Back in the Valley, Back in the MMIX

Happy Belated New Year everybody. The Beck and I are back in the valley after a nice, quick visit to SA. The goings on to close out the year:

• Had a nice faux-Christmas morning in the usual family fashion on Wednesday. My extraordinarily generous parents got us a lot of stuff, including clothes, some beautiful framed wedding pictures, a cool digital photo frame, and some cash / gift-certificates for home furnishing projects. Combined with some gift certificates from Beck's parents and M/G, we've got some shopping to do over the next couple of weeks. Sweet, and big thanks to everybody.
• Found a pickup game down at Trinity on NYE afternoon, so Aaron and I headed down there to get in the last Ultimate of 2008. Pretty sloppy, no offensive formation game, and as luck would have it the teams were divided along hilariously uneven lines. The captain from Kansas University was there, so 'twas fun to play against a very talented / athletic youngin', but his team had the two other throwers and the other runner - our team was limited to Aaron and me in the skilled frisbee-player department. All of this was a wash anyways, because Aaron re-hurt his quad about 10 points into the game and had to sit out for the remainder. Boo. Ah, well, at least bro and I got to play together for a little bit.
• Had a fun NYE - Mom prepared sandwiches, Deb made some very-good-for-us cheese-and-beef dip, and we had a low-key, Sam Adams-fueled NYE celebration. Ron, Pat and Grandpa rolled in a little later (Ron & Grandpa left at 9:30 or so), and we spent the remainder of the evening listening to Aaron's true confessions and playing a funny game called Imaginiff. Beck impressively made it all the way to 11:5... we'll go ahead and give her credit for midnight this year. YEAH!
• Woke up early and went for a four mile run around the neighborhood. I briefly had some "1000 miles in 2009" type ambitions, but as my bruised feet, sore ankles and knees throbbed a bit that morning, I thought that maybe 20 miles per week not including Ultimate was a bit much. We'll see. For now, we'll post it as 4 miles jogged on the year (and to date, 3 hours of Ultimate played, counting Saturday and today).
  
• We went shopping for a short while NYDay; I got the 2008 version of the Best American Non-Required Reading series which has fared well in the past. We goofed for the afternoon - got some frisbee throwing done in the afternoon; Beck is looking awesome. Beck also made two kinds of chili for dinner that night, and we capped things off with some cutthroat Rook which, if you aren't aware, is a sort of Bridge-for-Dummies kinda game.
• After I taught my mom the wonders of Gmail on Friday morning, the lady folk went to get pedicures and we got a greasy greasy burger lunch at Culver's. Hijinks galore. Later, Aaron headed back to Austin and we spent the afternoon at the San Antonio Art Museum - quite a cool place and impressive collection housed in a converted brewery. We came home, packed, and hit up Taco Cabana on the way to the aeropuerto. A completely non-eventful flight - Beck watched Horton Hears a Who and at least the start of Step-Brothers, with Mamma Mia! being the to-SA selection - and we rolled back into the casa at 10 or so on Friday night.

So, a good trip, and now we're back to normality. As referenced above, I got in some disc Saturday morning at a casual game in Scottsdale and got in some rain-ridden 3 on 3 stupidity this afternoon. Interspersed with reading and sleeping and generally reorienting, I get back in the swing of things tomorrow. Huzzah - classes don't start for another two weeks, but there are grants for which to apply and websites to design. So, game back on.

Hell-o-2009.