The Year Of The Dragon

And so, as the year comes to an end, I finally finish my first run through of Skyrim. Remember back here when I talked about game length, well check this out for accuracy. I'll now wait for the creation kit to be released and see how the fans run wild before adding the best of their mods and playing through again. In the meantime I'll take a little break from gaming, maybe see the sun again...oh wait, is that Deus Ex on sale on Steam? Nevermind.

Quantum Confusion

It's a testament to how good this book is, that I was 2/3 done and still confused about many of it's concepts, but really enjoying anyway.

Ghost Legion

The help desk boys are going to be busy in the New Year.

Defending Christmas

A quiet Christmas for two isn't necessarily how we'd like to spend it, but we got to see my folks before and we'll be seeing the Atlanta Irelands after. Need to mix in some Huldens and Christensens one of these years. Still, we had a good time us two. Watched a days worth of Christmas movies from the classic of Wonderful Life to the horror of something made for the Lifetime channel. The obligatory yearly watching of A Christmas Story of course. Pictured here one of my favorite gifts, a nice donation to the Defenders of Wildlife.

Twas The Night Before Christmas

When all through the house, not a creature was cooking, not even a mouse. Mimi's on the other hand, provided a really good dinner, with their great muffins for breakfast in the morning.

Yule Log

You aren't a hard core Christmas decorator until your toilet looks like a chimney.

I Know It When I See It

The plan for today was to go wander the Asheville art district. We drove all over this sketchy looking neighborhood of empty factories and old train yards. Couldn't find anything open. And finally ended up here, on some street corner, next to the only piece of art we could find. As always we had a great time doing it, the four of us can make anything fun, even getting lost. Here's my folks with what we hope is a sculpture, and they took the same snap but with me and Mari. So, travel tips 2-4. 2 - Do the art tour on a Saturday, they're all closed on Sunday. 3 - Despite how the map represents it, the galleries are spread out in little clumps across a wide area so it doesn't necessarily feel like you're in one big artsy area. 4-I'm sure the neighborhood is perfectly safe, but it looks like you're in a graffiti strewn industrial ghetto (and not the cool, artsy graffiti, just tagging.)

Wineding Down

We went down the the villages too, including the on-estate winery. I must have been getting tired because I didn't think to take pictures of any of that, so instead you get a posthumous shot of some of the bottles.

Backyards And Yards

The view from the backyard.

Because Two Pools Is For Poor People

A side garden/walk area with three pools.

Take That, Tourist Trap

Here's the library. I got this off the internet so no credit to me, but no $50 book to the Vanderbilt coffers either. Anyway, the chess set there belonged to Napoleon. (Edit: Looking at the picture the chess set is hard to make out. It's in the foreground, in a plexiglass case on that tan wood table.)

Stairway To Haveland

Particularly liked the parallelogram windows of the stairwell. On the inside my favorite was the library (I know, shocker there. Too bad I can't show it to you, oh wait I can.)

Big Ole House

The biggest house in America. They strictly enforce a no pictures inside the house policy (the better to make you buy things my dear), so you won't be getting any. I guess just google Biltmore and you can see some if you're that curious. FYI, that line out front is only a small sample of the mass of humanity that was milling around the place.

Vanderbuilt

Today was spent at the Biltmore, the home built by the Vanderbilt family. It sits on a mere 8,000 acres, and besides the house has two small "villages" (read shopping areas) and a hotel. There's also a nice Starbucks right before you go on property so everyone was happy. You can spend a whole day here, and we did. But special travel tip, it's worth seeing but don't go around Christmas. As impressive as the house is, the Christmas specific decorations aren't that great and the crowds were crazy to the point of frustrating. Here's the front lawn.

Can't Sleep, Clown Will Eat Me

Our room at the Cedar Crest. That bed is amazingly comfortable but you have to climb a ladder to get up on it.

LD B&B

Headed over to Asheville, NC to meet the parents here for an early x-mas get-together. We thought it would be fun to forgo the hotel for a B&B, pictured here (the Cedar Crest.)

Slippery

You can never have enough slippers.

Wrap It Up

Hadn't gone to a movie in a while, didn't know on which side of the cheese line this would fall. Turned out to be really good, worth the price of admission. Though be warned they play a Justin Bieber video before the movie starts which will likely induce vomiting.

Getting Fuzzy

This is a reboot of a popular series done in the 1960's. I never read those so I have no reverence for the original material, that said this was really good. Invokes an interest thought about what makes a creature sentient, and what would have happened to us if some alien species had come down and mined all our resources. How would we have developed without bronze, iron, oil....?

And So It Begins

Xmas boxes are go.

WOTM

December's wolf.

The Foggiest

December kicks off with the foggiest day I've seen in Nashville. It was thick all the way from home to work. I learned later that mere minutes after we passed, there was a huge 45 car wreck with at least one fatality on Vietnam Vets. To think, a few different traffic lights and... (Update, a quick peek at News 5 site has it up to 55 cars, 18 injured, and the single fatality stands.)