Happy Thanksgiving folks. Hope everyone enjoyed the holiday, the food, and the football. I got back from Hawaii last weekend and it was just great. Perfect weather. Great food. What more could you ask for?

This trip has been in the making for months. The kids bought the parents tickets to Hawaii about six months ago. Since then, they made a trip to Seattle all by themselves and while they enjoyed themselves, they expressed their dismay about how they would have been happier if we joined them. So the decision was made to surprise them in Hawaii. So everybody except Chris went and we surprised them outside their hotel. The look was priceless but the camera angles were bad so we never got a good picture.

The first day was the traditional luau. I got pulled onstage to dance with hula girls. Sure, it was a surprise but was I complaining? Nope. In subsequent days, there was Pearl Harbor, North Shore, shave ice at Matsumoto's, shrimp at Giovanni's, and tons of shopping for Nancy. She couldn't decide between a Dior necklace or Dior wallet, so what does she do? Get them both, obviously.

In fact, the only unpleasantness was the trip home where the flight back was delayed for almost 4 hours, which meant we couldn't get to Oakland until 2:15 am. And if you know my parents, you know their opinion of Oakland even if it is just at the airport.

All in all, these few days away from work were welcome. As some of you know, I'm in month 2 of my 4-month hellish period at work where two veterans are on medical leave and replaced by two newbies while at the same time I'm trying to take over a new, more complicated contract. Luckily, I'm thankful the newbies are performing extremely well (obviously because of my great teaching skills :) The roadblocks seem to be IT in its fumbling of the reports we use to do our jobs and a reorganization at work that has given us mixed messages to start out the new year but seems to be getting better.