A Very OSTOCOM Christmas, 2005
We had our annual Christmas party/gift exchange last night, which ended up being very fun and worth all of the preparation we did. We ended up getting our tree and decorating it all on Saturday. Luckily, Rei saw an ad for fairly inexpensive trees, and I really like the one we got. It’s not scraggly at all, and it’s nice and tall and fresh and makes the whole living room smell like pine. We had a bit of an issue with the lights, mostly because two strands we had didn’t work, and one strand had half of its lights randomly blinking on and off all at the same time. I HATE that effect. My father once grumbled that Christmas lights that do that make him think of a sleazy Las Vegas sign, and I was actually inclined to agree with him. Besides, having only one section of the tree blink looks really silly. So Beth and I played with the lights and tried to switch bulbs to no avail. We ended up just letting that section go out and moving the other rows of lights around so we didn’t have a big hole. Hurray for ingenuity.
I also had my stupid moment of the year, but all turned out well. About two hours before everyone got to the house, I was sitting on the couch with Rei, watching the Lost Disc of PotC special features that Laura so kindly loaned me, and dealing with certain naval personnel moping around in my head about the poor Interceptor being blown up. And the phone rang. It was Beth and Alix, who wanted to know if Rei already had a copy of the Sense and Sensibility with Emma Thompson in it. Of course, if I would have been thinking straight, I would have realized that Beth or Alix had Rei’s name for the gift exchange and they were trying to run a potential present idea by me. However, my brain circuits did not fire properly, and I turned to Rei, who was sitting next to me on the couch, and got as far as, “Hey Rei, do you have the Emma Thompson version of….” before Beth yelled “Nooooooooo!” in my ear and I realized I’d been quite dumb. Oops… We all laughed about it later though, and Rei sure has the Emma Thompson version now…
The party was a lot of fun. Beth made sugar cookies, Rei made cranberry orange muffins, and we all drank Martenelli’s and hot toddy (which I’d never had before. Rum and cider=yum). We sat around and laughed and talked and played video games and watched old videos of us being silly. Our party guests contributed fun stuff to do too! sharamordinae brought a fun, heavily wrapped box with goodies in the layers of wrapping (like a mummy!) that we passed around, each of us tearing at the wrapping for ten seconds and keeping the candy that fell out as we did. Neko brought a Christmas carol quiz and some home-made Harry Potter ad libs that turned out being hilarious. Especially when ghettopeach and I both chose ‘spleen’ as a body part independently of each other. Great minds really think alike.
Our tree was all pretty and sparkly and surrounded by presents, and we had Christmas lights draped over the French doors to the back yard, and it was all very fun. Not that I don’t love family Christmases, but friend Christmases have the advantage of not having to watch myself to make sure I’m not being too weird. Because everyone else who was in the room last night is at least at my level of oddness in some respect. ;-)
When everyone finally arrived, (and some people had to come an awfully long way, like sharamordinae and Neko and V-chan, who had to come from work) we got down to the serious fun business of presents. (Because presents are NOT Serious Business ™) I like watching other people open presents almost as much as I like opening them myself… Beth had the camera out again, so hopefully we’ll have another OSTOCOM Christmas DVD sometime in the future. Rei handed out gifts, and the cats had a field day with bows and wrapping paper when they decided it was safe to venture into the room of loud people.
My gifts were well-received… I had gotten Megan as my person, and I got her a stuffed Bruce the shark from finding Nemo, a manga, and some candy. For Leighton, I’d completely selfishly gotten the sequel to a book he loaned me a couple of years ago that I want to read. And for Rei, I had picked up an awesome Star Wars shirt I’d heard her freaking out over in Hot Topic. In fact, I’d gotten if for her that night. Told Megan H. to tell Rei I’d gone to the bathroom if she asked where I was. Stealthy, no? Must have worked… she had no idea I’d gotten it for her, so the reaction was rather fun. ;-)
As for me… I feel loved. Rei drew my name, and she went NUTS, I tell you! From Lush, she got me three Bathbombs, (including the new Black Pearl one, of course…) and a massage bar. Then, there were the books, which were actually from one of her characters to one of mine… hehe. Anyway, the books were Finding Serenity and Sex and the Slayer, which is a book that looks at feminist and gender studies issues in Buffy. I had no idea this second one even existed, and it looks SO interesting… can’t wait to read. Yay for fannish academia! Then… she got me all three Inuyasha movies! Yes. I’m giddy. Watched the first one last night. Much with the Inuyasha/Kagome and Sango/Miroku cuteness. lynxgriffin also got me a little something… the Kenshin character profile book, in ENGLISH! Viz put it out! I’d picked up the exact same title in Japanese, and though it has a few very pretty color pictures in the front, I just couldn’t conscience buying it because most of the book was text in a language I can’t read. But now I have it in English! Yay! It’s got all kinds of interesting tidbits about the characters, questions from fans to the author, a timeline (fanfic writer’s dream…), historical information about the stuff that’s going on in the series, whole awesome sections about Saito and Aoshi, my two favorite Kenshin boys… *squeal*
By the time we finished watching the movie, everyone had either departed or was ready to depart. Because I didn’t have anything at all to do in the morning, I took Alix home since her car was in the shop. Driving on the freeways late at night with no cars is kind of fun…
When I got home, instead of going to bed, I stayed up until almost 3 AM reading. I’ve been depriving my brain of long fictional works since I started working on my thesis revisions in earnest. I knew that if I was reading something, there was a danger I’d get sucked into that and use it to procrastinate and not get things done. So, I just said, “No new books till thesis and papers are finished.” And now they are finished. And so I started a new book, The Broken Crown, which is the first in the Sun Sword series. My brain is soaking it up like a dry sponge. Haven’t read till late in the night for a while… I feel like I’ve been away from someplace that’s important to me for a very long time. It’s good to be back.
