is back there.”  Sure enough it was.  We asked if they would hold it for us, but they said that they couldn’t hold it for us.

I told the CFO that we typically always circle back to the first thing that we saw when we go shopping around town for something specific, so let’s just buy it and if we find something better, we can bring it back and get a refund.  With that, we bought the tree, threw it in the back seat of the accord (the box just barely fit) and continued to shop at the other stores on her list of places to check.  After visiting the other stores, we agreed that we got the best looking, most reasonably priced option at the first store, so we took it home.  Surprise, surprise, we bought the first tree that we found.

We got it set up Saturday afternoon while watching the college championship football games.  We woke up to snowfall on Sunday morning, so I decided to run to the grocery store and do our shopping before the weather got too bad.  It was a wise call as it snowed off and on through the rest of the day.  The CFO stayed inside and did her work while I took care of a few tasks around the house and the garage… and a few hours later the weekend was over.

We woke up to cold temps on Thursday morning:

 

Turkey week

Since our original plans to go on a cruise for the thanksgiving holiday had to be changed when my mom broke her ankle, the CFO and I went with plan B: spend the holiday week in Georgia at my parents’ house.  We already had plane tickets to fly to Atlanta (we were going to drive to Tampa with my parents to get on the cruise ship) and delta wanted a whopping $200/ticket change fee to change our tickets (plus any difference in the actual fare price).  So, not wanting the tickets to go to waste, we headed south.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t much warmer in GA than IL, but it was nice to see trees, rolling hills and roads that weren’t straight for miles and miles.  While we were there, we had the opportunity to do some holiday shopping, eat at some of our favorite restaurants, and, more importantly, catch up with a few friends. On Sunday, the CFO dropped me off at a restaurant to eat lunch with friends and she went shopping.  After lunch, I went go karting with a couple friends at the new Atlanta Motorsports Park near Dawsonville.

Before we got in the karts, the guy managing the track told us that we could go flat out up the hill and into turn one… However, even after three 8 minute sessions, I could not  get myself to fly up the hill and dive into turn 1 without lifting off the throttle.  This was just one of the reasons that I ended up being a few seconds slower per lap than my friends, but I had fun none the less.  While I enjoy driving, there is a reason why I’m not a professional race car driver…

After karting, my friend dropped me off at the outlet mall to meet the CFO.  We worked on crossing some people off of our Christmas list and then went out for dinner at Macaroni Grill, a restaurant that we like but don’t have near our home.  Since our anniversary was the next day (7 years!), we said that it was our anniversary dinner. 

Of course, this did not stop me from giving the CFO a hard time the following night, when she met one of her Athens, GA friends for dinner on our actual anniversary.  “How could you go out to dinner with one of your friends on our anniversary?” I asked.  I am planning on continue to use this for many, many years to come: “Remember when you went out with a friend on our 7th anniversary?”

While in Athens, we also spent a lot of time hanging out with my sister and her family… most of that time was spent eating, playing games or wrestling with her two sons.  It is crazy how fast those boys have grown (turning 4 and 8 this month), but the fact that we hadn’t seen them since last Christmas probably amplified that.  I am usually very camera happy but I didn’t take a single photograph on this trip… I’m not sure what happened, I guess I wasn’t in the mood.  So, I don’t have any pictures to accent this post… sorry.