Breakneck Break

Christmas (Dec. 25):
Cornell & Co. came over around 9AM and we opened our presents with them. For not asking for anything, I got a surprising amount of good stuff. Notably, I got a Wii (jk, it's for the whole family), some base layer clothing (needed since I lost some of mine...), Friday Night Lights Season 2 (such a good show), and a BlackBerry Storm2!

The BlackBerry was a very ironic gift because it was the exact phone I was going to ask for when our contract was up in March, but I hadn't mentioned it to my parents yet cuz I figured that would be rude. My dad just figured that would be the phone I would want and bought it randomly. Well he did buy it at the same time that he bought a netbook (since cancelled after I made him realize it was a waste of money for him) BlackBerrys for my mom and him. Apparently he was very worried after Emma/Noel posted "my parents both got blackberrys" on Facebook because he thought that would clearly lead me to the conclusion that there was a deal where he would have bought me one as well. I did not in fact intuit that (I mean even buying 2 phones on a different network when you are still under contract for 4 more months is silly, I didn't think he would have made it 3) and thus was completely surprised when I opened the new phone on Christmas.

A bunch of our relatives came over after presents for brunch and an early dinner. Davis also showed up after that, and we hung out for a while, enjoying many a lol. My dad provided many of those lols and the most memorable one came when he was discussing some of my Facebook photos that he had seen. He stated (with my mom and sisters and other relatives nearby) that he saw me in some pictures with a bunch of girls who "looked like they could be in pornos." I'm not sure exactly who he's talking about, but probability-wise here's looking at you KK, Liz, Sarah, Khalehla, and Becca!

Cheney (Dec. 26 - Dec. 29):
At 6:30AM my family began the 5 hour drive out to Cheney (eastern WA, near Spokane for those not in the know). We stopped for breakfast at our usual spot, although the name of the place escapes me. There was a cute waitress checkin me out, but I played it cool. Over breakfast, I showed my family what the BlackBerry could do and they were astounded (It knows where you are?! You can go on the Internet?! You can scan barcodes?! You can find nearby establishments?! etc.). We arrived right before noon at Tamara's new house. Well it was new to me at least; she had moved there earlier in the year when she and her ex-husband separated. We spent the rest of the day having a "second Christmas" basically, with more gifts for everyone and another turkey dinner, nom! That night, I introduced Emma and Noel to the classic 90's-ness that is Full House since there wasn't much else on.

Most of Sunday was spent helping Zoe and Callie (Tamara's two daughters) play with all of their new toys, including their own Wii. That afternoon, my mom finished my replica of Jayne's hat from one Firefly episode and it turned out awesome. Loves it. That evening, my family went to see one of the families that we met during Emma's adoption. The adults and kids quickly split into two separate parties; I remained with the adults and had a good time enjoying the awkwardness & hilariousness that is caused by a tipsy Roy. Conveniently for him, I was there to be DD.

Monday, we went ice skating at EWU which I didn't much care for given how uncomfortable the ice skates were. I don't think I've ever worn even a semi-comfortable pairs of ice skates in my life. I stopped early and just worked out at their weight room. After that, everyone except Tamara and I went swimming at the motel that my parents were staying at. We went back and watched The Hangover on pay-per-view. My mom nearly watched it with us because for some reason she thought she would like it (wtf?) but thankfully I convinced her not to, that would have been too weird. Emma and Noel also wanted to see it (even though I knew they wouldn't enjoy it) and they insisted on watching it when they got back (PPV was a 24 hour rental). Sure enough, they only times they laughed were when people got hit by opening car doors. I thought it was a pretty hilarious movie, not the funniest thing I've seen, but fairly up there.

Headed back to Shoreline around midday. Nick and Wilfred came over in the evening and we chatted for a while since Nick was getting his tonsils out the next day and would therefore be "unable to chat for a while."

