life as a dog…

Well, I get to spend New Year’s in Florida. Maryland’s football team is playing in the Gator Bowl and I get to go. But I bet I don’t even see the game. Will be working the whole time. Then again, it’s not like I am any fan of Maryland. Just another team.

Driving home for Christmas on the 24th. I think this is the latest I’ve ever headed out. Harley gets to go to the kennel again. He’s going to hate it this time – it’s shots time.

We had our company Christmas party Friday. I actually made out pretty well – got a gift certificate to Tower from one person I helped out with computer video stuff. So I got Two Towers and West Wing. Not too bad. I would have picked those up eventually, but $3 is better than $78.

I swear I’ll try to update more often. Just been incredibly busy lately. Some good news – I’m ever closer to a free airline ticket to London. I need 50,000 miles, and I’m at about 37,000 now. Yeah, it’s still going to take a while, but I’ll get there soon enough.

OK, so it’s been a while. Never did finish my roundup of Gatlinburg.

Day 3 – went to Cades Cove. Now, the first time I had been there was with family when I was probably around 8-10 years old (really don’t remember when it was…I’d have to look at some old pictures, and I’m not inclined to take the time to do that). So anyway. For a kid, Cades Cove is extremely boring. Think touring missions in California. Same thing. But this time, I was there to take pictures and just relax. It was OK except for one thing – the crowds were horrendous. It’s a 7 mile loop, and they tell you to expect it to take 2-3 hours. That’s being nice. You are literally in a chain line of cars going along. October is definitely not the time to go there. Pictures are difficult, because it’s next to impossible to get a picture without people in it. You just have to either find odd pictures or accept that tourists are going to be in your shot. I suppose Photoshop could take care of it, but that’d take a lot of time.

Day 4 – that was my drive home. Since I actually had an extra day, I figured I’d take my time getting home – didn’t really matter how late I got in. So I took a back road for about 100 miles of the trip. But I swear it seemed faster than the trip down on the interstate. I was going to go to Natural Bridge, but they want $10 just to go see it. Whatever. I found some llamas on my trip back, and when I get all the slides scanned, I’ll post some of those.