It's the Friday before Christmas and I'm excited I dont have to work until after the New Year. I've had a lot to do at work - some fun projects and some not so fun. The good thing is I'm working on a big range of different things from building a community site (like Facebook or MySpace) for the company to creating forecasting and manufacturing planning systems. I haven't posted my pictures from Europe yet, so I really need to do that. In fact, I need to sort through them and choose which ones I want to print out.

When I was looking at the options for printing pictures at Costco, I noticed a new option called a photo book. Essentially, you download this software from a 3rd party vendor that is much like iPhoto for the mac. It allows you to use themes and templates to create a completely customized photo book from the pictures on your computer. I spent a couple days creating it and getting input from everyone, but I haven't pulled the trigger yet on buying it. It's really not that much more expensive than if I were to just print all the pictures - $30 for a professionally finished, full bleed picture book.

The whole reason I really wanted to get the photo book was to be able to show it off to everyone over Christmas. But because I didn't pull the trigger early enough, I wont be able to get it in time for Christmas. That being said, I think I'm just going to print some pictures at Costco to show everyone.

I don't really have time to write about it right now, but I'm also looking for a new place to live. I want to buy a house because I think continuing to rent is like throwing money away when I could be building equity in a home. But Laura and I aren't married (or better yet engaged) yet and the timing really just isn't right. However, I'm ready to get out of an apartment - I want a backyard for Shiner, and be able to run around without worrying about bothering the neighbors below us, and be able to crank up my stereo. We're looking at townhomes and single-family homes, but it's hard to find exactly what we want.