who is i? what are this? in 2013

i don't know guys. how the heck is it already 12 days into december? where is my time going? what is happening? what in the?

i have been doing a lot of things and traveling a lot of places and trying to remain present and aware in all moments so that this kind of stuff doesn't happen to me (like whole months disappearing and suchforth).

but anyway.

aaron and i were supposed to leave for dallas (for work) last thursday, but early that morning i received a FLIGHT ALERT from virgin america informing us that our evening flight was CXNCLD. not delayed, or rescheduled, no. just flat out cancelled. the weather conditions were supposed to be terrible in the evening, so they were preemptively putting the kibosh (kabosh?) on all their flights. ugh. so we rescheduled our flight for the next morning and fully enjoyed NOT being in a freezing ice storm in dallas, tx. we got out fine the next morning but landed in a virtual ice rink and then had to make a very scary drive to our hotel. all was fine, but we just kept asking ourselves... WHY? whywhywhywhy and why? we holed up in our lovely accomodations for the night and enjoyed a swanky dinner at the hotel restaurant and prepared ourselves for the unsavory day ahead.

the project we are working on requires us to visit people's homes, do little home tours and then go for a 'joyride' in their luxury SUV. it was pretty fun in NJ & NY, it was AWESOME in LA, but it was just plain miserable that first day in Dallas. road conditions were terrible and the newscasters kept imploring people NOT TO LEAVE THEIR HOMES UNLESS THEY ABSOLUTELY HAD TO. so of course we went right out into it. long story short, we survived and with another moderator/videographer team managed to complete 7 out of 8 interviews over the weekend.

to make an unsavory weekend a bit better, we were able to get on an earlier flight out on monday by bumping ourselves up to first class for $139 each (only $39 more than it would have cost to chage the flight from 5:40p to 2:55p). first class never felt so good.

i've missed so much... before dallas was thanksgiving and we hosted our first affair in the new house. we had 13 people (including a 6-week old baby!) and it went FABULOUSLY well. everyone pitched in to make it a great group effort. my sister-in-law and nieces flew in from MN, aaron's brothers and mom were there along with our new baby nephew and his momma. it was perfect, really.

before that was a quickie trip to NJ where i worked for a few days and then came home immediately after.

before that was a trip to MN; before that a trip to Chicago. and well, it's just been a very active final quarter of the year. i'm leaving for SF tonight, returning tomorrow afternoon for a quick presentation ... and then i don't 'have' to travel until mid-January (quick trip to NJ for another presentation). Ahhhhhh i am very excited for the end of next week when i can press PAUSE for a couple weeks and try to enjoy my wonderful son, his papa and our agreeable weather here in Los Angeles.

an update on our crazy baby... soon...