Must be some big cockroach

Naming Conventions

I'd comment on how I've gotten into the habit of naming my posts after lines from movies, but historically that would result in me changing to a different system.

Friday

The Greek, Ladybug, the Rocket and TeamHooking got the weekend off in fine style with a night to be remembered. There was awesome food and drinks, great friends, and great conversation. We got our tree decorated by what clearly must be the hottest tree decorating trio of all time. I managed to limit myself to only sticking my foot in my mouth once or maybe twice.

I got awesome blackmail video footage of TeamHooking jumping up in the air to put tinsel on the tree.

What a great night.

Saturday

Saturday was the company xmas party. Our rooms at the hotel weren't fantastic; they stuck us with double double beds, rather than one larger bed, and couldn't move us as all the free queen-sized beds were on smoking floors (they still have smoking floors?). But the party was pretty good; we sat with Foran Object and Pigtails, kerflufl and Mr. kerflufl, and Serdic, and we had a lot of fun at our table. The highlights were manifestly phallic napkin arrangement, suitably mocked by my lovely wife and Pigtails, and Pigtails' efforts to steal another bottle of wine for us.

The food was pretty good and the music was acceptable. The live jazz band was really cool.

We got to meet RJA's lovely date Dot, who is very charming in person. Hopefully she had a good time. I did feel inclined to make a certain amount of fun of RJA's choice of a pink tie. He tried to convince me that real men wear pink, which may be true; all I know is that heterosexual men don't.

Unfortunately Prime, Null, the Foran Objects and just about everybody else bailed fairly early so we ended up calling it a night about half past eleven.

Sunday

Sunday we met up with Dougly and the CBC, Mr. J and M-Italia, Izzy and Wing, and P for Peking Duck. The duck was an interesting dish but rather gamey and fatty for my taste. After dinner we headed back to the Casa Wardo for drinks and to exchange xmas gifts. The J's new house is nothing short of gorgeous, with a big high-ceilinged living room and upstairs that looks out over it, and a very cool kitchen with J-shaped island.

The highlight of the gifts was, I believe, the remote controlled tarantula we got for Dougly. The CBC was, shall we say, not amused. I think we cheated a bit though as that present is at least as much for the rest of us as it is for Dougly.

This was a busy weekend but lots of the people we met up with are people we haven't seen much of lately, so it was really good to reconnect, shoot the shit, and have a good time.

Monday

Team lunch at work! Mmm, beer!

After work we went out to finish up our xmas shopping. We got a lot closer to being done, but the time/travel to gift ratio sucked. We didn't get home until about 9, and were to bed shortly after dinner, conked out.

Xmas Status

I believe the last of the xmas shopping is now complete. Now, to wrap!

The Living Hell of HP Technical Support

2.5 hours and no farther than we were yesterday. HP, go fuck yourself.

If you have the option of buying an HP product, or contracting syphilis with a toothless crusty cougar, go for the syph. At least you'll have penicillin.

Vampire

I ordered a huge lot of Vampire cards from White Wolf in the states late last week. The price difference between priority int'l FedEx and regular int'l FedEx is, no word of a lie, $1.86. That's the difference between 1-3 days and 5-7 days. Um, okay.

When I saw that my order was estimated at 11.4 pounds, I thought I might have overdone it a touch.

After completing my order it took me back to the main store page, which I hadn't visited initially, where I discovered that I could have entered a code to get 25% off my order. I sent in an email and got a response yesterday that they'd credited me the 25% I would have saved, no fuss no muss. And I got a notice from FedEx that my stuff is in, but as I wasn't home they'd be back tomorrow.

White wolf, you complete me.

Incidentally, I've also gone through the effort of putting all my cards in plastic sleeve sheets, having decided (eventually) against going the card-box route.

My lovely wife has asked me if I've started a spreadsheet for them yet. Not yet, but that's a good question.