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Today is the last day of 2008. This year was full of great things for me and my family, but was also painful in many ways for humanity as a whole. I spent the better part of 2008 listening to everyone’s opinion (ad nauseum) about which band of crooks would best run the country. I thought maybe after the election I would get a reprieve from the propaganda machine and all the divisive finger-wagging. But now the financial crisis has stepped-in to stoke everyone’s appetite for anger, panic and outrage (me included as I find myself randomly muttering, “those bastards should be thrown in prison”, as I walk around the house). As Mark Twain said, “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme.”

In the desert of this long year was the oasis that is Christmas. Melissa and I had locked-down spending all year (she has been a great influence on me with regard to frugality). However, we both decided that this Christmas was going to be a blow-out. To help make it so, my sister-in-law (Suzanne), my mother-in-law (Suzanne) and my father-in-law (Glenn) all came down to spend Christmas with us. It was a hoot. My mother-in-law is the best cook ever, period. She made all kinds of munchies, made a spaghetti and meatball feast one night, prepared a smoked brisket, smoked turkey and two smoked pork roasts and she made multiple breakfasts all while tending to the kids and cleaning as we went. Both Suzannes and Melissa made a Christmas dinner that was actually larger than our Thanksgiving feast (I have a few photos of it in the slideshow). I have gained just under 10 pounds in the last 1.5 weeks and we still have leftovers in the fridge. Nice!

All the photos for the month of December are here. Many of these are photos of the kids opening gifts so forgive the redundancy.

The number of gifts under the tree this year was almost gross. It sprawled about six feet to the left of the tree and about 5 feet to the right. I won’t try itemizing all the things everyone received because it would make for a boring read and is frankly embarrassing.

I took vacation for the week of Christmas and the week of New Years. My brother Justin is coming to visit us tomorrow and he is staying for four days. So far we took the kids to see “Bedtime Stories”; it reached almost 70 degrees here one day and I got a round of golf in; Melissa and Suzanne hit the after-Christmas sales; Glenn and I caught a few good meetings; I got two motorcycle rides in; Melissa and I have been slowly cleaning-up and organizing the house.

My cousin Joe and his wife Sara just had their first child, a boy, and he is healthy and Momma is doing well from what I understand.

I have no resolutions for the New Year. I am just going to take it a day at a time. I suppose that is a resolution in itself.

Melissa and I are looking forward to the final episodes of “Battlestar Galactica”, the new season of the “Sarah Connor Chronicles”, the new season of “Heroes” and the new season of “Flight of the Conchords”. We are simple people with unrefined tastes.

I could go on-and-on, but it has been the best Christmas holiday I can remember. We are very, very blessed here at the Kentucky Macumbers …

Thanksgiving was yesterday and we had a great Thanksgiving holiday this year. I took off for a week of vacation and Melissa and I did some shopping on Monday. After shopping we went out for Indian food for lunch as a sort of belated Wedding Anniversary meal (our anniversary was the day before). We got the Christmas tree setup and Melissa put all the Christmas decorations out and the house has a total holiday feel to it now.

I also turned 39 this month, Justin turned 37 and Mom turned 61. A lotta aging going on!

All of the photos we took for November and for Thanksgiving are here.

Today is the last day before I take a week of vacation for Thanksgiving. On Wednesday Melissa came in and informed me that we apparently had a critter in the garage and that it had chewed/frayed the wires to our garage door sensors as well as leaving a couple of large patches of poop to let us know it was there. We come-and-go through the garage and not the front door, so our garage doors are usually open all day unless no-one is home. We shut them before bed at night but they are open all day.

I went out and cut, stripped and reconnected the garage door sensor wires because without the sensors the garage doors won’t close without manual override. Without the sensors, the garage doors wouldn’t close at all from the remote controls we use in the cars. I noticed the garage was pretty messy and had collected a lot of leaves that were blown in from the yard. Toys were everywhere. Generally a dirty place all animals aside.

Well, this morning (Friday, two days later) we awoke to more varmint poop and this time the little bastard had completely chewed the wires bare at the connecting point to the sensors. I opened up both garage doors and could not find the thing anywhere so I started emptying out the garage and got my shop-vac and the blower attachment setup to begin cleaning the garage. I got the motorcycles started and ran them a bit and cleaned them up. I got all the toys out of the garage. I threw out about 1/2 trashcan of debris, leaves and other crud that had accumulated. I pulled out a folding table that Melissa suspected the animal was hiding behind but there was no sign of him/her. The only things left in the garage were a freezer (I knew the critter wasn’t in there nor behind it because I had checked) and two metal shelf racks that are full of all sorts of cleaning supplies, chemicals, solvents, seeds, fertilizers, etc. I got the blower going and was blowing the dust and a few leaves that had accumulated behind the racks and got a surprise that made me jump up and let out a most effeminate yelp …

If you click on the small image above you will get a better look at our uninvited guest.

Shortly before I took this photo an odor overtook the garage that left little doubt as to what I was dealing with.

