The Ups & Downs of the Holiday
Up:
Hit the malls with the boy on Saturday so he could finish up a couple shopping tasks. It was not too bad to deal with. Since the wife and I were not trading prizes this christmas, I had no shopping to do, although I did bring her home some perfume as an un-christmas prize.
Down:
Saturday night, our dryer decided to stop making hot air. Interestingly enough, clothes dont dry as fast in cold air... Huh! This is a used dryer we bought when we moved into this house. We have a very nice electric dryer but there is no 220v outlet for it and the landlord does not want to pay the bucks to have the house wired for it. So when we moved in, we bought a $100 used machine and it lasted almost 4 years. Not bad I guess.
Down:
On Christmas Eve my wifes Aunt was taken to the hospital in an ambulance after collapsing. She's in her 70's and had probably spent all day in the kitchen cooking. She's a great Sicilian Momma and they have a party every year on Xmas Eve. Her Aunt makes so much food. Ham, Turkey, homemade pizzas, etc, etc, etc. We were not headed that way since we were going to spend the night with my side of the family, but it put a bit of a damper on the evening. Although the docs wanted her to stay overnight and get checked out, she went home. I imagine it was that there was no way she was gonna miss her grandchildren opening gifts. I first met her 19 years ago when Beth and I had only been dating a couple weeks and she treated me like one of her own. I hope she goes back and gets checked out this week.
Up:
We took my side of the family out for tasty steaks on Xmas Eve as our gift to them. We felt is was better than buying useless crap they didn't need. We had checked out the menu of this place online prior to going to see what we wanted to eat. When we got there and were waiting for everyone else to arrive, Beth was looking through their menu and noticed the prices were a couple dollars higher on everything compared to their website. She brought this to the attention of the hostess more as informational than as a bitch, but threw in the line... "it'll just cost us about $30 more than we thought tonight". Honestly, the money was no big deal, she just likes getting the dig in. However, after we seated the waiter said "we have three free appetizers for you tonight". We think its because Beth mentioned the price differences. So we ended up with about $30 of free appetizers. Bonus!
Up:
After dinner we went back to Mom's house for the other gifts that were getting exchanged. As we were talking about our dryer dying, my nephew says " I've got a dryer for you". Apparently a neighbor had moved and wasnt taking their dryer with them. It was sitting at his grandfathers house and he was looking to get rid of it. My nephew also didn't want to hang around his house all day xmas so he volunteered to bring it down to us. Considering they live way up in the northern part of the county, how could I say no? So now I have another dryer.
Christmas morning:
Since we were not doing a big gift thing, xmas morning didn't take long. Since he is into the big ticket items these days, there are not as many gifts under the ol' yule tree for the boy as when he was a tot. We got him a new stereo for his truck and better speakers so he can really crank the metal \m/ - He also got a gas card, some used golf clubs for whacking balls at the range, and a requested DVD. The Zen of Screaming. Apparently he wants to learn how to growl so he can be a metal singer. Of course if he puts as much effort into that as he did the guitar, it wont happen, but whatever, I'll give him the opportunity. He's the one who has to carry it through. He got me a nice stainless steel cocktail shaker that I was looking for. I put it to use tonight and mixed up a Manhattan to enjoy while typing this. We did an early dinner at the in-laws with more gift opening afterward.
I have eaten entirely too much over the weekend, although I enjoyed it all. Back on track tomorrow.
Hit the malls with the boy on Saturday so he could finish up a couple shopping tasks. It was not too bad to deal with. Since the wife and I were not trading prizes this christmas, I had no shopping to do, although I did bring her home some perfume as an un-christmas prize.
Down:
Saturday night, our dryer decided to stop making hot air. Interestingly enough, clothes dont dry as fast in cold air... Huh! This is a used dryer we bought when we moved into this house. We have a very nice electric dryer but there is no 220v outlet for it and the landlord does not want to pay the bucks to have the house wired for it. So when we moved in, we bought a $100 used machine and it lasted almost 4 years. Not bad I guess.
Down:
On Christmas Eve my wifes Aunt was taken to the hospital in an ambulance after collapsing. She's in her 70's and had probably spent all day in the kitchen cooking. She's a great Sicilian Momma and they have a party every year on Xmas Eve. Her Aunt makes so much food. Ham, Turkey, homemade pizzas, etc, etc, etc. We were not headed that way since we were going to spend the night with my side of the family, but it put a bit of a damper on the evening. Although the docs wanted her to stay overnight and get checked out, she went home. I imagine it was that there was no way she was gonna miss her grandchildren opening gifts. I first met her 19 years ago when Beth and I had only been dating a couple weeks and she treated me like one of her own. I hope she goes back and gets checked out this week.
Up:
We took my side of the family out for tasty steaks on Xmas Eve as our gift to them. We felt is was better than buying useless crap they didn't need. We had checked out the menu of this place online prior to going to see what we wanted to eat. When we got there and were waiting for everyone else to arrive, Beth was looking through their menu and noticed the prices were a couple dollars higher on everything compared to their website. She brought this to the attention of the hostess more as informational than as a bitch, but threw in the line... "it'll just cost us about $30 more than we thought tonight". Honestly, the money was no big deal, she just likes getting the dig in. However, after we seated the waiter said "we have three free appetizers for you tonight". We think its because Beth mentioned the price differences. So we ended up with about $30 of free appetizers. Bonus!
Up:
After dinner we went back to Mom's house for the other gifts that were getting exchanged. As we were talking about our dryer dying, my nephew says " I've got a dryer for you". Apparently a neighbor had moved and wasnt taking their dryer with them. It was sitting at his grandfathers house and he was looking to get rid of it. My nephew also didn't want to hang around his house all day xmas so he volunteered to bring it down to us. Considering they live way up in the northern part of the county, how could I say no? So now I have another dryer.
Christmas morning:
Since we were not doing a big gift thing, xmas morning didn't take long. Since he is into the big ticket items these days, there are not as many gifts under the ol' yule tree for the boy as when he was a tot. We got him a new stereo for his truck and better speakers so he can really crank the metal \m/ - He also got a gas card, some used golf clubs for whacking balls at the range, and a requested DVD. The Zen of Screaming. Apparently he wants to learn how to growl so he can be a metal singer. Of course if he puts as much effort into that as he did the guitar, it wont happen, but whatever, I'll give him the opportunity. He's the one who has to carry it through. He got me a nice stainless steel cocktail shaker that I was looking for. I put it to use tonight and mixed up a Manhattan to enjoy while typing this. We did an early dinner at the in-laws with more gift opening afterward.
I have eaten entirely too much over the weekend, although I enjoyed it all. Back on track tomorrow.