A brief update - I arrived home in Baltimore yesterday. Ben came to pick me and Lisa up, and we dropped Lisa off at her cousins' house, which as it turns out is about 5 minutes away from ours.

Tonight we saw Lord of the Rings, which, as everyone had been telling me, is quite a good movie. Much less boring than the book.

There's this metal band called Savatage which does a lot of rock operas and other epic stuff like that. On one of said rock operas, they did an amazing metal arrangement of "Carol of the Bells", which you may have heard on the radio. Based on the popularity of this song, they did a whole album of metal arrangements of Christmas carols, under the name "Trans-Siberian Orchestra". This album is my top choice for holiday music.

Unfortunately, Ben and Jim have decreed that this album is not to leave the car CD player until after Christmas. After about 5 consecutive listens, I'm already starting to get sick of it.

So much for moderation. Kids these days...