I tried shooing it away by poking a golf club under the shelf/rack but have to admit I was having paranoid visions of the skunk popping out and “gittin me”.

I tried a few ricochet shots with a BB gun (by this time the skunk had retreated well under the shelf due to my golf club strategy) but had no luck and realized that if I incapacitated the skunk then I would have the lovely job of pulling it out and disposing of it.

Finally I got the blower going again and just applied a steady and unpleasant force of air under the rack. The skunk poked its head out 2 or 3 times to make sure the coast was clear and then waddled on out of the garage.

We have been using our home’s front door for ingress/egress and keeping the garage doors shut ever since.

I leave for a week in California later today. These last several weeks have been crazy with work at Cisco, the kids having a week off for Fall Break and getting everything done for Halloween. This year the kids did what is becoming a tradition, they went to the neighborhood of some of their friends and trick-or-treated there all night while I held down the fort and passed out candy to the children in our neighborhood. It’s funny how many neighbors I catch-up with by standing in the front door and shoveling out candy to their kids. I found out that the father of one of Sharon’s friends is a former colleague of mine. I hadn’t seen him in years and he ends up living right down the steet from me and his daughter (Meredith) plays with Sharon all the time.

All the kids had a really good haul of candy this year. We had brisk volume at our front door but the festivities ended a bit earlier than usual this year due to it being unseasonably cold for late Fall.

November is already upon us and I find myself thinking of Christmas shopping and the nearness of my favorite holiday of them all - Thanksgiving.

All the photos from the Halloween parties and from trick-or-treating are here.

Kayleigh turned 6 on September 21st and we showered her with gifts and took the family to a place called Incredible Dave’s. This place had indoor bungie jumping, lots of kid-friendly “games” and play areas with big inflatable castles and the like. There was a climbing, sliding, tunnel maze kind of apparatus that the kids played in. Pretty neat place.

Kayleigh received many nice gifts from the Grandparents and really loved all of her Camp-Rock-themed gifts the most. Camp Rock has risen to be her favorite movie and favorite mass-merchandise campaign.

All the kids are getting too big for their current iteration of bicycles so we will probably be asking Santa to refresh their bikes come Christmas-time. That ought to be fun. The photos from Kayleigh opening her presents and birthday cake are here.

The Red Bull Moto-GP came to Indianapolis on the weekend of September 13th. This was a very eventful weekend because Hurricane Ike’s residual weather was making its way up to the Ohio river valley. Instead of riding my motorcycle up to Indianapolis for the races in heavy winds and a torrential downpour, James and I went up in the car on Saturday and stayed the night and went to the track on Sunday. The Moto-GP race was abbreviated to 20 laps due to standing water in places on the track. The 250cc race was cancelled altogether. Valentino Rossi won the Moto-GP race (note: and eventually goes on to win the 2008 Moto-GP championship, his eighth).

James and I went to all the vendor tents on the infield and still managed to have a good time despite the weather. I got a picture of James with Rossi’s M1 motorcycle and we had plenty of track-food and things to do.

Unfortunately, while we were at the track 80mph winds were devastating Louisville and we came home to no electricity. We were without power for 5 days due to Hurricane Ike. We fared much better than most places which lay in its path but Ike’s destruction downed trees and lines as far north as the Cincinnati-Dayton area.

On our last day we slept-in. We grabbed the free breakfast (omelet!) and then headed out to Laguna Seca so I could take a look around. We drove right-in (only have to pay if you are camping or if there is a race going on). We drove on the access roads around the track and then stopped into the souvenir shop. It was a lot larger track and much larger park than I had realized. Unfortunately they had the service road which leads to the Corkscrew fenced-off so I was not able to get back there. I did get to tour over half of the sections of the track though.

The rest of the photos from Laguna Seca are here.

From the track we drove through Salinas and then up HWY101 to San Jose. In San Jose I drove Melissa around the Cisco campus; specifically by all the campus buildings on Tasman and then up McCarthy. Up at McCarthy Ranch we stopped for lunch at In-N-Out Burger where I had two double cheeseburgers, fries and drink. Melissa agreed that they make one tasty burger.

From San Jose we left for the Embassy Suites at SFO (South San Francisco). I wanted to get up there before 101 got too jammed-up and we made it to the hotel with plenty of time to rest and regroup before dinner. I didn’t have high expectations for our last meal on the trip because I didn’t particularly want to venture down to Palo Alto or up to San Francisco since we needed to leave so early the next morning. Since this has been a pretty charmed trip all the way around it stands to reason that we stumbled upon a killer sushi restaurant in San Bruno called Sunny’s Sushi. It was in a strip mall and San Bruno is not exactly the most eclectic area but it was really good. I had a sashimi sampler and 4 rolls with miso soup. Melissa had some of the aforementioned sushi and a vegetable tempura. It was super fresh, quick and cheap. Couldn’t have asked for more.

We got up early Monday morning and ate our last breakfast in San Francisco. By nine we were on the road and took HWY1 all the way down to Monterey. We stopped a couple of places to take some pictures and filled up on coffee.

