Caught In The Whirlwind
Posts tagged christmas
Woah. Has It Been That Long?
Jan 14th
Well, I’ve finally worked up the ambition to post something! I’ve been busy with various things and sidetracked by situations for the past couple weeks and generally haven’t felt much like writing here. But I don’t want to abandon this place entirely, so I figure I should fill in the gap with a general summary.
My last post was on Christmas so let me start there. Aside from Wassy’s awesome Frost art gift (which I love and is now being displayed in the living room), my parents gifted me an Amazon Kindle 2. So far I’ve finished reading the Lord of The Rings trilogy (Started with the paper book and switched to eBook a couple of chapters into The Two Towers), Down and Out In The Magic Kingdom by Cory Doctorow for the Sword and Laser book club, and I’ve started working my way through the Xanth books again. The kindle is not without it’s issues, but I’m enjoying it a lot. My biggest gripe is the screen contrast could be a bit better.
Lets see here. Oh! My dad now has an XBox 360 and We both have copies of Madden NFL 10 so that we can resume playing our weekly football games. We played once a couple weeks ago to test to see how the online franchise mode would work and it seems like we can deal with it’s little quirks, but we haven’t had a chance to play again yet, due to me being busy friday night’s for a while and the actuall NFL playoffs starting up. Hopefully we can get a game going next week.
Other than that I’ve been mostly hanging out and relaxing a bit. A little too much actually, as I’ve let my experimentations in graphic design stuff kinda fall to the wayside over the past couple weeks. But I’m getting back into the swing of things now. Over my vacation at the end of 2009, I worked up a page for the City of Heroes Forum Art Competition that Wassy is in charge of this year. Nothing special, but I think it turned out pretty good. I was experimenting with using a grid system when setting it up which was a bit…odd for me at first, but I think I managed to get the hang of it.
I also came up with an idea for my personal site which could work, but required that I draw up a penguin logo that was kinda blocky, like an old sprite from a video game. I’m fairly happy with the result (See to the right) and I’ll be headed full steam ahead on the rest of the design in hopes that I can complete it before I decide I hate it again. I’m also working on and off with my mom’s store type website but I’m stuck on that…again. Not certain if what I have going on feels right for the content. I really want to get something finished for her though.
As far as school goes, I’m in for another class this semester. This time it’s a course focusing on Photoshop. After this one I’ll be down mostly to classes which I have to take during the day (all the core design classes) so I’m not sure what’s going to happen. I suppose I’ll have to try to modify my work schedule but I’m really not sure how receptive management will be to that as we get busier. I’ll probably post more about that particular issue later as I have a lot more to say about it.
In other news, we have a new toy around the apartment. Wassy recently picked up a Nikon D60 camera which she’s allowed me to play around with. I’ve been trying to take some better pictures of my Fish, along with other things if I can think up a good picture I’d like to take. I’d love to get into photography but the equipment is just so freaking expensive…
Anyway, here’s the best picture I took of my newest fish:
Not bad at all I’d say. It came out a little too blue and I couldn’t quite get all the blue out without making the rest look funky, so that’s the best I can do. In conclusion, I want one of these cameras. I need to think up some more arty type photos to try out.
Merry Christmas Eve!
Dec 24th
Ahhh…finally. It’s Christmas Eve and my vacation has begun. I won’t be back to work (unless something explodes) until January 4th, so needless to say yesterday time was standing still. But it’s finally arrived. Vacation. Wooo!
The next several days are going to be consumed with family type stuff. I’m going over to my parents today for out main Christmas celebration as well as the (semi) gathering for my mom’s side of the family, then back there tomorrow more for hanging out purposes. Then I’m headed off to my aunts house for the gathering for my dad’s side of the family on Saturday.
Today’s going to feel looooong as well, because Wassy should be finishing up the Christmas-themed Frost piece at some point which I will be unable to see until this evening when I return home from my parents house. She did the inks last night and it’s turning out amazing, so I can’t wait to see colors.
