Thanksgiving for 2007 was a little different for me for a few different reasons; Mom and Jack did not visit as they are saving money to come up this year at Christmas, Robin and I had dinner at my Grandparents in Dexter along with roughly 20 other family members and then later in the evening Robin and I headed to the coast where her parent’s live.

The weather for Thanksgiving day was fairly cool, in the 40’s with clear skies. Robin said that my families Thanksgiving dinner had a lot of people; I’ve never thought of that before as I’ve always had large family gatherings and that’s what’s generally depicted on TV. After eating dinner we headed back to my apartment and then shortly after left for Prospect Harbor to visit with Robin’s parents.

On Saturday Robin and I went in to the hospital to paint our window that she had picked for the annual Christmas window painting contest; we spent a couple of hours painting it and I think ours is the best out of all of them- at least message-wise.

This year for Christmas I flew to Virginia to stay with Jack and my mother for the week to celebrate Christmas and to spend some time with them during the week. I usually pick different flight routes every time to experience new terminals; this time around I flew into Logan Airport in Boston, MA. The one thing that I enjoyed most about the airport is that there was always a constant breath of fresh Atlantic Ocean water.

I waited roughly an hour in the Logan terminal I was on my way to Raleigh, NC which was another new airport to me. I’m always surprised at how nice everything looks in North Carolina; buildings, roads, landscape, etc. Jack and mom greeted me in airport and we started off towards Bedford, on the way we stopped at Hardees, my first time as Maine does not have a Hardees. I ordered a Jalapeño Angus burger which was very good, much different than the other fast-food chains.

Sunday, Christmas Eve mom and I went to Thomas Road Baptist Church where Dr. Jerry Falwell preaches. The church was newly built last July and holds 5,000 people along with many other rooms, stores, etc; the quire is 3x larger than my church I attend! When we arrived Sunday School had already started which was lead by Elmer Towns, you can listen to his class online as well if you’d like at ElmerTowns.com. Near to end of class the stadium began to fill towards 4,000 people which I’m told is lower than any other week. I really enjoyed the service; including listening to what Jerry had to talk about. After Church we made plans to see “The Nativity Story“, and then head to TRBC for the evening service.

On Monday, Christmas day we exchanged gifts with each other. As always, mom always exceeds any expectations one would have- she always gives gifts that are needed. After the gifts had been opened we took plenty of time playing with our new toys, taking down the tree and fellowshipping. Later mom treated Jack and I to dinner at Peaks of Otter restaurant that sits near the base of the mountain. Afterwards we took different route home, one that brought us winding up and down a mountain littered with mansions.

On Tuesday we braved the Roanoke Valley View mall where thousands of people were exchanging gifts or spending their Christmas money. Despite the advertisement claims on TV there were very few sales and even less that actually interested me. Mom and I cleaned up the yard, took down the Christmas decorations and put up a new bird feeder, I was able to capture this curious Tufted Titmouse.

Mill Mountain Zoo which is located on Mill Mountain in Roanoke was open for the afternoon so we set sail and browsed throughout the zoo looking and taking photos of the animals. They had two rare Snow Leopards which was a treat as I am interested in large predator cats. I met a very friendly Llama that enjoyed having her photo taken with passing visitors. Afterwards we ate at the local Red Robin Gourmet burg pub; the selection of burgers was very impressive.

A local cinema in Lynchburg was playing “Open Season”, so mom and I attended on Thursday. The movie was alright, I didn’t like the fact that they were portraying hunters as people who are hicks, bad and have no heart. On the way home to Bedford, a beautiful sunset was on display. The entire sky was painted with glowing orange-red gradient and the gray clouds looked as if they were on fire.

Thanksgiving has come and gone for the year 2006, I always enjoy this holiday not only how it was derived but actually being able to sit down and have a meal with the whole family. I have a fairly large family thanks to my mother’s parents who had six children, some of children and grandchildren.

After saying that they were staying home for Thanksgiving this year, Jack and mom decided to drive up and stay 3 days at my apartment- they slept on a blowup bed in my second bedroom.

Thanksgiving dinner was good; we had around 25 or so people there that day. I always enjoy listening to the family talk about what has been going on in their lives this past year. One of our traditions is to look through my grandparent’s myriad of photo albums ranging from the 1940s to present day. I would love to be able to scan all of the photos and create a digital album.

The weather in Virginia has been very hot, hovering around 95 degrees, but the important difference between Virginia and Maine is that VA does not have the humidity that ME does when it gets warm.