So this day was pretty packed. We checked-in early to the Embassy Suites in Seaside, CA and then we drove down to the Del Monte Shopping Center and picked-up some chocolate and took a quick tour of the Apple Store there. From there we drove down Lighthouse Avenue to Cannery Row and did some walking and took some pictures of Monterey Bay. We saw several sea lions but I couldn’t get a glimpse of any of the sea otters that have come back to the area. Melissa picked up a few gifts and we read a little about the history of Cannery Row. John Steinbeck wrote about the rough-and-tumble sardine canneries in his novel about the area and apparently this stretch along Monterey Bay has a very long history.

From Cannery Row we went on the epic 17-Mile Drive around the Monterey Peninsula. Saw lots of breathtaking coastline along with Spanish Bay, Spyglass Hill, Cypress Point and Pebble Beach golf courses. Above is one of our several photos of the Lone Cypress which has apparently been living on that rock for over 250 years. Melissa and I both couldn’t help but notice the mansion houses in the area. Reminds me of a line I read in a book recently …

“Son, when a Muslim grows up in India and he sees a man living in a big mansion high on a hill, he says, ‘Father, one day I will be that man.’ And when a Muslim grows up in Pakistan and sees a man living in a big mansion high on a hill, he says, ‘Father, one day I will kill that man.’”

The author’s point being that when we feel like wealth (or any particular goal) is attainable, we focus on the steps necessary to achieve that goal. Conversely, when people are made to feel like they are locked-out and that their goals are unattainable - they tend to want to destroy things (or have a good old-fashioned revolution). All this made me decidedly hungry.

So after we did 17-Mile we drove through Carmel and it was bustling. At this point we had been going all day and headed back to the hotel to rest-up and get ready for dinner.

A guy at the hotel recommended we try Tarpy’s and we went with that. Man, it was good. I had a Campechano (calamari and shrimp) and Melissa had roasted artichokes (artichokes are a big crop in the area) for appetizers. I had a serious bone-in ribeye and Melissa had Sea Bass for our entre’. We split a huge strawberry shortcake for dessert. Strawberries are also prevalent in the area and we had been enjoying them with breakfast nearly every day on the trip.

All the photos we took are here.

Today is Melissa’s birthday and we started out with another good breakfast at the hotel and then jumped in the car and drove up to Fort Point at the base of the Golden Gate Bridge on the San Francisco side. From there we drove along the western edge of The Presidio, along the coast by Baker Beach, down El Camino Del Mar, through the Golden Gate Park and eventually into Haight-Ashbury. I had an awesome burrito at a Taqueria on Haight Street (had to). We walked up and down Haight and stopped into a few of the shops. Melissa bought a kewl tie-dye shirt and we bought a few more gifts.

There was a major walkathon for Breast Cancer taking place at Golden Gate Park and the path apparently included Haight-Ashbury as there were a lot of women wearing pink. There were also a few nice bikes participating which flew the pink ribbon colors.

On the way back from Haight-Ashbury we drove down Lombard Street and hit the famous twisty section (again). We parked the car at the hotel and I caught a little football while we rested.

Later in the afternoon we walked down to Chinatown where there was a big festival (Moon Festival of some sort) going on in Chinatown. IT WAS PACKED. I have never been to southeast Asia - but I feel like I have.

We walked back to the hotel, re-grouped and then walked to the North Beach / Telegraph Hill area for some Italian food at a great little place called Ristorante Ideale. They have AWESOME desserts. We also had this nice zuchini appetizer. I had lasagna and Melissa had pumpkin ravioli. Good stick-to-your-bones food.

All the photos from the day are here.

On Saturday Melissa and I woke up early and ate a big breakfast. The fruit has been good every morning and we have been making the most of it. We walked down Bay Street to the cable car line for Powell-Hyde Streets and bought a day pass. We took the car down to California street and caught the California line up to the California Memorial Masonic Temple and Grace Cathedral.

At first the Masonic Temple was locked-up and I had to settle for taking pictures through the front door. After we went down California heading west we came back on the cable car and noticed that some people were bringing in boxes and the front doors to the temple were open. We jumped off the car and I managed to get into the Temple long enough to take some photos of the Emile Norman mosaic that dominates the foyer.

After hitting a few more hills on California Street we took the cable car down through the financial district and got off at the end of the line at the Embarcadero. We shopped at the Ferry Plaza Farmer’s Market and bought a few more gifts. Neither one of us felt like taking the ferry to Alcatraz, so we took the F line (tram) down the Embarcadero back to Fisherman’s Wharf and grabbed lunch at Cioppino’s. I had shellfish saute and Melissa had crab cakes. I think it was at this point Melissa came to realize that you have to work really hard to find a bad meal in SF.

After lunch and the inevitable metabolic crash, we went back to the hotel room and recuperated a bit.

Later in the afternoon we went down along the North Shore through the Presidio and then crossed over the Golden Gate Bridge to have dinner at the Scoma’s on Sausalito Bay.

All the photos we shot that day are here.