But al that must wait until later, I’m off to get ready to visit my parents. To all 4 of you who read this, I hope you have a happy holiday.
Weekend Before Christmas
Dec 21st
Time to report on my doings over the weekend.
My Christmas shopping is now completed. I took Friday off from work and this ended up being a good decision since I needed to venture out to the stores to finish off my shopping stuff. But it is now completed and ready for our family gathering on Thursday (we do present stuff on Christmas Eve now since my sister is busy pretty much all day christmas)
Friday evening was quite a fun experience in City of Heroes. I joined up with Wassy and some of the folks that inhabit the Fan Art section of the City of Heroes forums for an evening of hanging out and chatting. It was really fun. Great conversation with everybody and I hope I get the chance to do that again at some point in the future. I was a bit apprehensive about fitting in since I’m more an outsider to that particular group of people but it was a really fun experience.
Speaking of art, Wassy has been working on the Christmas themed Frost piece for me over the past couple days. I’ve been trying to be good about not looking because I want to be surprised, but she gave me a peek yesterday and her current progress is extremely promising. I can’t want to see the final version. My levels of anticipation for this gift are high. I’m looking forward to it as much, if not even more than spending time with my family this week. I really, really appreciate it when she takes time out of her (now incredibly busy) schedule to do something for me.
Onwards to my other activities. I actually finished working on a web site design! After floundering around a months after finishing Wassy’s site, I was able to actually put another one through to completion, which was a website to host the City of Heroes Fan Art Forum art competition that she’s hosting next year. I need to have it done by January, so it’s a good thing I got it all set now. Eddy Swan (from the art forum, we’ve been chatting since we played the game together on friday night) helped out a bunch with a logo concept which was a big part of what the design was missing.
So now, to start working through the longest three days of work of the year before my huge vacation begins…
Yup. It’s December.
Dec 9th
We’re right in the middle of our first winter storm of the season right now. Snow, wind and sleet/freezing rain later on in the day. Fun! Today was also my first drive to work after moving further away in true winter conditions. We had a smaller event last week, but it wasn’t nearly as bad as the weather we were getting today.
Altogether though, my drive was better than I was expecting it to be. I think a lot of that had to do with the fact that during the hilly bit, a snow plow had just gone through and deposited a fresh coat of sand. Thankfully. I’m not looking forward to the drive home if the freezing rain prediction holds true though.
December also means planning for family gatherings and the dates of them this year have started to firm up. I’ll be busy the 24th through the 26th with Christmas family gatherings which works out fine for me. Going to be at my parents for Christmas Eve and Christmas and then out to one of my Aunts for the gathering for my dad’s side of the family. We might have some people over for Christmas Eve from my mom’s side…possibly. Not quite sure how that’s all going to shake out though.
Lets see, more random stuff. I did some re-measurement yesterday and it actually seems that I’ll be able to fit a new desk into my space in the office after all. Wassy was up there doing work last night so I figured I’d see where my chair would be pushed with her sitting there at her drafting table working and it actually looks like we have more space than I was initially thinking we would have. That always seems to be the case. So perhaps that can be a tax refund expenditure. We’ll see what happens, as I know I’m not getting nearly as much back this year as I have in previous years.
Lots Of Waiting
Dec 7th
There’s lots of waiting going down this month.
First, I’m waiting for next weekend because of Dexter, the second to last episode of the season having aired last night. And what a season it has been. I’m going to continue my policy of no spoilers, but lets just say that unless they totally screw this up, this is going to be my favorite season of Dexter ever. They’re handling things so well, from the twists and turns to Dexter’s character development. And John Lithgow better win SOMETHING for his performance.
