Christmas is a time for love, peace, family, giving, and TOTAL INSANITY!

I tried to go to the Ritz Camera store in the Natick Mall at lunch today. Big Mistake. The mob was so insane that they had police outside of the garage. Not policeman, singular, but policemen, plural. Four of them at one garage entrance. Four of them blocking one garage entrance and funneling everyone to the other garage entrance, creating a cluster of titanic proportions.

I didn’t even make it into the building before running (well, driving) away screaming in fear.

Merry Christmas, indeed!

Jen called me this morning to ask me if I take route 20 at all. I do, but only to cross it. She had heard there was a fire that closed a chunk of the road in Weston, MA. I don’t cross in Weston.

Was there ever a fire. This is from New England Cable News:

Here’s a later story with more complete details (no one was hurt, thankfully) given by a reporter on the scene who has a really rough time when she goes off script. Ouch.

Tonight we are having dinner with my parents. The Christmas gifts the kids got for them are in my car, ready to be handed out. Word on the street is that we, much like the Whos down in Whoville, will be having roast beast.

Roast beast is a feast I can eat in the East.

Yeah, that was terrible. Sorry Dr Seuss.

The gifts are wrapped, with the exception of a couple that the kids want to help with. Those will probably be handled on Thursday while Jen and the kids are home and I am at “work”.

I say “work” because Thursday is a half day for us. The day will start with our group Christmas yankee swap festivities. After that we will all trek downstairs to the humongous company wide Christmas party where the shrimp is world renown (I don’t eat shrimp though) and the buffalo wings are wonderful.

Most exciting of all is that I have to do a load of laundry or two tonight as well. I can see your jealousy. Jealousy is an ugly thing but it is totally understandable in this instance.

Can you tell that I really don’t have anything to write about this morning?

Watch this video and get into the holiday spirit:

You might be seeing stuff like this through the course of the day. I’m in a Rankin/Bass kinda mood.

This is the time of year when you can’t walk down the street without being bombarded by lists of the top n things of the soon-to-be-concluded year. Top 10 movies of the year, top 100 songs of the year, top 10 athletes of the year, the biggest douche in the universe (thank you South Park). Stuff like that.

Well I’m not going to be left out this year! I have painstakingly compiled my list of The Best Things That Happened in 2009. Here is my list!

Number One!

Jenny and I got hitched!

Number Two!

There is actually a tie for number two! What were the statistical chances of that??

and

That’s right, the tie was between the East coast half of our honeymoon, and the West coast half of our honeymoon! (so I guess I could have just said that the honeymoon was the second best thing to happen in 2009, but I wanted to post two pictures, so deal with it.)

Number Three!
Everything else that happened in 2009 is tied for number three.

So to sum up… Getting married to Jen was the best thing to happen in 2009 (not to mention the best thing to happen ever) and going away for two weeks to celebrate our wedding was the second best thing. Everything else was great too, but those two things stand head and shoulders above the rest.

I hope you enjoyed that. I worked really hard on it.

You’re welcome.

I can’t wait to see what happens in 2010.

The network in the building I work in has been down since 10:00am or so. We tried waiting it out in the hopes it would come back, but that doesn’t seem likely right now.

So, we are taking advantage of the fact that my company has six buildings within a relatively short distance. I have moved to the closest one on the map. Fortunately I was able to snag a computer with internet access! >whew<

Unfortunately it probably means an evening commute on the highway instead of on the back roads. I’ll see if I can map out a way that avoids the worst spots. I may just have to suck it up and take 128N to 93N like the rest of the world does.

Wish me luck!

I haven’t been in this building since my original training in the summer of 2004. I forgot that you have to walk outside to go to the cafeteria here… which means Robbie has snickers bars for lunch today because I don’t wanna go back out in the cold!

Fortunately I just heard the familiar sound of a soda dropping out of a soda machine so I know the kitchen (and the junk food) is close. >whew again!<

Tuesday:
Clean out the van to make traveling to Christmas Celebrations easier.
Buy the last two gifts, both of which are for work grabs.
Wrap the last few (two?) gifts and then wrap the grab gifts.
Put away the wrapping paraphernalia and straighten up around the tree.

Wednesday:
Grab the from kids to step-grandparent gifts.
Travel the 15 minutes to my parent’s house.
Have Christmas Eve-Eve dinner at my folks’ house.
Bake cookies for Santa Claus.
Try not to eat all of Santa’s cookies before Santa arrives.

