Today officially marks the beginning of our long awaiting break from work. For those of you that are unfamiliar with the IT industry, almost everyone goes into what is called a “change freeze” during the holiday period. This means that no changes whatsoever can be made to anyone’s infrastructure, which is the only thing that I do, and a large part of what Jes does as well. The reasoning behind this is because if you happen to break something, you don’t want to risk having the person who can fix it being away on vacation. With all of that being said, Jes and I are off for the next two weeks and we couldn’t be more excited about it – it is going to be a well deserved period of rest and relaxing (and of course some holiday fun as well).
Last night we kicked off the vacation with a trip to Martinis and IMAX at the Fernbank Museum for a couple of drinks and a show about King Penguins. This was Jes’ homage to my, admittedly somewhat strange, passion for nearly all things penguins. The film took us through the journey of how a young King Penguin makes it to adulthood and all of the trials and tribulations that can get in the way before that. There was nothing earth shattering in the film that I didn’t already have at least cursory knowledge of, but it was very well done and had us laughing and very invested in the well being of this penguin family. By the end of the film the baby penguin had grown into a young adult and was off on a three year expedition to fish and get bigger and stronger, after which he would return and start the cycle all over again.
The excitement doesn’t stop with Penguins though. Tonight we will continue our holiday festivities by going to a performance by the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra as they put on A Very Merry Holiday Pops. This is less symphony and more variety show, but obviously will heavily feature the ASO. I can’t tell you how much I am looking forward to this, as I really think it will be something that Jes and I fall in love with. Neither of us are “concert people” in the typical sense: we don’t like music that is too loud nor do we like massive crowds. Both of us however really enjoy classical music and the beauty of a full orchestra, so the fact that we have never been to the ASO surprises me, looking back on it. Somehow we lucked into literally the best seats in the house, so it should be an amazing time. Before the performance we will have dinner at one of Atlanta’s new-ish highly rated restaurants, as that is something else that we would like to start doing more often.
There are many more festivities planned for the two week break that we have, but I don’t want to spoil all of the surprises before they come. I hope everyone has wonderful plans for the holidays and can spend it with their friends and family.
Merry Christmas everyone!
Odd, your cousin Zac, (for those that do not know, Charles and Zac look very much alike), has a thing for penguins as well.