I flew out of Bangor on Saturday morning and arrived in La Guardia airport an hour later, the airport was medium sized, the runway is partially on the harbor. After waiting about 45 minutes in NYC, we took off in a small Lear jet; I was near the engine so the ride was very loud. I was able to see the Empire State building from the air, I was hoping I could see more of the city but the smog and humidity was too heavy.

I landed in Greensboro an hour later; the airport looked the same as last year which is expected. I met Mom and Jack in the luggage pickup section. We waited for my luggage until it was announced that everyone’s luggage on my flight was flown to Buffalo, New York. We were told that I would be able to get my suitcase(s) the next day.

Mom and Jack have a new vehicle, it’s a Buick Rendezvous, it’s very nice and I am considering purchasing one for myself, the MPG is roughly 27. We headed home after having dinner at the Cracker Barrel and relaxed the rest of the night since I was tuckered out.

On Sunday we went to Trinity Baptist Church in Bedford, the assistant pastor preached, he is 20 years old and has not yet graduated from Liberty University. He spoke a very good sermon, one that hit me.

Later that night we headed towards Lynchburg to pickup my suitcase and went to Liberty University to watch the fireworks. There must have been 25,000 or more people there. Mom and I walked over to the new Thomas Road Baptist Church, it’s massive and beautiful inside. I wish I could of heard Jerry Falwell preach there. Tim LaHaye also teaches at Liberty and lives on Campus, I would really have liked to have met him, he is the co-author to one of my favorite book series, Left Behind. The fireworks were very good, they were shot off from Liberty Hill.

On Monday mom and I sat outside for awhile and talked; I also read some of the Left Behind series in-between waiting for the not-so-camera-friendly birds to land on the feeder. I was able to snap a few decent shots of a Cardinal and a Tufted Titmouse bird and an American Gold Finch. Later in the afternoon we went to see Superman Returns, which was an excellent movie. I’m a huge fan of Superman and his mythology, I was a little surprised on the way the ended the movie, but I will not spoil it.

I finally found Coca Cola in a glass bottle; I have been looking in all of the stores in Bangor for them, supposedly from some online message board research that the majority of the States have Coke in a bottle for sale. I purchased a 6 pack from Food Lion; the Coke actually does taste different in the glass bottle. The cap is metal, but it does not twist off like Root Beer glass bottle cap does, you actually need a bottle cap opener. I’ll be buying a few of these and taking them home with me.

For those of you that do not know what Memorial day is, it’s a day that the US remembers our men and women in the Military that died fighting for our country and other countries. I would like to say to all of the Veterans out there, I truly appreciate what you have done for everyone, thank you.

This whole weekend was beautiful; Maine had 80 degree weather all day long. It’s now Monday evening and the sun is starting to hide behind the clouds. I’m outside writing this entry while my Greenhouse grinders are cooking on the grill.

Saturday morning I worked on Ogden2k, I changed the look so that the colors are more consistent. I change the blog file structure around by tweaking the .htaccess file using mod_rewrite, this should allow for better search indexing. I also added a new feature named tags, basically what I can do with this is that I can assign multiple tags (keywords) to each entry I write, and you the reader can search by tags. If you enjoy reading about the food that I cook, you can select the “cooking” tag. Later in the afternoon I went grocery shopping and than relaxed at home.

On Sunday I went to church, Stan (our pastor) was not there, he took a vacation so Mark, the assistant pastor filled in. He talked about temptation and trials which was very good- I am trying to apply what he taught to my life. I headed up to Dexter to visit with my grandparents. We barbecued chicken and corn for dinner, after eating we sat outside in the shade because it was so nice out. Their cat, “Mister”, attempted to catch a Sparrow watching her babies in a bird house. I watched Munich when I got home, the movie is very good. I’m not sure how accurate it is compared to the real-life events that happened back in the 70’s, but from what I’ve read it looks to be accurate.

I caught up on some sleep today and woke up very refreshed. I love waking up to a nice cool morning breeze filled with the smell of Lilacs. I had picked the purple lilacs at my grandmothers on Sunday. Their sweet smell always reminds me of spring when my mother would have at least three bouquets of Lilacs around the house. I have wanted to make more photo albums, so I purchased one of those albums that peel back a clear sheet that allows you to add any size photo that you want. I purchased a new photo collage that holds 6 photos. I will be filling up both once Mom sends me copies of the photos she has. I finished up another job request from one of my clients today; they needed a “click tracking” application that would monitor the CTR of the ads they host on their message board. I installed phpAdsNew which is a very robust system. I re-arranged my second bedroom; it contains all of my servers and lab-environment equipment. It’s much neater now as the two wire shelves are side-by-side with the computers aligned beside the shelves. A co-worker mounted an old LCD monitor to a new LCD foot “base” for me last week so I can use it in my lab.