For those of you who don’t know this face, I’d like to introduce you to my “spoiled child”, Lexi. Unless someone begs to differ, I doubt you will find another animal on this earth that loves Christmas as much as she does (unless you count humans, then I take the cake here!). I wanted to share a couple of her highlight moments for the 2007 Christmas season so far.

For starters, she loves egg nog. I don’t share with her often since I’m an addict myself (somebody please call Egg Nog-aholics Anonymous), but when she does get a special treat it’s like a seasonal blend of cat nip.

Second, she enjoys spending time watching the little magnetic figure skaters on my Department 56 ice skating pond. I realize it’s probably more like an attack position (they move! I’m gonna get ‘em!) but hey, she hasn’t pounced at them yet, so technically she’s still just keeping herself occupied by spectating.

Finally, she loves to lay next to the fireplace and tree. Sometimes she helps herself to a munchy snack at the same time (the bottom fake branches) but she’s starting to learn that they aren’t as edible as she once thought (insert sarcastic tongue sticking out here from the photo).

On a final note, I hope everyone had a wonderful and filling Thanksgiving and is enjoying the start of the Christmas season. Santa and New Year’s Eve will be here before you know it!

I don’t know about you, but the beginning of October marks the start of probably my most favorite time of year: the season of holidays.  Halloween is my second favorite holiday, and Christmas is my first.  I’m sure I’m not the only one to say this, but I still enjoy being a kid at this time of year, regardless of what they say about the holidays being all commercial and crap.  I’m especially a sucker for holiday decorating.  I took over for my parents’ house at an early age and I continue that tradition on to my own place now (plus I STILL do my parents’ house… must have spoiled the heck outta them). **

Anyway, I suppose that’s enough walking down personal holiday-loving lane (what?!  I can’t call it memory lane can I?).  Development update!  As much as I wish I could report some widget advancements, I’m sad to say I have bigger fish to fry at the moment.  As previously noted in past posts and the screenshot hint in my Portfolio page (I need to add more to that soon!), my start-up company Local Sounds is doing better recently, and we’re scrambling right now to get a couple of items done and ready to go for the beginning of November.  Even though that takes precedence right now, I will continue to promise that I’ll try and get some more widgey-woo time in so I can get some updates out. 

In the meantime, I invite you to submit ideas and suggestions of maybe some things you’d like to see added to or improved upon on the widget.  I realize it’s only the first version, but I believe it’s never too early to start collecting a list of things that could potentially make it even more awesome-o down the road.  You can leave your suggestions / ideas / feedback in the comments of this post.

Well, I always seem to find the need or desire to write posts at 1:00am, so I suppose I should run for now.  I hope to see some feedback about the widget, or just my posts in general.  Until next time…

(** NOTE: By the way, if you haven’t already noticed, I blog with a pinch of dry humor, sarcasm, and “parenthesis flashbacks”.  It’s my nature, I’m pretty laid back, and I talk the same way in person.  If you feel something offends you, spill your guts to me.  I’ll try and watch my mouth, otherwise enjoy my intentional nuttiness. )

I hope everyone had a great and relaxing Labor Day weekend.  I wish I had done a little more for the holiday, but it was relaxing, yet productive.  When I was growing up the Labor Day weekend was always the last weekend that we got to go camping.  I suppose that seems like the norm here in the Midwest; especially in Central Wisconsin where I grew up.  :)  At least this year we got a couple hours Monday evening to sit down on Lake Mendota and grill out and watch the sailboats in front of an amazing backdrop made up of the setting sun and the Madison downtown skyline.

Even though I wish the holiday hadn’t ended so quickly, it’s nice to know that the weekend is almost here again.  I vote that we need more Mondays off during the year!  Between that and a pretty lax week at the day job, it’s been an overall peaceful work week.

Speaking of work week (no day job stories today to bore you with, don’t worry!), had some good progress on my new found interest in Internet radio widget development.  Got the “legal” licensing stuff cleared up with the guy behind the widget that the Gruvsonic widget is based off of.  Nice guy, easy to work with.  He runs www.nzmac.com, a Mac community in New Zealand.  Check it out.

Well, I suppose I should wrap this up and get to work.  Have some widget work and paperwork to do.  Plus I blew the first part of my evening watching the keynote from the Apple / Steve Jobs event earlier today.  An awesome and much needed refresh to the iPod line, let me tell ya!  Although after that iPhone price drop, why oh why didn’t I wait?!  I guess I really had no way of knowing, just like the other 800,000 iPhone owners from the past 2 months.  D’oh!