We’re getting ready for my parents’ arrival on Wednesday morning (weather at the Seattle airport willing), and I’m looking forward to the short week, two days on and five days off.

It’s been cold and rainy over the last week, with the exception of this weekend, thankfully, which we spent looking at houses and condos in our continuing hunt for a place to buy that has everything: size, location, style, the right price… We’ve found few with most of what we’re looking for, but none with everything, which is how it goes, I suppose.

One place we likely won’t be moving is this arresting new building on our old block on Formosa north of Santa Monica. It’s pretty interesting, but I’m curious how the neighbors feel about it. We watched the previous building come down and this one begin to go up, but it wasn’t until yesterday that we finally saw the finished product.

I’ve been keeping up with most of the screenings of the year-end prestige movies, but I haven’t seen anything that’s been really compelling. Aimee and I are due to make our top (and bottom) ten lists, and I have a feeling my favorites of the year came out in the summer. We’ll see what happens. I won’t be traveling anywhere over the holidays, so I’ll have time to catch any stragglers I’ve missed over the new year.

We had our holiday party on Friday, which was another fun, catered affair with a band, an open bar, and our bonuses, despite the faltering economy (and with only a couple of Bernard Madoff jokes). It’s the beginning of the busy, exciting phase of the year, which I’m looking forward to.