Today I hear Lily Allen’s new single, called Fear. I can’t wait to hear the rest of the album. I really enjoyed her first album and if this single is any indication the new one should be every bit as good as the first.

I know I’m a little bit late in posting about Christmas, but it seems to be more and more the norm for my family to celebrate a little later than usual. This year Christmas was delayed due to my baby sister having to work on Christmas Eve and Christmas. It was actually kinda nice because it stretched the holiday out for us from Thursday until Sunday. It also worked out well because my hubby was sick as a dog on Christmas Eve.

Christmas morning we woke up early and had some breakfast and exchanged gifts. We had stated that we weren’t going to exchange gifts (like every year) but we both managed to get each other a little something. I picked up Guitar Hero World Tour for the XBOX 360 for him and he got me a MSI Wind netbook. More on both of those to come. We lounged around and watched the Office on Netflix and had a quiet day which ended with a lovely dinner together.

However, my family Christmas was anything but quiet. My mom, dad, sisters, brother, neice and my sisters’s best friend showed up on Saturday afternoon for our “Christmas Eve”. It was pure chaos from the minue that many people showed up but it all turned out to be quite a good bit of fun. Dinner was delicious, we all had a few drinks and played some UNO and a marathon game of Monopoly until close to 3am.

“Christmas Day” on Sunday was even more hectic, my nephew and brother in law arrived and presents were opened. It started off nice as the newphew was opening his gifts, I forgot how much fun it can be to watch a little one open gifts but as soon as he had exhausted his mountain of prezzies, he started to try to unwrap every gift there was and when told to stop… well as expected, he didn’t care for that too much.

We did a pollyanna this year and I had my brother in law. My gifts went over well which made me happy. My eldest sister had me and I got pretty much everything I asked for. My favorite gift was a Scosche PassPort a device that finally allows me to charge my iPhone 3G when it’s connected to my Volvo’s iPod adapter.

All in all it was a lovely holiday, tho now begins the massive clean up effort, thank goodness there is a bit of time left on the old vacation!

This week I upgraded my blog to Wordpress 2.7 and i have to say I really like it. The admin console is much nicer and very customizable. I also really like the one click upgrade feature, it makes upgrading so much easier.

The other thing I like is the plugins management up grading. Sweet.

Check it out if you have a blog.

My love of Volvos is no secret on this blog and as my previous two Volvos were S60s, I am very interested in what the new S60 will look like. I’ve been following the preview shots of the concept, first of the floating center stack, then of a very shadowy silhouette of the new car, so imagine my surprise and excitement when Volvo flat out announced the Volvo S60 Concept that will be on display at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit.

I love it. It’s very cool and it shows that they are following the XC60’s design trend… here are more photos via Autoblog.

Back in October when I accepted my new position at work, my business travel days had all but ended. When I accepted the position I had only ONE outstanding trip to take, a trip back to Boston. To be honest, I was very much looking forward to the trip. First of all, the trip was scheduled for right before the holidays, when I usually try to take two solid weeks off from work. This would mean I’d be out of the office for three week straight. Second, since I knew for a while this trip was coming, I made some plans to stay an extra day to meet up with buddy who I’d met online and his partner for dinner.

When planning the trip, I ran into some interesting roadblocks. First of which was that since I was staying an extra day, I’d have to cover the hotel for that day. When I looked at the hotel that I stayed at on my last trip to Boston, I found the hotel was 299.00 a night. Too rich for my blood. My online buddy was very helpful getting me a list of hotels near where I’d have to be working and I found one with a internet deal where the last night at the hotel (the one I had to pay for) would be only 99.00. Sweet.

The next big problem was airfare. Philly to Boston was $1000 for a direct flight, and $700 for a stop over in NYC, and 350 for a flight to Manchester, which means renting a car and driving back to Beantown. I put on my thinking cap and realized that Philly to Boston on the Acela would be cheaper and faster… so here I am on a train to Boston.

It’s a lovely way to travel, the seats are comfy, the EVDO seems to be holding out so far, the car is noisy so no one even cares I’m on the phone the whole way .

Well here I am on the train back to Philly. Boy do I love this EVDO modem. The connection was kinda spotty in Connecticut but it’s held out. I’ve been playing Hello Kitty Online the whole way home and it’s been so much fun.

Boston was great. The hotel I stayed in was the Parker House hotel where the Parker House Roll was created as well as the Boston Creme Pie. It is a very historic place and very nice too. I got to eat at some nice places including the Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse in the old City Hall right next to my hotel.

The highlight of my trip was getting to hang out with my new online buddy and his partner. We went to dinner with some of their friends who were so nice and made me really feel welcome. After dinner, we headed to a bar called the Ramrod for karaoke. I’ve only been to a karaoke bar two times and they were both on the cruise my hubby and I took for our 10th anniversary, those were drunk straight people… however gay karaoke is a whole other experience!

My friend and his friend were both very good singers and extremely fun to watch, the other guys however… well they were fun to watch but not very good singers! It was a wonderful evening and it was so nice to just get out of the hotel and have some fun with new folks! Thanks to them both

All in all it was a pretty good trip and a lot better than my last one there!