13 days to go

nope, its not 13 days to go before CHRISTmas. its actually still 21 days to go before the big day but what i'm already excited about is that come december 17, i'll officially be on vacation --- that'll be 17 full days of not working! obviously i'm very elated about that, add to that i'll be on VL on the 10th for some VERY important meeting and the 13th is a holiday at the office. i'll finally have devoted time to take care of things i've sort of put off for some time. come january, probably have 1 1/2 weeks of work and then fly off to the Az for the face-to-face. yay to more mileage & shopping --- not!

as tradition brings it and with dear friend cindy in town, we had a get together of sorts last night at hula-hula at westgate. the food was surprisingly good - and yes, i shied away from eating rice starting yesterday but i found it a bit expensive. the conversations that night was a mixture of nostalgia, family experiences and mostly updates on what we've all been doing lately. some good news also about heids and lea both having their second addition to their families. everyone seemed to be in high spirits - all happy to see everyone else. this is what's so nice about our friendship, no matter the distance or the last time we got together, we can always readily pick up where we left off as if it was yesterday. joh turns out to be interested in pursuing (or at least showing interest in) photography. we're both looking at hopefully buying a nikon d80 to kick off our hobby, take some photography classes on the side while we try to fit in some culinary courses. wonder how well we'd be able to do that - but just making plans is fun. let's see how these planning turns out.

2007 is almost over. hope i get GREAT news before the year ends. or hopefully 2008 starts with more good news.