gifts

Christmas Update

Posted on by grahams

I slacked way too long again, so this is going to cover alot of ground.. Sorry if it feels bullet-pointy.

Christmas, as always, was awesome. Dropped off at the airport very early on Friday, and after some shitty poker at Foxwoods, I rolled into Jersey in the late afternoon. Hung out Friday night with the Fam, Saturday we went to the Grandparents’ house to celebrate with them, but had to leave early because had to work until midnight. When we got back , , , and I buckled down for our traditional Christmas movies:

We all managed to stay up until Mom got home from work, and after some last minute wrapping we all retired to our beds. Everyone seemed to wake up around 9:30am or so, and we proceeded to open our gifts. A strange occurrence: We were tearing off wrapping paper when the doorbell rang. I stood up to look through the window, thinking “Who the hell would ring our bell on Christmas morning?” when I saw a mail truck! They were delivering mail on Christmas morning, which was also a sunday, one would presume that they were behind schedule, but I hope that fella got some good overtime pay for that shift. Amusingly enough, he was delivering a package for Larissa that contained gifts for me, so instead of wrapping it she just handed it to me and I ripped open the Amazon box. =)

Dad and my sisters all got different species of iPods, and I didn’t do too badly myself, not only scoring tons of great books and DVDs, but also a Blade CP Micro R/C Helicopter. I’ve operated R/C cars and was way into boats for awhile, but I’ve always wanted a Helicopter. Recently, my boss at Goodrich, Brian, got a Blade CP and all his talk about it re-lit that fire. It’s definitely going to be a long time before I’m comfortable flying it, but I’m already learning how to hover it and getting better at it every time I spin ‘er up. I nicked a set of blades pretty quickly, but I knew going into this that there would be some sacrificial trips to the hobby store when learning to fly.

I chilled at home for a few days, tried to meet up with everyone but there’s never enough time, so I did what I could… I spent the bulk of my time with the Family and Chuck, but also found time to catch up with Johnny, , and Amy.. I hauled ass back to Boston Wednesday afternoon and and came over for some Burnout Revenge and Scotch. Thursday morning I picked up Corinna from the Airport and we just chilled out the rest of the day.

Today we met up with Audra at the Kendall and caught Wolf Creek, a movie that really wanted to be The Texas Chain Saw Massacre but didn’t quite make it. It wasn’t bad, imho, but could have been better. Tonight we watched The Big Lebowski (another Christmas gift) which I hadn’t seen in ages and Corinna had never seen!

Wow….

Posted on by grahams

I had a great time today doin’ the family thing…. We got up at 6am, before my mother had to go to work, so we could have “Christmas Morning”… The family was really split as to whether or not to wake up early; I was teetering (I think our family tradition was neat, but no-one other than my father seemed to want to wake up at 6 to do it).

I am very thankful, I can’t think of another thing I could have received, and everyone I gave gifts to seemed to be very pleased. While some people criticze the gift-exchange part of this holiday, I think it gets too much flack…. Yes, we shouldn’t be so product-oriented, but it is a great feeling to give and to receive.

As far as the receiving end goes, I received many DVDs, a bunch of CDs I wanted (Including 3 Talking Heads discs), and a TINI Board, which has little practical justification for me, but it totally for fun. Regular readers know that the TINI is the basis for the new drink hardware, so it gives me a non-production platform to play on, and I also have a few other ideas for fun things to do with it… The only way to install software on it (other than the shell) is via FTP, so I need to go out tomorrow and score a hub or a crossover cable so I can start playing around with it in earnest.

I truly hope everyone had a wonderful day today, and if you didn’t… Drop me a line, maybe we can make up for it… I have a good deal of happiness to go around… :)