We flew into Buffalo, NY, this morning and ended up in Niagara Falls this evening thanks to a ride from our friends Maria & Michael (thanks guys!). It is chilly, but not too much snow so far. Tomorrow we head to the Finger Lake region of NY for wine tasting…

I’ve been eying a new receiver for our home theater for the last year, and after a good bit of research, I decided to get an Onkyo (TX-SR705). Of course, I needed to get a good deal on it, so for the past two months I’ve been watching a number of websites for deals and discounts. This past Tuesday I saw a price I liked at Circuit City and brought my new baby home!

Leandra helped me with the initial install last night (she’s getting quite good at cable stripping) and I’ve got all the major parts working. It sounds good already, but I’m sure I can get it better with a bit of tweaking and optimization.

Unfortunately, this upgrade means our our master Harmony 880 remote is temporarily out-of-sync, so we have to use individual remotes until I get a chance re-program. I’d forgotten how much the Harmony remote had automated things and I can’t wait to make it the only remote again!

One of my favorite video games ever is Wii bowling. Not only can you realistically bowl from the comfort of your living room, but you don’t have to rent stinky shoes or smell stale beer and pizza when you play.

I’ve been a *pro* for a few months now, which pretty much means I have a sparkly bowling ball… but it also means I need to do consistently well lest I lose my pro status.

On Monday night I bowled my best game ever, 6 strikes and 4 spares, a 223!

Unfortunately, Eric didn’t do so well, so I’m sorry I had to post this photo. He typically performs around a 170, honest. :)

Even with the drought we still have a few plants that have provided us some color late into November. For example, we planted hardy cyclamen several years ago, and they send up flowers every fall.

These are really winter plants- after they’re done flowering they’ll send out their leaves which will stick around until April or so. We’ve also got some traditional fall color, especially from my Japanese maple:

Clearly happy in its container on the patio.

The biggest surprise is our gerbera daisy:

We haven’t had a gerbera flower in several months, but after we got some rain a few weeks ago, “Fred” came back to life and started blooming. With a bit of mulch the gerberas will come back next year. Hopefully we’ll have a better balance of sun and rain in the next growing season for Fred and all the others!

We have the tree lit and decorated. Our friend Todd is spending the night, so he helped out with the festivities; pup spent the night wondering what the heck we were all doing.

Ta da!

Our favorite ornaments are our extensive Opus n’ Bill collection.

We arrived back in town last night and after church today we picked ourselves up a lovely Douglas fir. Luckily, it fit snugly into our truck with the back seats down.

Eric cut the trunk to give it a fresh surface to suck up water and we set it up in the corner of our living room.

The biggest challenge is going to be preventing pup from eating all the needles.

White we are both fans of traditional candy bars, Southern Season has a wonderful and extensive collection of speciality chocolate. Here is one of our absolute favorites, milk chocolate with almonds and cinnamon…

We’ve been out of town quite a bit over the last few months and that trend will continue through Christmas. The good news is that we’ll be able to take her with us on a few of the trips… otherwise she stays at Camp Bow Wow.

The Camper Cam lets us know that she’s doing just fine. :)

We had a lovely Thanksgiving, here is the table all set up for dinner…

It snowed all morning and then we had sunny skies. We brined the turkey again this year and the stuffing Lynn made was absolutely delicious.

We drank wine, ate a lot of food, watched football and spent quality time with my family… everything Thanksgiving is meant to be about. :)

The lovely Shelly at Really Rome organized a city swap this year for those who signed up on her blog. The main point was to send a little taste or feel of where you live to someone who lives somewhere else. While we only shipped to Boston, the recipient is originally from Germany, so that sort of makes it an international experience. :)

Included in our city swap care package from Durham, NC: Jim’s Own Homestyle Bar-B-Que sauce, spicy North Carolina peanuts, Tar Heel blend coffee, and a book of North Carolina photography with several comments/quips from me via sticky-notes. Hope she liked it!