The second thing I’m waiting for is this Friday I get a bonus in my paycheck (that ends up being about 1% of my pay. Long story short, we’re getting back 4% of the 10% of our hours we lost earlier this year, but they budgeted 5% and instead of giving us 5% of our hours, we get 4% and a 1 time payout for the remaining 1%. Gotta be some sort of tax reason) and I desperately need a new office chair, as I believe I have mentioned before. So I’m curious as to how much I’ll have to work with on my chair hunt.
I’ve put the desk plans on hold for a while, by the way. I’m hoping I’ll stumble across something that will work out in the meantime.
In other news, Wassy was working on a model sheet for one of her City of Heroes (well, City of Villains, but it’s really the same game) this weekend applying her new skillz from this semester to her comic book style linework. Seeing how that turned out is going to make waiting (patiently) for the christmas-inspired Frost piece she had mentioned that much harder. Quite looking forward to that.
All that’s in addition to waiting for the end of the month with Christmas and New Years, spending some time with my family and a long (and needed) vacation from work at the end of the year.
So needless to say…there’s a lot of waiting going on. And it’s making time slow to a crawl.
My Christmas 2008
Dec 26th
Phew. Finally have time to sit down and catch my breath after all the christmas related activities over the past few days. So far things have been good. There's one more holiday related gathering coming up on Saturday so there's still some more holiday left for me to go through.
Things started off on Christmas Eve for my family. Because my sister does stuff Christmas morning with her in-laws, we've started doing our main Christmas celebrations the day before to make scheduling a lot easier. I went over to my parents house early to help with the food preparation. Lots of vegetable slicing for salads and stuff like that. That caused the 3 hours before the rest of the family arrived to go pretty quickly.
Once my sister and her husband arrived, we did the gift exchange. I received a bunch of new penguin-y stuff from my parents including a set of penguin mugs that will be excellent for tea, as well as an embroidered penguin towel that my mom made (and was given to me by the dog…because she thought that I would need a towel to clean up with after she licks my hands whenever I come over). Other highlights include a swiffer wet jet (You seriously don't realize how much you appreciate these things until you move out), a hand mixer (because I borrowed one from them a while back) and a bunch of stuff for my 360 (extra controller, some battery packs, and Guitar Hero: World Tour guitar pack).
My parents dog enjoys stealing my dad's socks and shoe laces so my mom wrapped up a bunch of socks individually and included inside each package a pair of shoe laces to give to my dad, labeled as coming from the dog. So he was having fun matching individual socks to each other and pulling out shoe laces. Also, one of his gifts hadn't arrived yet, so my mom took an empty bag closed it up with as many clips as she could stick on there (so the air wouldn't escape) and gave that to him. Hopefully that one gets here today, but the way she did it was funny.
After the present opening, we played a little Wii. Specifically a Mini Golf game that my sister opened earlier that day. The best part of the game is going to be totally impossible to reproduce through text. But it had the most over exagurated announcer guy ( "PLLLLLLLLLLLAAAAAAAEEEERRRRR OOOOOOONNNNNNEEEE… CHOOSE YOUR GOOOOOOLLLLLFFFFFEEEEERRRRR!!!!!") and the courses were very strange, but it was fun playing through them. After that the family sat down and watched a couple episodes of a TV series that my sister also opened earlier.
Meanwhile I headed to the kitchen to start making the macaroni and cheese for later. It was the first time I made it for other people, so I was a little nervous as to how it would end up turning out. But, as it happens, it seemed to have gone over great, and my mom appreciated having some time to sit down after running around all day. So that's a good thing too.
Once that was all done, some of the members of the extended family arrived for dinner and cards. Because my grandma is getting a little older and doubly because she just had some minor surgery, we didn't have the traditional gathering at her house on Christmas Eve this year. Instead the family kinda broke up into smaller groups at various houses and we're planning on doing a family reunion sort of deal sometime in the summer. So Mike, Stacy and Elizbeth (uncle, aunt and cousin respectively) ended up coming over to our place. That was a fun evening.
