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First things first, Happy New Year!

Now, with that being said, I’m sure that there are many out there who are wondering where the heck we’ve been. Well, believe me, it would take too much space (and energy) to properly fill you in, so I will stick with the highlights:

Part 1: Work

There has been lots of work, which has made my mom nervous that she’s lost us to Chicago forever. In the past months, I have worked in Milwaukee, Minneapolis, Omaha, Iowa City, Philadelphia, and, my favorite, San Francisco.

Oh, how I loved San Francisco. I wish I could have spent a week there. (Hopefully, Apryl and I will get the chance to visit the city together sometime in the near future.) The funny thing is that we really didn’t even do that much, except walk around, starting on Market St. up to the districts SOMA, Chinatown, and North Beach. Still, I was just fascinated with the beautiful city and had a time visiting the Beat Museum, City Lights Bookstore, Chinatown, and the sea lions at Fisherman’s Wharf.

Most bizarre sighting, a farmer’s market I visited on the morning of our last day in town, where live poultry was being sold from the back of a pickup truck. The farmer (or whoever he was) would take hens out of a wooden cage, tie their legs together, stick them in a brown paper bag, and punch a small hole in the bag with his finger so that the birds could breathe. Surprising (at least, to me) is how popular these birds were, with a long steady line. I wasn’t bold enough to snap a photo of this odd practice. Not sure I want that keepsake.

– More photos of the San Francisco trip can be found here.

In town, I have worked on several segments for the Oprah show, including one of those Dr. Oz episodes. If you have a Myspace account, you’re fully aware that one of these segments was with Stacy London, who has a show Apryl loves on TLC called What Not To Wear. And I am happy to report that London was quite charming and sweet. A month after the shoot, Apryl and I caught the episode on TV, and I was surprised to see how little of what we shot during that 13-hour day was used in the final program.

Also, I got to work on an episode of the HGTV series Designed To Sell as well as a live ESPN shoot with Mike Ditka at his restaurant in Chicago.

And, of course, I traveled to Philadelphia for another Thanksgiving week with the UCA/UDA cheerleaders. It was the warmest thanksgiving in Philadelphia in one hundred and six years. Below, I’m posing with the cheer escorts:

The really fun part of Philly came when I got back to Chicago and spent countless hours editing 10 hours of footage into 50 minutes. I think I gained 10 pounds from all the eggnog I consumed at the computer.

Up next, Part 2: The Best of October!