That last major holiday - Dec 22-25 2006

[Charinida]

/me hopes everyone got what they wished for! Other than coal in the stockings.

[Ganlron]

mmmmm coal

[Charinida]

For me, not much.

Got a wonderful card from The Bones. Love original cards. Pretty funny. :) Woot!

Fri/Sat pretty much slept in and cleaned up some. Avoided shopping.

Sun/Mon, worked. Had turkey dinner from the USO which was great!

Watched Bing Crosby (The Bells of St Mary), listened to Santa Claus is Comin' to Town (Fred Astaire) and Frosty the Snowman (Jimmy Durante), watched Scrooged and both Mummy/Mummy Returns.

Game wise, mainly played L2. Made another character, a Dark Elf in favor over the Light Elf. Making a rogue - but rogues don't get dual-wield. Only the blade-dancers get the ability to dual-wield.

Overall, it was quiet...

[Ganlron]

worked and slept...watched a movie at some point.

[Serani]

Um, Friday, we shopped. Last minute stuff.

Saturday was the holiday with my mom. Had turkey and ham and lots of other stuff. Opened presents and then took her home. Afterwards, I wrapped...until 3am

Sunday was the holiday with the kids. I had the most fun watching the kids open their gifts. We all got Nerf guns. Rubi wanted to get me the sniper rifle, but he couldn't find any anywhere, so we all ended up getting the revolver (the Maverick) and proceeded to have a number of nerf gun battles in the house. It was a BLAST! Later on, my ex picked up the kids and he gave us a nice gift card for Barnes & Noble. Jabby got SimCity 4 for the holidays (and her own WoW account) but none of her dad's computers could run it, so I installed it on my machine and stayed up WAY too late playing.

Yesterday: went to see Eragon and took the day off from mostly everything. I also watched National Treasure (which I got from Rubi) and painted little houses (eventually, I'd like to have a whole village). After I finished the house, I played more SimCity. Having trouble with seaports. I can NOT figure out how to place them. :(

GREAT weekend. I SO don't want to do any work today.

[Shiz]

I got really sick Thursday and Friday. Used the weekend to slowly get better and was feeling 90% on Christmas. Back to 100% today (at work)! The Big Day was a success for the kids. Stone got a muscle-puffed Spiderman costume from Santa and he wore it all day. I will try and get a pic up. My brothers gave me a new vid card, 2 Conan collections and The Blood Knight (Greg Keyes series). Mom and Dad arrived for lunch and stayed over night. It was a nice Christmas, but boy is it exhausting as a parent.

[Sylvene]

Friday: Worked late - we have this big show the 2nd week of January. Did last minute shopping, listened to Carols at the mall and picked up a bunch of clearance Regency Romances from Half Price Books.

Saturday: Napped, read a Regency romance with a hot compress on my chest and took more Robutussin cough medicine. Fixed myself a nice hot honey / lemon & brandy drink before bedtime.

Sunday: Rinse & repeat of Saturday.

Monday: Opened presents. :D

[EricStratton]

Friday - Cleaned, played Civ4, did some last minute shopping.

Saturday - Cleaned, watched sports.

Sunday - Cleaned, cooked, watched football (stupid 'Skins).

Monday - Christmas! We hosted again this year. It went very well. We had all the food ready when ppl started arriving. Everyone had a good time and left very full. A LOT of Guitar Hero was played and football was watched. I played some Gears of War. Having a hard time getting used to the horizontal-axis controls (I'm used to the opposite and I'm disappointed it's not configurable).

We did get some bad news, tho. My sister-in-law's sister was diagnosed w/ breast cancer over the weekend. And Christmas morning, my little brother went to the ER b/c his leg had swollen up really big. Turns out he has a blood clot and has to stay in the hospital for a bit. :(

[attriel]

After I finished the house, I played more SimCity. Having trouble with seaports. I can NOT figure out how to place them. :(


well, look on the bright side: it's jabs's problem, since it's her game ;)

[Zyzzyx]

Saturday: Worked with dad and started some work in the attic. Got it wired and switched with three lights down the length of it, not nearly as dark now. Was a nice 40F up there, but with a couple layers including a wool work shirt, and a balaclava (pulled over the mouth to filter the dust from the blown-in insulation up there) it was warm enough. Mixed some football in during the day.


Sunday: Back up in the attic. Spent a few hours on/off through the day, this time putting down a small walkway to access better. Already fairly sore from crawling around up there on Saturday. (half of it is short, crouched or on your knees, other half is tall enough to stand up)

Got that part finished, next will be redoing the recessed can lighting in the kitchen. Probably planning to get some consultation for ideas from a lighting shop first though. After that will be adding some insulation up there. Right now its an average 5" of blown-in insulation, with plenty of spaces being nearly bare to the ceiling drywall. And we wonder why the heater runs so much when its cold. Will probably add 9" of fiberglass on top, might go with more blown-in, not sure yet.


