Was a Merry Christmas

What a blur the past few days have been. Phew. The Christmas party was fun. Typical Dave and Busters type party. The service (as it was last year) was painfully slow. I think I started eating the tablecloth. After D&B a bunch of us returned to the office for (what many considered) to be the real party. Everyone at work is (of course) a gamer. Not only do we love making games – we love even more to play them. The popular game at work has always been Call of Duty. The teams have always been drawn down OS lines. Mac vs. PC. It is very much like the Mac Ads… for secret Santa at work one co-worker looked for the C+ GUI Interface book as a present… The rivalry gets intense. Fun – but there is no doubt each geek wants to win. We upgraded recently to COD2 so this was the first major slugfest. And I’m happy to say the PCs (which I’m a part of) demolished the Macs again and again and again… heh. Hopefully the Mac boyZ will get some practice in over the holidays. -smirk-

The first stop on the Christmas rounds was at my Uncle’s in Niagara. Regrettably my sister’s dog Wiley (glumpy glumpy ArooOoooooooo) contracted a contagious mouth virus so that really limited our options for bringing the dogs down. The virus was harmful but I couldn’t subject a dog we are watching and our own dog to that risk *knowing* there is a potential for them to contract it. It would seem pretty irresponsible to me. Hopefully it will clear soon and the dogs can play later this week. Anyway… my family thing was pretty short. It was good to see my cousins who are now in University. They seem so much more mature this year. I think my one cousin is going somewhere. She seems very focused on school, very bright and very mature for her age. Beware Ottawa!

Yesterday B. and I hosted a Turkey dinner here for my family. Gawd. What a shitload of work it was. B. did the majority of it but I still felt like I was run ragged by the end of the night. It was a busy but fun evening. Steve (B.’s brother) and my Dad enjoyed Texas Hold’Em on the Xbox 360. It is amusing seeing my Dad (someone who is very computer illiterate) holding a 360 controller kicking ass at poker. Hehe. After a few early removals from the oven, the turkey ended up being quite excellent. There was a ton of food. There are a ton of leftovers. I think I’ll be eating turkey still at Easter. I scored a bunch of great gifts from B. and my family. A bunch of games (for both the 360 and PSP); a bunch of Sabres’ swag – including a crazy winter hat and some nice clothes – foremost on the list being a sharp dress shirt from B.. Thanks to all the gift givers!

Today we pondering getting up early to hit the Boxing day sales. Maybe score a LCD TV, a new stereo or a monitor but we ended up not going… good thing too… it was crazy crazy busy at Trinity Commons today. People need some serious remedial lessons on how a four way stop works; how to not cause gridlock in an intersection and common driving courtesy. Yes, there are tons of selfish idiots on the road. Unconscious knowledge… Anyway… we dropped by B.’s sisters for brunch today. We got some wonderful news… B.’s sister is expecting in July! Congrats to her sister and their family – I hope all goes smoothly. It was happy morning after the ‘news’… B.’s nephew got a massive Remote Controlled car. We took it over to the local park. It was quite a blast. It is remarkable the torque the RC had. B.’s nephew is quite a little car aficionado and was doing all sorts of tricks with the RC. Did I mention he is 6? As much fun as the past few days have been I’m eagerly looking forward to doing NOTHING for a day or two. I need a holiday from the holidays.

Sadly tomorrow Cairo goes home. We have been dogsitting him for several days now and have really enjoyed having him around. It doesn’t seem like too much more work having a second dog around and it gives Tanga someone to chew on (other than us) all the time.