Christmas Day was a bit lower key in comparison. Like last year, my grandparents were going to come out to my parent's house for an early dinner and talking. I arrived early again to learn how my mom makes her lasagna for future usage myself. It seemed like after all the activity the day before, their dog was totally tired out and very sleepy. So I ended up carrying the dog around for a while and letting her sleep on me. My grandparents arrived on schedule and the afternoon went pretty well I thought. As is tradition, throughought the day we were watching bits and pieces of the A Christmas Story marathon on TBS.
Oh, another thing that should be mentioned. Thursday morning I was going to go play with my toys but, I ran into that eternal delima of Christmas day…Batteries not included!!! Of course the toy was my swiffer wet jet, but it's still the same general problem! The more things change, the more they stay the same and all that. I just thought it was kinda funny.
So, so far, so good as far as holiday stuff goes. Today is a little breather between family activites. I'll be home most of the day (although I might go out shopping just a little bit later as there's some stuff I need) but later I'll be headed over to my friends place for some Guitar Hero-ing, pizza and general hanging out.
All Christmas-ed Out
Dec 26th
Yesterday I went over to my parents house in the morning and hung out there pretty much all day, playing various Wii games. We started with NBA Live 08 for the Wii (without looking at the instructions, so we were lobbing shots at the basket from the other side of the court) which was…fun. Like the reviews said, it wasn't a really great game but it was entertaining enough that it was interesting. Probably not in the ways the game designer intended though.
I managed to get my dad to play a game of Mario Party 8 which I thought was fairly good but he didn't enjoy it as much. My mom ended up winning the game. After that my parents played some tennis and I ended up falling asleep for a little while on their couch. After I woke up, we played some Wario Ware Smooth Moves which my mom really enjoyed and my dad, predictably didn't.
My grandparents (mothers side) came over for dinner and to play some Wii sports after, which was cool, and they looked like they enjoyed themselves.
But, as a result of all this activity, I'm totally Christmas-ed out. I need to take today to clean up my living room a bit, call school to get my registration for my capstone project fixed up and generally relax.
It's A Penguin Christmas
Dec 25th
Yesterday was the majority of the planned Christmas celebrations for my family with our gift exchange happening in the afternoon and then going over to my grandparents (mothers side) in the evening.
I got to my parents house around 11 because I had to shred some stuff and I'm too cheap to buy a shredder myself. I had cleaned my bedroom out the previous days and I had a stack of old pay stubs and stuff that I had to dispose of. That took an awful long time to shred. After that I hung out and watched the ER Christmas episode marathon on TNT until my sister and her husband arrived shortly before 1am at which time we commenced with the gift opening.
Probably the best part of the whole thing was two presents my mom gave to my dad and my sister. My sister has a habit of, lets say..using a lot of tape when wrapping gifts. Using A LOT of tape. Usually taping up every single opening in the paper that could be used to gain a foothold for the opening. She does it to one package a year, usually to my mom. So this year, my mom got revenge. She gave both my sister and my dad (for laughing at her when she's trying to open it year after year) presents that contained boxes wrapped inside of boxes inside of boxes, all taped up, with just a little note inside (although my dad got a gift certificate to the restaurant they like to eat at in his)
It was a penguin Christmas for me. My mom made me up a really nice penguin themed shower curtain and a couple of penguin themed pillows. There was also some penguin related kitchen stuff, including a really cool set of plates with penguins ice skating and on each plate, the penguins keep falling down and off the plates. I kept thinking my friends who already thing this obsession is becoming a problem are going to think I went off the deep end.
In the non penguin department and yet still decorational department, my parents have this really cool crystal thing that rotates while shining lights up through the crystal to illuminate a 3d design inside of it that I liked when I was over there. This year they found a fish related one, which I tried to take a picture of over to the right, but it's extremely hard to do since you can't use the flash and it needs to be a little dark to get the effect.
Moving into the non decorations was a set of screwdrivers which I really needed, as well as a tool box destined to slowly empty of screwdrivers as I scatter them around my apartment never to be found again.
