The holiday started well for me on Friday at work when I received some gift cards for Skyline Chili and The Olive Garden from some coworkers. Unfortunately things took a turn for the worse that afternoon when I had to run to Best Buy to get our boss a gift card from our department (hey… it wasn’t my last minute idea but I was the one stupid enough to volunteer to go get it). The traffic here in Florence, KY, was horrible around the mall area (of course) so the drive there and back took just over an hour and ten minutes to complete. Normally this is a 15 min trip if that tells you anything! On the plus side though, our boss loved the gift and he quickly told us we could leave early. After some rather nasty traffic on the way home, the wife and I went out to dinner at The Olive Garden so we could use the gift card. The food was great as usual and you gotta love a free (well, almost free) meal! We then returned home to watch a perennial Christmas favorite at our house: Badder Santa. Nothing like that movie to really get you in the Christmas spirit!
On Saturday we headed up to my in-laws for the weekend since they have the big family Christmas party on Saturday and the smaller immediate family Christmas party on Sunday (Christmas Eve). I never relish spending the weekend up there since my wife never sleeps well there and the shower sucks balls, but I know it makes her mom happy so we do it anyway. Either way, we drive up to Dayton, OH, and I drop the wife off at the party location so she can help them decorate. I then drive 20 mins to the Fairfield Commons Mall in search of my wife’s Christmas present. Now before you think I’m some dumbass who purposely waited until two days before Christmas to shop for his wife you’re wrong. I thought my wife and I had agreed to get her a laptop that was going to be on-sale the day after Christmas but on Friday she mentioned that she’d rather have some jewelry so now I was stuck last minute shopping. That said, I arrived at the mall and began to scour the jewelry stores for some black pearls (or Tahitian pearls as the lady at the jewelry store informed me) since I knew my wife had been wanting some for a while. Unfortunately, most of the stores only had regular white pearls and/or black pearls with gold settings (my wife hates gold… she thinks its gaudy). At the very last store I check they happen to have exactly what I wanted… black pearls in a white gold setting in both earring and necklace forms! Thank god for Zales is all I can say. I had the woman behind the counter wrap up the pieces and headed for the party. Once there I went ahead and gave Michelle the present since I knew she’d love to wear the earrings and necklace for the everyone at the party to see and comment on. She was very excited and said I had picked out the exact same pieces she had been looking at to buy for herself earlier in the year. During the party she received many a compliment on her new gifts and was glowing about it the entire time. I guess for once I did something right in her eyes. LOL
The party itself was fun and all but it was the typical family holiday party… too much food (and very little of it all that appetizing), too many children (I hate kids with a passion… just an FYI), and the usual “White Elephant” gift exchange game. Several hours later the party ended and the immediate family (my wife and I, her brother and his girlfriend/kids, my mother-in-law, and her best friend) proceeded to my mother-in-law’s house for some real gift giving. After all the gifts were done, here’s what I came away with:
- Xbox 360 Wireless Headset Communicator
- Xbox 360 HD DVD Player
- Project Gotham Racing 3
- Batman Begins [HD DVD]
- Sandisk Sansa e260 4 GB MP3 Player
- A digital picture keychain
- An assload of flannel pants (I love bumming around the house in these during the winter!)
- $250 in cash
As you can see, I did ok. Unfortunately the HD-DVD player and the Batman Begins HD-DVD are on backorder from Best Buy so I won’t get them for a few more days but I can’t wait to try them out on the HDTV! I honestly have no idea what, if anything, I’m going to do with the digital picture keychain but I do think it’s a cool little gift. And for the record, I gave the $250 to the wife to help cover the cost of her present since I was little short… hehe.
Sunday morning arrived way too early after a night of horrible sleep due to the six dogs (three of ours, three of her mom’s) jumping in and out of the bed all night. I finally got up and showered about 11:30am so the wife and I could go out for some lunch before things started closing down for the day (it was Christmas Eve after all). We had some rather lackluster Boston Market for lunch and then headed back to her mom’s house so I could work on her computer and surround sound system. As you may or may not know, I’m a huge geek so that means, by default, I’m the guy everyone in the family calls when they need help with computers or electronics. I spent the next two hours diagnosing the problems and putting in place what fixes I could to remedy them. By the time I was done, it was time for Christmas dinner and the Bengals game! Dinner was great (I ate WAY too much ham!) but the game was horrible. The Bengals lost of course and now have to win next week for any chance at the playoffs. I think they have a good chance at winning that game but I don’t see them going very far in playoffs. Either way, after dinner we packed up the car with gifts and dogs so we could head for home.
Monday (Christmas Day) was very uneventful so I’ll cover it quickly as this post has gotten WAY too long already. Woke up late… went to my brother’s house to give gifts to him, his kids, and my mom… went home an watched TV… fixed a pizza for dinner… watched Love Actually since its my wife’s favorite Christmas movie (and just a good movie in general honestly)… wife went to bed and I continued to get caught up on my Battlestar Galactica episodes on the Media Center PC. Like I said, not much happened… sorry.
As you can see, it was a eventful weekend and I can’t wait for next weekend since it’s New Year’s Eve! The wife and I are going to a party at one of her friend’s that’s also doubling as a 16th birthday party for her son. Needless to say, that should make for an interesting evening (and an interesting blog post)! Stay tuned!
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