They also gave me a loaner in the middle of last week. I was getting tired of walking to the grocery store. And taking the bus and train to work. It was an Audi A4 Avant S-line, a much nicer car than my A3. I like my A3 more. It handles better and accelerates faster and is nice enough for me.

I had noticed that the clutch was feeling different. In fact, I forgot to ask them about it when I took it in for regular maintenance the week before it failed. I am little worried that it failed after only 34,000 miles. Hopefully, it won’t be in the shop any time soon. This was the third, and longest, time in a month. A month ago, I had the lower front bumper cover replaced after I scraped it on a crub and the side ripped out.

Today, I bought a new grill. I got a Weber Baby Q which is a well-reviewed portable. It was expensive enough that there were cheap standup grills for the same price. I wanted the portable since I can see taking it camping. It was much easier to setup unlike the cheap one which had to be assembled; three screws vs eleven. The cylinder screwed in perfectly. I did have to remove the cylinder holder since I had a 16.4 oz bottle and it takes longer, thinner 14.1 oz bottles. The flame lit easily; I could fine the starter button unlike the cheap one. The construction is solid. I didn’t worry about it falling off the little table. And the food was yummy.

Tonight, watching a movie in the dark, I saw a dark shape. I turned on the light and saw the mouse sitting out in the open. I dropped an upside-down bucket on it while I figured out what to do. I scooped it in the bucket and dropped it outside uninjured but a little scared.

The weird thing is that I didn’t have any hesitation telling everybody at work once I found out the news. And the people at work were pretty understanding about doing the interview and being not quite good enough. The other weird thing is that a few days after I found out, I saw this comic from one of my favorite web comics.

I went searching for “itunes”, “track number”, and “ogg”. One of the pages I found looked familar. I had seen that color scheme before. I realized that it was my brother’s blog. The AppleScript he mentioned is currently working its way through my collection.

The best part was seeing my niece Rose for the first time. She was three and a half months at the time. She was very cute and lovable. I loved watching her wiggle her arms.

One cool thing is Neil and Lara’s friends the Olsens visited. Both the Olsen children were old friends; they brought their significant others and their mom came out to spend Thanksgiving with her family.

For Thanksgiving itself, we went to my Uncle Tim and Aunt Judy’s place in Raleigh. There were 14 people at dinner.

I didn’t get to enjoy the nice weather in San Diego because of the cold. I didn’t do much while I was home beyond sit on the couch, read, and blow my nose.

My Christmas was pretty low key. Probably becuase the exiciting members of the family were elsewhere. It was just my parents, my grandfather, and myself. We didn’t open presents until nearly noon. We had a nice dinner of turkey and stuffing.

Luckily, the driver was okay. She walked away and looked fine. An ambulance eventually took her to the hospital but it was likely just a precaution. I don’t know the cause of the accident. There weren’t any other cars, people, or skip marks. It looks like she swerved, jumped the curb, and hit the pole.

The crews from PGE were great. They had a new pole up and the power restored within five hours. Once they started, it was quick getting the car out and the old pole upright. They pulled out the stump, augared the hole deeper, and puller the new pole upright. Most of the time was spent moving the cables and wires over to the new pole. A piece of the old pole is suspended next to the old one. It has wires attached and I guess it can’t be removed until those are moved.

One cool thing is that I got to meet my neighbors in the apartment building. Some ran outside after the accident; the rest arrived home later. We were hanging around outside watching the PGE crews put up the new pole. I guess it is good something interesting happened at home because today was my company’s picnic and I would have felt really silly to have completely forgotten it and just saw at home boringly.