Bajkowski.com

If you wonder where I’ve been, given the lack of updates, you’re not alone. I’ve actually been wondering the exact same thing. After a quick review of the past two months, I’ve coined a new term, “over-housed”. The meaning of the term is quite simple: busy with so much house work that one is incapable of doing almost anything else. To give you an idea of the transpiring events over the last month or so, here is how it pretty much went down:

The previous homeowners of my new home leased the home back from me for a few months. When the family finally moved out, Tina and I had only a few weeks to begin renovating the two-story home, and here are some of the things that we managed to either do ourselves or with professional help in the span of just a few weeks: Hardwood installation on entire first floor with the exception of the kitchen, entry, and bathrooms; Interior painting of entire property; Replacement and installation of major appliances such as the refrigerator, dish-washer, washer, and dryer; Purchase and assembly of new dining room table; Repainting of all cabinetry interiors in the kitchen; Re-framing and door installation of washer and dryer housing to accommodate new appliances; Removal of all previous shades and blinds, and the replacement of all switches and contacts in guest room. These were just some of the major tasks, I won’t not even mention all the little things that we had to take care of to make this house feel like a home. Nor will I go into all the things that we still plan on doing, for the list is endless and getting longer almost every single day. A Big ‘Thank You’ goes out to my Dad, who flew down for a weekend and spent several days helping us out with all these tasks, and then came back a week later to surprise me and helped out some more. I have no clue where he gets all his energy from, all I know is that I simply could not hang with him. Regardless how many coffees or red-bulls I consumed, I beat him to bed most days. At least I feel that Tina and I are single handedly rescuing the American economy, or at least the home improvement and home services sector! Needless to say, I’m in need of a vacation, so I’m packing my bags and heading to Salt Lake City, Utah this Friday for some snowboarding and much needed relaxation.

As always, vacations fly by way too fast, at a rate that seems to accelerate with every year. Hopefully one of these days the passage of time will reach a final terminal velocity – I mean, will time seem to pass by even faster, the older I get? However, I digress; this year’s Christmas vacation was essentially one big road trip with some very enjoyable stops in-between. Given that gas prices have fallen significantly from their recent highs, Tina and I elected to drive this year, as opposed to flying as usual when visiting family.

The first lag of our drive was from Austin to Huntsville, Alabama. Instead of taking I35, which is a rather uninteresting highway full of trucks and police officers, we chose to take route 79 through Texas. This proved to be an enjoyable drive which lead us through many small towns before jumping onto I20 shortly before Shreveport, Louisiana. The rest of the drive was rather uneventful, which is typical of I20 with it being so straight of a highway that we got excited every time a slight curve came up – with two exceptions: First, Tina tends to have a heavy foot at times, and so it was just a matter of time before we had an encounter with the man in blue soon after crossing the Mississippi border. Thankfully, with all her charm and a nice smile, the officer was nice enough to let Tina off easy with just a verbal warning although she was probably at least fifteen miles over the speed limit – why do I never seem to have such luck? Second, as the night grew old and we finally arrived in Birmingham, we were greeted by a very heavy rain storm and severe wind gusts. Having taken Tina’s small but mighty Toyota Scion, no matter how much luggage we had stacked in the cargo, we were no match for the weather conditions, and just as we were getting tired after a full day of driving, we had to slow our pace significantly. This of course was very frustrating, but eventually we made it to Huntsville around 1:30am, were we were greeted by Tina’s parents and other family members, and treated to a nice welcome.

The next day, after eating breakfast which was delicious as always - you can never go wrong with some home cooked eggs and bacon; I left Tina behind with her family and continued on my way to Atlanta. Once again, I opted for the local roads rather than the highway through Chattanooga, which I did not regret one bit since I got to see some amazing scenery as I crossed high bridges, lakes, and rolling mountain sides. All this time my parents did not expect me to arrive in Atlanta until two days later, and when I surprised them by showing up behind them at a store in which I pinned them down by asking random questions about products I had little interest in, they were very much blown away. You should have seen their faces! It was as if they had just won the lottery :)

I spent the next couple of days helping my parents prepare the house for the annual Bajkowski Christmas party. We were hosting some early arriving guests that would stay at our house.  I also spent some time hanging out with Martin and Sofie. The Christmas party was great and crazy as ever, and while the economy might be in the doldrums, the party atmosphere would have none of it. Plenty of guests, some new faces, many old and familiar faces, plenty of drinking, chatting, socializing, and so many little side stories that it would take years to recount them all. Tina and many of her family members even came through to celebrate for another year.  Suffice it to say, the party was a huge success as always, and I’m already looking forward to the party next year. We shall neither talk here about the parts of the night that I might have troubles remembering nor the epic hangover the next day, but in the end there are absolutely no regrets. As a matter of fact, I have no right to complain about anything at all, as Tina had to leave at 8am sharp the next day with her family and get back to Alabama to celebrate Christmas.  If her hangover was anything like mine, I’m sure the trip back to Alabama wasn’t an easy one! At least I got to sleep in and wake up at home, versus in a car.

