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happy holidays!
woo! another year gone by, another year of not knowing what the heck i spent all that time doing. :)
well, i guess i know what i spent some of it doing. lately in particular i've been mopping up lots of dog pee. :( we got prince our puppy and he's totally not house trained yet. we've been a bit slack on it but as of 2009, that dog is going to get beaten into shape. he has been fun to have around but his time getting spoiled has come to an end.
i also spent a bit of that time getting restaurant deals done with mai. we now have signed letter of intent for two of the restaurants we've been working on. one in hammnd (it's across lake pontchartrain from new orleans) and one in slidell (about 15 miles east of new orleans). a signed letter of intent is what the actual lease gets made from, it describes all the terms that both us and the property people have agreed to. a signed loi makes it all a done deal as far as most parties are concerned, the lease is a formality at this point. so yay! two new restaurants! hammond will be open first. they're supposed to give us the empty shell in may of 2009 and we should be open by the end of july, 2009. slidell is still 2 years off since the whole shopping center it will be in has been postponed a year due to the economy. but we've been given assurances that the center is still going to be made, just slightly delayed a bit.
as a related side project, the nashville partners are hoping to have a restaurant opened within the next 2 or 3 months. it's not really a cafe roma but is sort of a combination of cafe roma and mai's old coffee house cool beans. they have a location and they're just trying to work out a good deal on the lease.
something i have not spent a lot of time doing is seeing movies. i had a nice run through the summer but going into fall saw a real slow down in my movie theater habits. i kept up on things via netflix, seeing stuff i missed, but haven't seen too many new ones. i think "eagle eye" was the only movie i've seen in the fall and it was fun. some netflix stuff i caught up on was "sweeney todd" (bloody but fun), "stardust" (fun little fairy tale), "memoirs of a geisha" (better than i thought reviews treated it), "speed racer" (pure eye candy, wish i had seen it on a big screen) and "black book" (really good dutch ww2 thriller).
while i've been busy playing video games, and sadly not programming any, mai has picked up a new hobby. she's been taking flight lessons! she hasn't actually taken many yet and she finds it more challenging than she expected, but she's sticking with it and hopes to get her private pilot lesson in 2009. as she gets closer to having it, the flight teacher is going to give me a few lessons to help ensure that should she ever be flying and something goes wrong, that i'll be able to help land the plane should she be unable to for some reason. (the more likely scenario is that 10 minutes into the flight, mai will likely say "baby, i'm tired, can you fly the plane?" and i don't want to have to worry about my life ending while she falls asleep at the wheel.) once we actually get to that point, i might go ahead and take lessons myself. but for now, as i've been telling people, all my flight lessons are in my mouth.
speaking of which, the braces thing is in full force now as i had the bottom braces put on at the beginning of december. i must admit i hadn't really fully expected the level in inconvenience that they've been, but i started it so now i'm going to see it through. thankfully, the worst of the pain was the first two weeks when the put the spacers in to make room for the braces. the braces themselves have not been painful, just annoying. thankfully, though, they don't stop me from actually eating, though i do notice i don't chew my food as much as i probably should, since chewing is a bit annoying. but i haven't choked on anything yet so it's all good.
in other good news, we start our holiday vacation a bit early tomorrow at noon. we're headed to the port of new orleans to take a seven day cruise to mexico, guatemala and belize. our niece oanh, who is now the general manager of cafe roma, is coming with us since she complained about never having a fun vacation. mai's sister jessie and her family did this same cruise last week and loved it so we're looking forward to a good time. this is our first cruise so we hope we really enjoy it.
after that, we do the fairly traditional road trip home to ohio for christmas. we stop in nashville for a day to see the family/business partners there and then will spend a few days in ohio.
if we see any snow, however, it won't be the first time of the year as we actually had snow in new orleans a few days ago. big, heavy, wet snow flakes like we normally see up north covered the city in the hours right after morning. it was all gone by the afternoon, but everyone down here was out taking photos and we saw a brief snippet about it on one of the national news shows.
and then last, but not least (at least to me) is the exciting news that later today, as we drive to a friends house for dinner, my bmw is going to roll over to 100,000 miles! woo hoo! my original goal for the car was 10 years and 100k miles and i'm a bit surprised to be hitting the mileage part a good 2.5 years earlier than 10 years. it's still running great though so i don't expect any problems hitting the 10 year mark.
can't think of anything else fun to blather on about, so i'll wrap this up here. i hope you're all having a good winter '08 so far and have fun holiday plans lined up. me and mai wish the best to all of you!
happy holidays!
-jesse
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