X-Mas was nice, I got an assortment of things from my Amazon wish list, as well as a few stand out gifts that I hadn't solicited for, including: a meatloaf pan from the wife, a cordless drill and one of those handy tool sets that comes in a big plastic clamshell from the in-laws, and an Anakin Skywalker Force-FX light saber replica from my mommy. All good stuff.

My sister's wedding was a lot of fun, I had a great time hanging around with a lot of my cousins that I never get to see and getting acquainted with my new brother-in-law's family, who are, I must say, a great bunch of people. His brothers in particular are a rowdy bunch of jokers that I felt right at home with. I actually didn't drink a whole lot during the festivities, as I was either feeling kind of sick or maybe I'm just not into drinking that much anymore. Highlights of the wedding ceremony included: me and Guy having difficulties rolling out the runner, me weeping like a little girl, and David [my bro-in-law] sweating his ass off.

I was unexpectedly back in Buffalo the very next weekend to help my Dad out after he had his foot operated on. With Guy going back to RIT and Heather in New Zealand for her honeymoon, I was the go to guy. He was supposed to stay off his feet as much as possible, so I ended up being his gofer for a few days, just like old times when I actually lived with him.

As for what's been going on around here lately, Shannon and I have started looking at houses. I was dead set on reducing my commute by moving closer to work at first, but DE property taxes are so much cheaper than they are in PA, it's looking like it would be cheaper to just stay in DE. But I will not move any further south than we live now. The 3 houses we've seen were OK, none of them were so great that we just HAD to buy one, so we'll continue to look for a while.

In other news, I start my graduate studies tonight at Villanova. I'm taking "Design and Analysis of Algorithms". Wish me luck.