Monday: Did the gift thing late-morning, what few there were. Late afternoon we started getting things ready for dinner. We'd been dry-aging a three rib beef roast for the last few days. Basically, following the steps from Alton Brown and a Good Eats episode. The roast dried from 6.25lbs down to 5.5lbs. Had it sitting out to warm up to room temperature, but it never made it. (We were making use of mom's new toy, digital oven temp probe) It probably should have sat out for a few hours, we gave it one hour, getting it in the oven at 4pm. Coated with oil, salt, and pepper.

We changed up the instructions a bit, ended up cooking it up to ~122F, and then carry-over heat took it up to 129F, the low end of medium-rare. The end cuts were about right, but it did come out a bit rare in the middle. Damn good though, no sauces or gravy or other 'stuff' needed, just darn good flavor.

After dinner got back to the Jets/Dolphins game. Had kinda watched most of the first half. I liked the comment from one of the guys: "Take two mediocre offenses, mix with rain, and you get a lot of nothing." But it finally did liven up in the last quarter. Maybe because it looked like it finally stopped raining.


Other than that, I (along with dad, since we work at the same place) am off all this week. The entire project shuts down for the week. For the standard employees its basically a week of vacation. For temps like me its a week without pay. Harumph. But, there's a couple other projects that we'll be working on around the house. I know we've got a closet to redo in the office and then move the fire safe (2'x2'x3' by damn heavy) in there and bolt it in. And need to build a spice rack drawer in the kitchen. And... I'm sure something else will come up. Probably be too cold to go riding most of the week, which is really starting to bug me.

[Xuthia]

Thursday - Yet another pot-luck, but was informal and fun. Crashed as soon as I got home.

Friday - Finished shopping, then went to late showing of the "new" Bond.

Saturday - Wrapping/eggnogging/watchingChristmas movie day.

Sunday - Headed out for Christmas with the families. We spend Christmas Eve with my folks. Mom and my sisters supply the food for that event.

Monday - On Christmas morning we meet again for breakfast - my turn to cook- then we open stocking gifts. We go to inlaws for lunch and gift exchange then head home.

[leng]

Not the best Xmas I've ever had. There was no improvement in Dad's condition - he is simply not eating and is just fading away. He still recognises mum and I, and seems to enjoy our presence. He does not seem to be in significant pain or distress (apart from occasional twinges from the leg he broke) and spends most of the time just dozing.

MUM & I have basically postponed Chrismas this year, although I did cook a full turkey dinner on Xmas day - thats turkey, stuffing, sausages (some wrapped in bacon), roast potatoes and parsnips, broccolli, cauliflour, sprouts and Yorkshire pudding. Nothing intrinsically difficult but by far the most elaborate meal I've ever attempted in terms of getting everying onto the table hot at the same time. Overall pretty successful, although IMNSHO the spuds could have done with a few minutes longer to crisp up a bit more.


Cheered myself up by watching on of my all time favourite TV shows (the Beiderbecke Trilogy by Alan Plater) from beginning to end including "Get Lost" - a sort of earlier attempt by the writer using almost identical characters and settings. Highly recommended if you like a gentle comedy, extremely well written and acted, although possibly a little too English (not an insult, just that an aweful lot of references would go unnoticed).

[Caranthir]

Friday - Aside from the friend's heart attack I mentioned in the previous daily thread, it was pretty uneventful. Left work at 3 to drive back to ND. Got home at about 10:30. Long, boring, but easy drive.

Saturday - Slept in, then got up and assembled my niece's kitchen playset. Wrapped my remaining packages, then spent the rest of the time relaxing. I think I played a little bit of WoW as well.

Sunday - More relaxation.

Monday - Christmas day. Lots of packages (mostly for Maddie), then dinner followed by going to see Night at the Museum. Cute movie. Relaxed for the remainder of the evening, or at least tried to even while I was being used as a human jungle gym.

[Charinida]

After I finished the house, I played more SimCity. Having trouble with seaports. I can NOT figure out how to place them. :(


If it is anything like SimCity 2000 (which I played mostly - I have SC4K but it's still in the box - unopened!) ... You need to make sure you have plenty of room for the warehouses. A minimum of 2x6 in size...

Don't place them along rivers... (not sure if they changed that in SC3K or SC4K) ...

Road or rail connection, power... Be sure to have room for expansion of the ports... And watch out for the pollution! NIMBY factor

[Draknor]

Relaxed for the remainder of the evening, or at least tried to even while I was being used as a human jungle gym.