Thursday:
Jen and the kids stay home while Rob goes to work for half a day.
When Rob come home, load the from us to Nana and Papa gifts in the van.
Make the hour plus journey to Jen’s folks’ house.
Have a blast at Nana and Papa’s Christmas Eve party.
After the party the kids will go home with their father.
Put out milk and cookies for Santa Claus and some carrots for Rudolph and the gang.

Friday:

CHRISTMAS!!!!

Saturday:
Sleep all day recovering from Friday.

Ho Ho Ho Everyone! It’s almost here!

Remember the Enchanted Village that used to be on display at Jordan Marsh in Downtown Crossing? Well it’s at Jordan’s Furniture in Avon, MA now. We thought it might be nice to take the kids to see it. After doing some heavy duty shopping Saturday morning we took a break from the hard work and drove South.

We found the place easily (it’s right next to IKEA, the place we go to when we want to redesign our entire living environment) and headed to the Village’s line. As we got into line who did we see but Elliot Jordan! The guy from the commercials! He used to be part of Barry and Elliot before Barry split, and now he’s just Elliot. The guy with the pony tail who gives away shit loads of furniture when the Red Sox win the World Series. That guy. He was just hanging there, and why shouldn’t he be… he owns the place, doesn’t he? He said hello, we said hello back, then we got in line. By the time my camera was out of the bag he had left. I know I have no evidence of my pseudo-celebrity sighting, but you’ll have to trust me. Besides, if I were going to make up a celebrity sighting it would probably be Geddy Lee. You folks know me well enough to realize that.

Anyway…

The line was very long but it moved steadily. The kids were patient but we could tell they wouldn’t be staying patient forever. Finally we got in! Jen and I took a bunch of pictures. Here are a few of them.

Here is one little segment of the line. Not even close to the whole thing.

This display has been around for many years and whoever designed it had a thing for teddy bears. There are teddy bears everywhere. Here we see one reading a newspaper. If this were a new design he’d either be reading the news on a netbook or a smart phone. Probably an iPhone.

This shoppe made me want ice cream. Then again, every shoppe and every shop make me want ice cream.

I tried playing with the angle to get whole streets into single shots. More or less unsuccessfully.

I mentioned the teddy bears, right? This room was over run by them! Check out the little bugger poking his head out of the chimney. How the hell did a teddy bear get in there?

Obviously teddy bears aren’t terribly good at judging spatial relations, as this guy was a little too big to fit under that foot rest.

He kid… gimme a cookie…
gimme a cookie!

GIMME A COOKIE!

The music store was obviously my favorite shop in the village.

Paying my respects to the sax player, even if he is a bear.

It seemed like every house had cookies. They were taunting me. Teasing me. Torturing me.

Weird… they were reading “Joy to the World” but the music we heard was “Jingle Bells.” Seems like an easily fixed continuity error.

The last display was a marching band and once again I will pay my respects to the sax player. Merry Christmas, Mr Sax Player.

It’s sort of funny…

On Friday when I was stuck in insane traffic due to an accident that forced a bridge closure I found a handful of news reports about it when I got to work.

Today, when I wasted 40 minutes of my life trying to go about 3 miles I can’t find any mention of it anywhere. Jen said she heard something about an accident near the route 133 exits on route 93 South. It backed up almost all the way to New Hampshire. I was stuck in the middle of that and it made me late for work again.

Merry first day of Winter.

I might take a few pictures through the window later, but not right now.

It’s snowing. It’s bad, but it’s not quite as bad as the forecast said it would be… at least not yet.

We’re having a very much needed flake day today after trucking the kids around to finish off the Christmas shopping and food shopping and stuff yesterday. We also went to the Enchanted Village, but pictures will follow at another time.

Today we’re watching movies and eating popcorn and playing games and doing the last bits of gift wrapping. It’s a nice quiet day and it’s quite wonderful.

The Christmas planning is in full effect now. We have evening plans for Wednesday, Thursday, and all day Christmas Day on Friday. Nothing on the plate for Boxing Day yet, but then again we ain’t English.

Cheerio!

Jen just took the kids out Christmas shopping.

Hmmm, thinks I…

Who might they be shopping for if they all went together and I was not allowed to join them?

Who indeed?

WOOOHOOO!!!