After 4 days of trying to deftly navigate the trecherous waters of
panels and keynotes and parties and sideways brautwurst vendors, my
time at SXSWi has come to an end. So goodbye, Austin, and goodbye
Driskill Hotel with your broken thermostat. Goodbye endless line of
Q&A audience members who actually had no intelligible questions and
were just grabbing the mic for some free PR for your busted 'start-up.'
Goodbye actual rock stars (like Michael Stipe who we bumped into last
night at Pangea), the kind of rock star that the dot-com nerdster rock
star really wishes they themselves were (if not, then why do you play
Rock Stat so much?).
Hellow home, my beautiful, loverly wife and darling Bubby! Easy trade
any time, anywhere!

Hey, we're home from MGM Studios now, but we had a blast. The Osborne Family Spectacle of Lights is not to be missed. Basically, you want to be right there in the middle of fake 'San Francisco' on the backlot with the 'snow' falling right as the choreographed lights start to the tune of 'Christmas in Sarajevo'.
And then, you'll get down. Yeah, baby!
...until they stopped the audio to make him stop blasting...poor Bubby!
Compliments of the Contemporary Kitchen...
And as you can see, we've hit the ground running!

Wow, he used to be tiny! Four years ago, almost to the day, we took Bubby on his first plane trip, and his first trip to Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida. I don't know how many plane trips he's been on at this point--a bunch--but I do know that in just a couple of days, he'll be making his third pilgrimage to WDW, to see Mickey and have some serious fun at Mickey's Very Merry Christmas Party, to celebrate Dad's birthday and related stuff, and to really have a great time.
The first time we went to WDW, Bubby was just a couple months old And while the rides were lost on him at that point, they aren't now: every day brings new excited anticipation: 'How long until we go to Mickey's house?!' He just can't wait to do and see everything again, particularly Buzz Lightyear's Astro Blaster Spin in Tomorrowland at Magic Kingdom.

I'll be posting mobiley, so watch out for fun here AS IT HAPPENS!!!
Josh and Rach are 'out of town' this weekend, but if not, I'm sure they'd jaunt over to the 12th Annual 'How Berkeley Can You Be!?' festival. After all, aside from the beautiful weather, that banana-mobile is for real, a definite must-see.
Alas, we are also 'out of town'.
Bonus photo, in lieu of actually going to Berkeley:
Legit Hippee Sighting

Contrary to what we are told, on a nearly daily basis, San Francisco isn't that expensive. An annual report from The Economist that ranks how expensive cities around the world are found San Francisco to be below average on overall expensiveness. Taking into account several factors including various costs of living, salaries, etc., The Economist ranked the lovely city by the Bay a 92, with 100 being average (and being represented by New York City this year). In fact, the editor of the report specifically stated that as to overall costs of living, that despite its reputation of being frightfully expensive, 'San Francisco competes with Dallas.'
=^)
So now, we can just point to this report, instead of our usual retort:
Have YOU looked at apartments in San Francisco lately?
...yeah, didn't think so.
We were going to go to San Francisco this past weekend for our 6th anniversary, but we decided to go to IKEA instead...
...should have gone to our favorite city:
The Queen Mary 2 sailed into the Bay this weekend, making it the largest ship ever to sail in. At her highest point, the QM2 cleared the Golden Gate Bridge by less than 30 feet.
Meanwhile in Cowtown? We had, uh, the Stock Show.
...whee...
The U.S. Representative of our favorite city with a public smoking ban is all about kicking the 'butts' at the Capitol, too:
Pelosi Bans Smoking Near House Floor
Meanwhile here in Fort Worth, the City Council and Mayor have spent over a year trying to determine whether there's any reason to ban smoking in public places because, really, how do they know that second-hand smoke actually is bad?
These pictures will refresh each time you reload this page, so as to cycle through different pictures. Or, to see them all, click here to see all of our Magic Kingdom pictures.
... the Bubby really likes Disney World!


...and just to prove how much we do, we've made it official: we're going to see her (and her doctorly husband with the confusing name) for Christmas! Anyone who knows Jonathan C. knows that he is Kevin McAllister at heart, and really, really, really wants to have a cold and white Christmas--at least a cold one. But, like it says above, we love our sister/seester, so we are off to West Palm Beach this Christmas, to hang out with her and enjoy making sand angels on the beach.
(And yes, this is all to make up for Jonathan being such a rotten brother growing up...=^)
...just not yet. We're currently waiting @ SFO on a DFW weather delay...with bags full of fun presents for Noah's 3rd birthday, on Tuesday.
Okay, we're home, finally. A little bit tired, and sad to leave our beautiful city behind, but so thrilled to have our Bubby back in our arms.
A few pics from our recent San Francisco trips...they are fed from our family Flickr account and will change if you refresh this page...