I also had my stupid moment of the year, but all turned out well. About two hours before everyone got to the house, I was sitting on the couch with Rei, watching the Lost Disc of PotC special features that Laura so kindly loaned me, and dealing with certain naval personnel moping around in my head about the poor Interceptor being blown up. And the phone rang. It was Beth and Alix, who wanted to know if Rei already had a copy of the Sense and Sensibility with Emma Thompson in it. Of course, if I would have been thinking straight, I would have realized that Beth or Alix had Rei’s name for the gift exchange and they were trying to run a potential present idea by me. However, my brain circuits did not fire properly, and I turned to Rei, who was sitting next to me on the couch, and got as far as, “Hey Rei, do you have the Emma Thompson version of….” before Beth yelled “Nooooooooo!” in my ear and I realized I’d been quite dumb. Oops… We all laughed about it later though, and Rei sure has the Emma Thompson version now…
The party was a lot of fun. Beth made sugar cookies, Rei made cranberry orange muffins, and we all drank Martenelli’s and hot toddy (which I’d never had before. Rum and cider=yum). We sat around and laughed and talked and played video games and watched old videos of us being silly. Our party guests contributed fun stuff to do too! sharamordinae brought a fun, heavily wrapped box with goodies in the layers of wrapping (like a mummy!) that we passed around, each of us tearing at the wrapping for ten seconds and keeping the candy that fell out as we did. Neko brought a Christmas carol quiz and some home-made Harry Potter ad libs that turned out being hilarious. Especially when ghettopeach and I both chose ‘spleen’ as a body part independently of each other. Great minds really think alike.
Our tree was all pretty and sparkly and surrounded by presents, and we had Christmas lights draped over the French doors to the back yard, and it was all very fun. Not that I don’t love family Christmases, but friend Christmases have the advantage of not having to watch myself to make sure I’m not being too weird. Because everyone else who was in the room last night is at least at my level of oddness in some respect. ;-)
When everyone finally arrived, (and some people had to come an awfully long way, like sharamordinae and Neko and V-chan, who had to come from work) we got down to the serious fun business of presents. (Because presents are NOT Serious Business ™) I like watching other people open presents almost as much as I like opening them myself… Beth had the camera out again, so hopefully we’ll have another OSTOCOM Christmas DVD sometime in the future. Rei handed out gifts, and the cats had a field day with bows and wrapping paper when they decided it was safe to venture into the room of loud people.
My gifts were well-received… I had gotten Megan as my person, and I got her a stuffed Bruce the shark from finding Nemo, a manga, and some candy. For Leighton, I’d completely selfishly gotten the sequel to a book he loaned me a couple of years ago that I want to read. And for Rei, I had picked up an awesome Star Wars shirt I’d heard her freaking out over in Hot Topic. In fact, I’d gotten if for her that night. Told Megan H. to tell Rei I’d gone to the bathroom if she asked where I was. Stealthy, no? Must have worked… she had no idea I’d gotten it for her, so the reaction was rather fun. ;-)
As for me… I feel loved. Rei drew my name, and she went NUTS, I tell you! From Lush, she got me three Bathbombs, (including the new Black Pearl one, of course…) and a massage bar. Then, there were the books, which were actually from one of her characters to one of mine… hehe. Anyway, the books were Finding Serenity and Sex and the Slayer, which is a book that looks at feminist and gender studies issues in Buffy. I had no idea this second one even existed, and it looks SO interesting… can’t wait to read. Yay for fannish academia! Then… she got me all three Inuyasha movies! Yes. I’m giddy. Watched the first one last night. Much with the Inuyasha/Kagome and Sango/Miroku cuteness. lynxgriffin also got me a little something… the Kenshin character profile book, in ENGLISH! Viz put it out! I’d picked up the exact same title in Japanese, and though it has a few very pretty color pictures in the front, I just couldn’t conscience buying it because most of the book was text in a language I can’t read. But now I have it in English! Yay! It’s got all kinds of interesting tidbits about the characters, questions from fans to the author, a timeline (fanfic writer’s dream…), historical information about the stuff that’s going on in the series, whole awesome sections about Saito and Aoshi, my two favorite Kenshin boys… *squeal*
By the time we finished watching the movie, everyone had either departed or was ready to depart. Because I didn’t have anything at all to do in the morning, I took Alix home since her car was in the shop. Driving on the freeways late at night with no cars is kind of fun…
When I got home, instead of going to bed, I stayed up until almost 3 AM reading. I’ve been depriving my brain of long fictional works since I started working on my thesis revisions in earnest. I knew that if I was reading something, there was a danger I’d get sucked into that and use it to procrastinate and not get things done. So, I just said, “No new books till thesis and papers are finished.” And now they are finished. And so I started a new book, The Broken Crown, which is the first in the Sun Sword series. My brain is soaking it up like a dry sponge. Haven’t read till late in the night for a while… I feel like I’ve been away from someplace that’s important to me for a very long time. It’s good to be back.