As grumpy as I try to be, there's always at least one out of the gaggle of hordelings who somehow isn't frightened of me. This time it was Sparrowhawk's daughter.

Apparently I'm not trying hard enough.:rotflmao:

[Ciiera]

Friday: Worked and then played the EQ2 holiday stuff

Saturday: Played the EQ2 holiday stuff and wrapped presents

Sunday: Played the EQ2 holiday stuff, got my Frostfell tree and two wreaths and helped Draeken get his then relaxed until dinner at Grannie's house.

Monday: Ryan woke my sleepy arse up at 6am and then spent the next hour trying to convince me to head over to his parents house to open presents. His mom begged me to procrastinate to give them some time to sleep. If Ryan had his way we would have headed over to his parents house at 6:05am. I managed to hold him off until 7:15am.

We opened presents at his parents house and then went to his grandparents house at noon and stayed there opening presents, having dinner and doing laundry. We didn't get home until around 8pm.

We were both in bed asleep by 10:30pm due to exhaustion.

Tuesday: Woke up, put away laundry, looked at the huge pile of presents sitting in bags in the living room and didn't feel like putting them away so I was lazy and left it there.

Eventually we logged into EQ2 and we joined a PUG for OOB. Naturally, the final boss dropped an item not usable by anyone in the group. It was the longest instance EVER! Our healer went afk for 5-10 minutes after every 3-5 mobs killed.

Oh yeah and we watched Davinci's Code which is one of the dozen or more movies that we got for Christmas.

Wed: I'm up and getting ready for work. They actually asked me to come in early and work late. HAHAHAHAHA! Not a chance! Overtime pay doesn't kick in here until after 44 hours of work and honestly, while the overtime would come in handy since we are moving next month, it isn't worth it for me to waste my time at work during these holidays. We have a busy weekend again this coming Sat, Sun and Mon and I am not going to work myself ragged leading up to the New Year. I will likely pay for that when my boss gets back from holidays. *shrug*

[Greebo]

Hmm, lets see...

Friday: Last day of work for me for the year (minus a couple of email checks I'll do today and friday). Went to a Winter Solstice party and exchanged gifts with friends and our "nephew and niece". The nephew had to be told that if he didn't settle down and do as he was told, the gifts we brought would go back in the car and would go home with us until "Next year" (at which point mom chimed in "Next CHRISTMAS"... and I'd only been going for January...) ;) In any case, the warning worked and he got to open his presents.

Saturday: Up to more friends in Bel Air, and more "nephews" and another "neice". The youngest nephew loved his Playschool Webelot, and the neice loved her new roundloom kit. The older nephew took his Madden 07 for GBA and vanished for the rest of the day so I guess he liked it too. (He's 15, this is expected behavior. ;) )

Sunday: Cleaned during the day, then two bell choir performances on Christmas Eve, both abysmal. Blech.

Monday: Exchanged presents. Carol had already gotten her big gift (a knitting machine), and her smaller gift (a row counter for same), she'd already gotten for herself. D'OH! She got me Firefly and for both of us, a culinary torch with some Creme Brulet mixes. We've devoured both... Yum! Mom-in-Law and Bro-in-Law came over and more gift exchange, and dinner - New York Strip, Potatoes and assorted veggies (and of course, Creme Brulet).

Tuesday: My folks arrived in town. More gift exchange including a far too generous check which is going to turn into an XBox 360 earlier than we'd planned. (We debated using it to reduce the debt and decided that this was a GIFT, so we were going to enjoy it as such, demmitol!) Dinner was Venison and Portabello Pasta (Yum!) and more Creme Brulet. Yum!

Today we're headed down to Daedelus books, then out to dinner tonight with my folks and m&b-i-l. Tomorrow is my family's get-together and Friday is a party at a friends.

Merry Christmas Everyone!

[Raveneye]

FRI - worked, we closed a little early (I left at 4pm) so I was able to get home quick and relax a bit in the evening.

SAT - Cleaned house most of the day. Went to the home of some friends for dinner and a gift exchange among the kids.

SUN - Had dad over for brunch and gift exchange. Kids napped afterwards, then off to my mom's for Christmas Eve dinner and more gifts. Dinner was the traditional Italian with meatballs made from scratch using my grandmother's family recipe. Yum.

MON - Kids amazingly slept in until 7:00am (my mom's dog the night before wore them out!). Much joy was had discovering what Santa had left us and opening even more presents. A couple hours of quiet in the afternoon then dinner and more presents at mother-in-law's house.

A great holiday spent with family and friends. Even though we kept the travel and run-around to a minimum, it was still exhausting. That's the trade-off when the kids are little, and I dread when they grow too old for the magic of Christmas...