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A few weeks back, I was lamenting the fact that, despite the fact that we are living in The Future, very little of the future occupies my home. Since that article, a few things have changed that I thought I might share.

First off, as an aside to all of our kitchen renovations, I also installed a new programmable thermostat. But I’ve mentioned that as an aside to another aside, so that’s really all I need to mention for now.

Then, some time last week, I ordered an iRobot Roomba Discovery SE. It isn’t the exact model that I was pining after, but so far as I can tell it as the exact same features. It’s just a generation behind. And because it was a generation behind, I got it for half the cost of a Roomba 530. It should be here today. I’m more than a little excited to try it out this evening. :) I haven’t swept the floors yet this week in anticipation.

And now, for the grand finale. Yesterday, Amazon announced a new device they’ve dubbed the Kindle. What is it, you ask? Pretty much the coolest thing since Gutenberg’s little printing-press-thinger, it is. It’s the first mainstream (or soon to be mainstream) product to feature electronic paper. It weighs a little over ten ounces, can hold over 200 books in memory, has a battery that lasts for days, and connects wirelessly using cellular technology (read: wireless access not needed) to download new books, newspapers, and blogs. It even has free access to Wikipedia, which is a pretty freaking cool idea. It looks like it has a metric crapton of buttons at the bottom, and for some reason its design reminds me of late eighties technology, but it’s still pretty cool. At $399, I’ll have to wait a bit to get one, but still. The awesome.

This year will mark my first-ever holiday(s) away from my family. At least, the first in working memory. Amanda and I will be heading north to Minnesota for Thanksgiving this week.

It took a lot of debate back and forth, but we finally decided on the following holiday schedule:

We’ll spend Thanksgiving in Minnesota with her family, because she’s met a good portion of my extended family (on both sides), and I’ve met very little of her family (parents, brother, one aunt, one uncle, and two cousins). So, we’ll spend this Thanksgiving remedying that. And, hopefully, eating some good food.

Christmas is… complicated. Neither of us are perfectly happy with the result, and neither are/will be our families. That’s how we know it’s a good compromise.

We’ll spend Christmas Eve in Minnesota with her immediate family. It seems they have a long series of Eve-rituals that I don’t entirely understand but Amanda would be devastated to miss. As long as there’s a lot of eggnog (and rum) and a little good food to snack on, I should be okay. We’ll spend the night in Minnesota, and then have an early Christmas breakfast with her family.

Then, in an effort to only moderately annoy both sets of families, we’re going to hit the road, drive back down to Iowa, and spend the rest of Christmas Day in Truro with my family, where there will be lots of good food and very little rum.

So! We’ve a bit of traveling coming up over the next month or so. We’re leaving Iowa this Wednesday evening, and will be back Saturday sometime. We’ve hired a dog sitter to come look in on Miles while we’re gone, so we don’t have to bother friends or family with checking in on him on Thanksgiving Day. And then we’ll probably be back in Minnesota on the 22nd of December, and then back in Iowa in the early afternoon on the 25th. Whew.