The travels begin

Going to bed soon in order to get up at 4:30 a.m. (urk!) to get to the airport, park, check in, etc. for an 8 a.m. flight to Arizona. It's the first leg of an 8-day voyage over the country and through the air to Nana's house we go ... and Grandpa's, and Great Grandma and Great Grandpa's, and then to Wendy's (in Portland, Ore.) for her wedding.

Back home in 2006 — to stay put for a while, we hope.

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night.

Christmas in the car

Last Saturday we took Julia to see the Winter Lights Festival in Gaithersburg. It's 3.5 miles long, so it took nearly an hour to drive through the entire series of displays. She seemed to enjoy it, particularly the lights shaped like candles ("candle" is a new favorite word; she likes to remove the battery-powered Christmas candles from our windowsills and walk around with them). But I'm a Christmas lights junkie, so it was really a trip for me, with the lady as a convenient excuse. Of course, faux Scrooges Ken and Kevin didn't seem to be complaining too much about going along for the ride. And Julia was especially delighted to see her Uncle Kevin, or "Kayin," as she pronunces it. Still working on the v's.

Gourmet for a day

As a thank you for my shiny new toy, I took Karim to lunch at Firefly on Tuesday. It's cozy, delicious and only a couple of blocks away from the office, a fantastic bonus when it's this cold outside. It was a gourmet getaway — I had butternut squash soup with creme fraiche, mussels with coconut curry sauce, and parmesan truffle frites. Everything was fantastic, but I think the frites win the prize.

Now I have to find another excuse to go back.

What does Heidi do, anyway?

For anyone who wonders exactly what we do at CDG Solutions all day (or at any other standard interactive agency that designs and develops web sites), here's a good primer, with plastic figurines.

But of course the missing piece of this process is the producer, or project manager, who oversees the whole process and facilitates the conversations between the programmer and designer, and between them and the client.

And *that's* what I do.

Let it snow ...

The first flakes of the winter of '05, as seen from my workspace window, overlooking the Heurich House on Rhode Island Avenue.