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Christmaaaaaaas!
MOST importantly, I got to talk to Eric yesterday! He called around 5pm, since that was Christmas morning in the Philippines. (For my non-LDS friends, missionaries get to call home on Mother's Day and Christmas. I was in Germany over Mother's Day, so I haven't talked to him since he left January 6! Almost a whole year!) There were some technical difficulties with the phone card, so my dad bought an internet one where we call him at...wherever he was. Someone's house. I could hear carolers in the background, singing Silent Night in surprisingly good English. Then I heard drums, which he said signaled the coming of a parade, which he tells me in the Philippines is always fronted by the gayest crossdressers available. Eric finds the flamboyant transvestites there pretty amusing (there are a lot of them I guess!) until they start hitting on him specifically because they know he doesn't like it. That is usually my biggest problem with gay guys too, the ones that hit on straight guys just to be jerks (there was one of those when I was down at Snow, I always wanted to punch him in the face but he would have accused me of being a homophobe instead of just thinking he was a jerk).
Anyway! Eric is doing awesome. He's got only the teensiest accent...I caught it on the way he pronounced some words, but when he asked me "like what?" I couldn't answer. I bet he could do a good one if he tried though, I know when Mike was in England he sounded normal on the phone, until we asked him to do the British accent and he sounded like a pro. (At least to us. I'm sure British people would still be able to tell he was American. Except he said they kept thinking he was Irish for some reason.) It was awesome to talk to him, even if it was a little tricky - there was a lot of delay so we ended up talking over each other then stopping and saying "what?" a lot. Which I guess isn't surprising since he's on the other side of the world.
Then on to Christmas morning! Even though we have no children in the house this year (Heather & Alan couldn't stay with their kids since she had to work on Christmas), Tricia being the youngest at 18, we still ended up getting up before 6:30 because Mike & Caitlin had to leave by 8 to do something with her family. It was a good haul! Tricia gave me the brown rose scarf that I had been eyeing at Shaybee's, and which I had suggested mom buy for Tricia because she wanted to get Tricia a scarf. XD Which is good because I had planned to "borrow" it from Tricia repeatedly. Mike & Cait gave me cute sushi earrings (really nice ones! The only ones I've seen before were big clay "I'm made out of Playdoh!" ones but these are actually classy-looking!) and fabulous giant green butterfly earrings. Which Mike apparently picked out himself, which is even more impressive. My stocking had candy - a candy cane full of Runts (how long has it been since I've had those...yum), a candy bracelet, Christmas Peeps (!!!), and a chocolate orange of course. And Diet Dr Pepper, and owl earrings, and another scarf, one of those compressed "T-Box" scarves, like the one Rachel gave Heather at our Christmas party Thursday. Santa brought me a Tinkerbell shirt and nerd books! :P Essential X-Men vol. 1 (out of print!) and a book on accounting fraud that I had actually intended to buy for myself once I was sure no one had gotten it for me for Christmas (shut up it will be super interesting I assure you).
The trick is to somehow wear everything I received that is wearable sometime in the next two days! I am wearing the Tinkerbell shirt right now, layered over a long-sleeve green shirt so that it will go with the green butterfly earrings. Also I think the brown rose scarf will look marvelous with it.
The most important thing to wear soon is my grandma's gift to me, because she is sensitive and worries that we don't like her gifts...and to be honest they sometimes miss the mark a little...but not this year! Man she hit the nail on the head this year - a big beautiful flower necklace! My grandma loves big bold jewelry, as I do...we are alone in this family on that (my mom and sister like bright colors, but in smaller sizes and quantities). Grandma's seen me looking at big earrings before and expressed surprise, so I make sure to compliment her fabulous and ginormous necklaces and such because honestly, I really do love them A LOT. So she got me this amazing long necklace with a big metal flower. It's that darker metal...is it called gunmetal? With rhinestones in the center. On long gunmetal chains. So it's big and feminine yet kind of BAD-A at the same time! It's like a necklace Sephiroth would wear if he were a female fashionista! (Okay don't picture it, but you get my point) That's too fancy to wear with my T-shirt today but it is definitely going to church tomorrow.
Also I didn't post about our friend-Christmas-party on Thursday! Melanie made me a round furry hat and matching muff. No joke! I am straight out of Victorian England, or current day New York! I pretty much look like Wilhelmina Slater in them. When I wore them upstairs yesterday to show everyone, my grandma got this surprised look and said, "They really look like you." Haha. I am classy! Heather gave me a cute clutch with Japanese candies on them, some actual candies, and a Hot Topic gift card. Rachel gave me earrings she bought in Camden while she was in London doing her study abroad. They are a little weird-looking but they are growing on me the more I look at them. :P Joe gave me a huge fuzzy blanket, just like the huge fuzzy blanket everyone wants when we watch movies at his house...he gave almost everyone one of those. XD
Ed gave me way too much...and I felt really weird and awkward until I discovered he gave everyone way too much. He just wanted to spend a ton of money on his friends I guess. Now I need to figure out what to do, since one of the things he gave me was big, expensive complete collection of Buster Keaton movies that I already have. And have had for several years. I'm not sure whether to tell him or not. Thoughts anyone? The fact that he got me that, PLUS two gift cards, a Tinkerbell snowglobe, and some other DVDs on my wishlist, made me feel weird and uncomfortable, until I saw that he got Joe the new Rock Band drums, a year of Xbox Live, and four video games for Xbox360 and PS3, and got Melanie a new computer. Now I've just got to wonder what he gave Heather....
What a merry Christmas! Mom always tells us Christmas is going to be light, but I always end up feeling like I got a ton of stuff! :D Now that the postal service will be getting back on track I need to send Eric the box of goodies I have; I always send him smaller boxes, and send it first class instead of Priority, and I was worried it would get lost with all the massive amounts of packages and having to go all the way to the Philippines. And on Monday...back to work. I have sold a lot of hats today, actually. Looks like a lot of people got eBay/PayPal gift cards for Christmas...and are buying all the stuff they wanted and didn't get! :P