Token D&D Session (Dec. 30):
First order of business was Sai and David revealing Davis' (6 month late) DINOSAUR & DIE birthday cake (D&D, get it? also punny because it depicted the dinosaurs dying)! David introduced his newest character (#3 for those counting), a druid. Druidic powers proved to be a very powerful thing in the hands of David. Excerpts from his blog post:

-I jumped off a ledge and transformed into a tree in an attempt to crush our enemy (at Sai's suggestion) that none of us could damage. Sai tried to get out of the way, but failed and I came one point of damage away from killing him.
-Some mouth enemy ate me (while I was in velociraptor form), but while I was inside it about to be digested, I transformed into a tree and the enemy basically exploded everywhere.

We also tried to go to Taco Bell for dinner, but they were severely understaffed and after a 15 minute wait, we got a refund and went to Taco del Mar instead. Saw Taylor Naten somewhat awkwardly at TB and perhaps just as awkwardly saw Mick (guy from ultimate 2 years ago) at TdM. In the end, we D&D'ed from around 1PM until 10PM, a solid session indeed.

NYE:
I spent most of the day creating my mom's birthday present which was a nice slideshow of the day we visisted the village in China that my grandfather came from. In the evening, Emma and Noel invited some friends to hang out with and I had to hold down the fort while my parents went out for dinner. Eventually we had cake and sparkling cider to celebrate the new year and my mom's bday and I hooked up my laptop to the big TV and showed the slideshow. Kind of a lame NYE, but hey I didn't have high hopes anyway.

Token Marvel: Ultimate Alliance 2 Session (Jan. 1):
David, as requested, acquired Marvel: Ultimate Alliance 2 (Christmas present I do believe) and so we managed to get in a nice long play session from about 4PM to 11PM. Pretty fun sequel; they do introduce a lot of changes which is nice, although the character selection and customization leaves something to be desired. We did take a break to meet up with The Asians at Red Robin for dinner. Josh got volunteered as the "birthday boy" when he left to use the restroom and was very surprised when he received balloons and a sundae after returning. Also, Davis pretended to hit Alex's nuts which resulted in him accidentally doing just that.

Ultimate:
I've been doing a lot of working out to prepare for spring season this year. Hitting the gym, lifting weights, crunches and pushups at home, etc. I need to get in more running, even though I hate it. I went to DiscNW sponsored pickup two days ago and it proved to be some good practice. Everyone there had a lot of experience (definitely more than David, Steven, Eric and me), but hey challenge is good, right? I failed completely at every JC (jump competition) and had 2 drops, but at least by the end I got a foot block and a layout D :/ Also, it was definitely busier than I had hoped and we did not get much playing time the first half of the time we were there. I've also been guest "coaching" at the Shorewood ultimate practices this week which has been fun since at the very least it's a chance to throw with Steven, David, and Eric, and if I can help out some nooblets while having a light exercise as well, so much the better. They've got a couple somewhat competent players, but most are newbies so it will be interesting to see how much SD&E can train them up.

Movies:
I've also watched a lot of movies recently because of convenient access to stuff I want to watch (HBO OnDemand ah yeah) and stuff that is convenient to watch when there's nothing to do (because at least one sister is probably watching something on TV). Anyway, I thought I'd throw 'em down just for kicks (and you can probably tell which movies fall under which category).
The Proposal was a terrible movie compounded by its many weird moments and the eternal awkwardness that was a love developing between Ryan Reynolds and Sandra Bullock; Ryan, my friend, you should have gone for that cute barista at the beginning that smiled at you.
Burn After Reading lived up to the mediocre standards I had pegged for it; a little funny at parts, but generally just too weird to really matter.
The Incredible Hulk (the one with Ed Norton and Liv Tyler) was pretty decent; just a popcorn action flick but much better than the other recent one in my opinion.
Minority Report was a movie that I had wanted to see for a long time and the sci-fi stuff in it was awesome--if only they had chosen someone other than Tom Cruise as the lead *sigh*.
Revolutionary Road was an extremely well done movie with great acting all around (especially the "slightly crazy" son, those were the best moments of the movie for me), but for some reason I just couldn't get as "into" it as I would have liked.
27 Dresses was utterly predictable from start to finish, just blah. I can actually appreciate a solid romcom, but this was not good at all and Katherine Heigl (who did a great job in Knocked Up) was just silly.

Amorous Affairs:
None that I can remember. And for me, that means none period.