And then finally I got my own little in-car GPS unit because I keep borrowing my parents GPS to go places. It's a Garmin Nuvi 650 which appears to be in full working condition. I just need someplace to go with it now.
My dad got a Wii which was the result of a scheme my Mom and Myself tried to pull to keep it secret. We tried using my credit card to make the purchase, but it triggered my fraud protection after wal-mart had denied the purchase after which we used my moms credit card and it worked. Chase still called me and wanted to authorize the charges on my card though, so…it had potential to be a minor mess. It turned out all right though.
We set the Wii up and played a little bit of Wii sports before having dinner (mmm, lasagna) and heading over to my grandparents house for the traditional Christmas Eve party. As usual, the highlight for me was the traditional game of Pitch which was almost usurped by something called apples to apples, which I am assured is a fun game, but it's not Pitch. The girls team won the first two games while the boys team won the next two. After that I left the game, so I don't really know what happened in the tiebreaker match. I went back to my parents and we played a little more Wii type stuff, and then I took off to go to sleep.
Today I'm going back to my parents for some more Wii action, and the christmas cinnamon rolls of course. I should have some more pictures of the penguin stuff up later. I only took a picture of the crystal now because it was hard for me to describe properly.
It's A Rock Band Holiday
Dec 23rd
I just got back from the christmas party thrown by my dad's side of the family. As I've said before, sometimes this party can be a little…less than entertaining. Mostly due to the people there I don't really know and/or get along with. This year though, it was pretty fun. Everybody was cool, lots of good conversation and food and stuff. We walked in to the spectacle of one of the dogs (there's usually a TON of dogs at this party) wearing a reindeer costume and looking very pathetic. All the other dogs were picking on him and it kept flopping in front of his face so he couldn't really see all that well. Pretty entertaining for a bit, but they took it off him quickly.
The highlight of the event though, was Rock Band. One of my cousins (her husband actually) has Rock Band and he brought it over so we could play it at the party. We played for a couple hours, with various people rotating in and out. I managed to play all of the instruments and sing some as well. I started out at guitar and played that. I was going to play drums after that, but my sister accidently bumped the difficulty on her bass part to Expert so I swapped with her quickly.
Then I got talked into singing. I picked War Pigs as the song and apparently I knocked it out of the park because people were commenting about it for the rest of the night. It's probably because I'm known as the quiet guy who doesn't talk much. Of course, I can also sing pretty decently (if the song is in my range) so I probably ended up surprising some people. I also ended up doing vocals on Tom Sawyer and Enter Sandman.
Just a mini Rock Band review. Pretty fun game for parties. I like the way Guitar Hero handles the guitar parts more than how Rock Band does it, and I also like the feel of the Guitar Hero controller. The drums were pretty fun, but hard to get used to because of all of the stuff you had to do at once when playing them. Overall, two thumbs up, but I probably wouldn't want to pay the full price for the set unless I was going in on it with other people.
All in all, a good way to kick off the Christmas party season. It finally feels like Christmas time to me.
The Longest Day Of The Week…
Dec 21st
…is the day before a 5 day weekend. I was figuring out how much vacation I had left to take and as it turns out, it's enough to take Christmas Eve and the day after Christmas off, so now I've got a 5 day weekend for myself. Handy.
Today is crawliing along like the day before a vacation normally does. I'm just looking forward to all of the festivities of this weekend. Tomorrow is my dad's side of the family, Sunday I'm going over to my friends to operate on people, Monday is the small family gathering and then my mom's side of the family in the evening. Then a day to recover.
I'm finally starting to get into the realization that it's really Christmas time and the year is ending very soon. Good riddance to 2007 I say. Since 2007 is the first full year that I've been blogging, I decided to do a summary post towards the end of the year. I've been going through all of my blog posts from the last year, picking out the big things that happened and I'll be constructing a 2007 in review post which should be up sometime before 2008 rolls in.
Recent Comments