Thursday, December 30, 2004

It's been a long December...

Christmas was a little weird this year, since Speedy is still in Winter Park, and will be there until April when she will come home and go immediately to Whistler with us. Yay! However, that still means that she wasn’t here for the holiday itself. I threatened to make a sign to wear around my neck that says “Speedy is in Winter Park, CO. I’ll tell her you said hello.” I’m still thinking that wouldn’t have been such a bad idea.

Christmas Eve is always pretty much the same in my family. I finish my shopping, since I am a huge slacker, come over to the parents’ house, wrap presents (which I hate. I love the purchasing part, but the wrapping part I suck at. Oh well.), and get ready for church. Fortunately, we always have the same thing for dinner, which is Dungeness crab, one of my favorite foods on the whole planet. Yummy. After that, we lounge around and then get ready for church. Everyone and their mother comes to the Christmas Eve service at the church I grew up in, so I actually went out an bought a shirt to wear so that I would look cute. Not kidding. It was fun. We sang loads of carols, my father spent the better part of half an hour shushing me, my mom and I waved to and hugged everyone we knew, I coughed up a lung thanks to the incense (gotta love the “smells and bells” service. Although I’m not sure our choirpeople know what to do with the bells. It was awesome.) and laughed when the bellchoir screwed up. Not loud though.

After catching up with everyone, we usually head home and watch a movie, but it was going on midnight when we got home and all three of us were ready to pass out. So we went to bed. Mom and Dad woke me up the next morning by unleashing the skiing Moose into the guest room to sing me out of my sleep. This thing is hilarious. It doesn’t really move on carpet, but it “skis” across the floor and sings. And it’s a moose. Awesome. After that performance, I stumbled out of bed, threw on my glasses and a sweatshirt and headed downstairs for prezzies and tea. I pretty much scored and I love my parents. Dad loved his autographed book and Mom got a good laugh out of me being slightly special and getting her the wrong book. Which I’m currently replacing with the right book once Powell’s gets it in. Yeah, I rock.

After that we had eggs Benedict for breakfast and I passed out on the couch for an hour and a half while my folks puttered. I woke up in time to help with the bourbon sweet potatoes and get ready for the annual dinner and white elephant gift exchange with the three other families we usually get together with on Christmas Day. The exchange is the funniest thing about dinner, as someone inevitably gets the Tackiest Gift Ever and this year it was Dad with Humphrey the Humping Dog. Complete with batteries, strap to attach it to someone’s leg and sound effects. It’s also got this terrifying grin and looks like a Chihuahua on methamphetamines. And now we own it. Gah.

I was supposed to go skiing the day after Christmas, but succumbed to the cold from hell that I’ve been trying to stave off for weeks. So I spent the day in bed instead and dragged my sorry sick butt back over to my parents’ house for dinner. Work has been very, very quiet this week and the social life has been limited to who is in town. I did hang out with Marshall, Kodiak, Chitown and our friend who moved to New York a few years ago. We all went to O’Brien’s to play pool and drink PBR. Kodiak headed back to Cali, since Tahoe has more snow than we do. It’s starting to be less funny the longer we go with no snowpack. Argh.

Dinner with the girls was dramatic, but ended up being fun. I talked to friends on the phone for an hour afterwards and then went to go get a beer with Strong Draught. Steamboat reappeared, which was fun since I hadn’t seen her in what seemed like weeks.

I’m stoked that I have tomorrow off work, but I’m less stoked that I have to spend half my day getting bodywork estimates on my car since I got rear-ended last night. Grr! Stupid not-paying-attention college girl. On the bright side, it’s not my fault!!

Happy New Year, y’all, and I’ll see you in 2005!!

Quote of the Day: “It’s been a long December/and there’s reason to believe/maybe this year/will be better than the last/I can’t remember all the times/I tried to tell myself to hold on/to these moments as they pass/but it’s one more day up in the Canyon/and it’s one more night in Hollywood/it’s been so long since I’ve seen the ocean/Guess I should.” Long December, Counting Crows.

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