The mystery of who kept stealing your newspaper. The answer, me!
Alison has demanded an update, so! Let's start with Thanksgiving.
Thanksgiving
Like my past few Thanksgivings, I planned on staying here and going out for, I don't know, Chinese or Indian or Burger King or something. But Alison said she was going to be driving down to San Jose and asked if I wanted to hitch a ride and get dropped off in San Francisco. So for the first time since 2007, I'd be spending Thanksgiving with the family.
It was okay. We spent most of our time at a house out in Watsonville. A house full of loud, obnoxious kids. But instead of staying there for the night, I got to escape to a hotel room at least, where I fell asleep at 8 or 9pm. It was pretty nice.
Anyway, the highlight of the trip to San Francisco was getting to see the Full House house! It was awesome. Here's a picture. I think next time I go to San Francisco, I'll bring some Full House DVDs with me, go to the house and knock on the door, and ask if whoever's inside wants to sit down and watch some quality television with me. How can they say no?!
Christmas
Another Christmas in Rancho Cucamonga. Same as usual. The family's okay for a day or two, and then they start getting on my nerves. Everyone kept whining that my flight got in at 8 on Christmas Eve, because for some reason they couldn't start eating at a Christmas Eve party without me? And oh no, I'm 10-15 pounds away from being overweight, I'm sooooooooo skinny! Am I eating well? Etc.
New this last year was having Gamestop ruin my Christmas. There were a couple of DS games I'd been wanting and my mom insisted I ask for something besides money for once. Okay, I thought, I can either ask for Professor Layton and the Unwound Future or 999. Seemed a pretty simple choice which game I'd ask my not-very-game-savvy mom for. Unfortunately, I had not anticipated that the people working at her nearest Gamestop are incompetent morons. Somehow, asking for 999 got her a used Nintendo DS instead. The employee not only had not heard of the game, but when my mom insisted that what she was getting was not what she asked for, they continued to push the DS on her instead of taking two seconds to check the computer to see if maybe, just maybe, the customer was right. GREAT customer service. Normally I side with Gamestop when people rant about how awful it is, but in this instance, ugh.
When I went to buy the game here, the clerk said it was a great game, told me to play through it multiple times to see all the endings and get all the story, and asked if I had had trouble finding it elsewhere. This is the same store where the chick was all excited when I bought Chulip, and I had no trouble getting Little Red Riding Hood's Zombie BBQ. The Washington Square Mall Gamestop (the one between Crazy 8 and GNC, not the one across from Claire's) must be the greatest Gamestop in the country.
And then I went back home, saying goodbye to 8.75% sales tax, sunny and highs in the 60s weather, and libraries where I wanted to print out my boarding pass but couldn't because they think it's acceptable to be closed from the 24th to the 29th. Oh, California. It's almost too easy to complain about how terrible you are.
New Year's Eve
Spent it at ye olde gamee nighte housee watching Red Letter Media movie reviews and playing a ton of MAME games. Pretty uneventful and "boring," but a good way to spend the night as far as I'm concerned.
And that's it! Now I'm looking for work and hoping and praying we'll get some decent snowfall this winter. Not a particularly thrilling start to the year, but things can only go up from here! ...right?
Thanksgiving
Like my past few Thanksgivings, I planned on staying here and going out for, I don't know, Chinese or Indian or Burger King or something. But Alison said she was going to be driving down to San Jose and asked if I wanted to hitch a ride and get dropped off in San Francisco. So for the first time since 2007, I'd be spending Thanksgiving with the family.
It was okay. We spent most of our time at a house out in Watsonville. A house full of loud, obnoxious kids. But instead of staying there for the night, I got to escape to a hotel room at least, where I fell asleep at 8 or 9pm. It was pretty nice.
Anyway, the highlight of the trip to San Francisco was getting to see the Full House house! It was awesome. Here's a picture. I think next time I go to San Francisco, I'll bring some Full House DVDs with me, go to the house and knock on the door, and ask if whoever's inside wants to sit down and watch some quality television with me. How can they say no?!
Christmas
Another Christmas in Rancho Cucamonga. Same as usual. The family's okay for a day or two, and then they start getting on my nerves. Everyone kept whining that my flight got in at 8 on Christmas Eve, because for some reason they couldn't start eating at a Christmas Eve party without me? And oh no, I'm 10-15 pounds away from being overweight, I'm sooooooooo skinny! Am I eating well? Etc.
New this last year was having Gamestop ruin my Christmas. There were a couple of DS games I'd been wanting and my mom insisted I ask for something besides money for once. Okay, I thought, I can either ask for Professor Layton and the Unwound Future or 999. Seemed a pretty simple choice which game I'd ask my not-very-game-savvy mom for. Unfortunately, I had not anticipated that the people working at her nearest Gamestop are incompetent morons. Somehow, asking for 999 got her a used Nintendo DS instead. The employee not only had not heard of the game, but when my mom insisted that what she was getting was not what she asked for, they continued to push the DS on her instead of taking two seconds to check the computer to see if maybe, just maybe, the customer was right. GREAT customer service. Normally I side with Gamestop when people rant about how awful it is, but in this instance, ugh.
When I went to buy the game here, the clerk said it was a great game, told me to play through it multiple times to see all the endings and get all the story, and asked if I had had trouble finding it elsewhere. This is the same store where the chick was all excited when I bought Chulip, and I had no trouble getting Little Red Riding Hood's Zombie BBQ. The Washington Square Mall Gamestop (the one between Crazy 8 and GNC, not the one across from Claire's) must be the greatest Gamestop in the country.
And then I went back home, saying goodbye to 8.75% sales tax, sunny and highs in the 60s weather, and libraries where I wanted to print out my boarding pass but couldn't because they think it's acceptable to be closed from the 24th to the 29th. Oh, California. It's almost too easy to complain about how terrible you are.
New Year's Eve
Spent it at ye olde gamee nighte housee watching Red Letter Media movie reviews and playing a ton of MAME games. Pretty uneventful and "boring," but a good way to spend the night as far as I'm concerned.
And that's it! Now I'm looking for work and hoping and praying we'll get some decent snowfall this winter. Not a particularly thrilling start to the year, but things can only go up from here! ...right?