Recovery over the next few days consisted of hanging out with my parents, watching a lot of movies, and of course ridiculous amounts of food. There is nothing like home cooked meals prepared by your parents. There is no denying that because of all the good home meals I digested, Tina’s little Scion had to work significantly harder when climbing mountains after leaving Atlanta than before coming in. And climbing mountains was exactly what was on the agenda after leaving Atlanta. First, I had the drive back to Huntsville to pick up Tina, and then continue on to the Smokey Mountains in Tennessee where Tina, Amit, Nidhi, and I had a cabin reserved just outside of Pigeon Forge. There, in total isolation from the rest of the world, other than cell phone reception, we spent a few very relaxing days and celebrated New Years. We grilled, even though it was freaking cold outside and it took us forever to get the coals hot enough, we cooked and ate to our hearts content, even though we probably should have been on a diet by then, and we played many games of Monopoly until late into the night. Unlike Scrabble, I actually have a chance to beat Tina in this game!

And so, the two weeks of vacation passed in a flash and it was time to get started on our long drive back to Austin. Once again, the drive was relaxing but entertaining nevertheless. For one, Tina’s parents paid us a cleverly calculated surprise visit  during our drive through Birmingham.  They tagged along in their car for a thirty mile stretch through Alabama before we had to stop for gas and then said our goodbyes and parted ways. Then Tina and I stopped for dinner in Shreveport and were pleasantly surprised at how nice the Boardwalk was developed along the river. Eventually, 3000 miles after leaving Austin and a little more than 2 weeks after our initial departure, we arrived back home, exhausted for sure, but nevertheless quite content with our road trip.  Seeing as we spent significantly less than the cost of one plane ticket for a round trip visit to our families’ places, a vacation in Tennessee and experienced great scenery and food, we’ll definitely consider driving again!

I’ve just uploaded our Virginia and Washington D. C. pictures from our trip back in July. This was over the 4th of July weekend, and we spent about a couple days in VA, and another day in DC. Next will be up the Aruba picture from the wedding we attended, so expect them up over the next couple of weeks or so. Just last weekend we were up in VA and DC again for Thanksgiving. The food was simply ridiculously good – and all the pounds I’ve worked so hard to shed playing on the Austin tennis league over the last few months, have come right back. If I get motivated later tonight I might make it to the gym, but with the weather being cold outside this might be a tall order. Besides the food, I actually managed to win a couple of spades games, which is rather unusual. I must have gotten lucky or maybe it was the moonshine – good stuff by the way! I also got a few games of chess in, and although I felt rusty I managed to hold my own. As a matter of fact, all we did is eat, drink and play card or board games so don’t expect many pictures. Being away from electronics for a few days is rehabilitation indeed – I should do it more often.

After Virginia, we took our rental car and drove down to D.C. to do some more sightseeing. I should probably mention that we were accompanied by Alessandro, who is one of Tina’s coworkers and a good beer buddy of mine. So if you see a guy that seems to be repeatedly in our pictures, that would be him. We stayed at the Grand Hyatt, which was only a few blocks away from the White House and most of the major museums. Hyatts are usually a bit out of our price range, but it seems D.C is not a very popular Thanksgiving destination and as such we were able to get a very good rate. The hotel itself was very nice and we don’t have any real complaints. We had a nice and spacious rooms, the check-in and out were very quick, and the hotel staff handled very well every request that we threw at them – ask Tina for details.

As for DC, we managed to visit most of the Memorials and landmarks. The good news is that most of them are walking distance from each other, the bad news is that there are so many that even the most comfortable shoes will give you blisters. We also managed to visit a couple of museums, namely the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History and the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum. Both of these museums are amazing and well worth your time. And time in them you will spent for they are gigantic, which explains why we only managed to visit two of them. Last but not least, they are free, meaning no over priced tickets that are valid for one day only! I’m so not used to free stuff anymore, seems like one has to pay for everything these days, that I almost felt uncomfortable at – a little donation at the donation box was needed to settle my nerves:) Anyhow, the museums are great, and since there are a lot more things to do and see in DC, I’m sure we will be back sooner or later. Big thanks go out to my buddy Victor who pointed us to some great restaurants and pubs – too bad that he could not actually join us for some spirited late night discussions.