Holidays

Thanksgiving went great. We played games (Rock Band and Scene It) and had a lot of delicious food. Cherish and Melanie did a great job decorating and hosting. The two turkeys we bought were tasty. They weren't perfect, but they were fairly close to it. It was damn sure better than what happened to some other turkeys (I'm looking at you Beebys).

I had fun with my mom and sister over the weekend. They came up to join us in the Thanksgiving celebration. I saw Boondock Saints 2 with my sister at the Lakeville Theater (btw, did you know they have a Medieval Madness pinball machine?), which of course was pretty crowded. The movie was very enjoyable. It's pretty much more of the same, but I liked the first one. I just find the fact that it was even made impressive.

Emily has decided that for the month of December she's going to take it easier and do less things. Basically, except for a few events, she plans to be less social. No cow nights, every other game night at our place (at most) and no spur of the moment outings or parties. It's not a bad idea, it seems to work well for Joey. As it is we're already pretty booked with Colin's birthday, Cherish's birthday, Winter Walk, Christmas, Emily's birthday, Donata's Gift, and the Just Food parties that Emily has planned.

What's going on?

First off, for those that care, we're having Game Night at our place on Friday. We'll be playing Battlestar Galactica starting at 8pm. We'll be having a new guest with us this night, Nolan, son of Lindsay the Front End Manager of the Just Food Coop. Due to this, there will be no alcohol consumed, since he's underage and all. This is fine with me, I think it'll still be fun. Oh, and Lindsay will be joining us later that night after she's done closing. OK, on other topics.

Not sure if you heard, but Facebook can now be accessed through the Xbox 360. One of nice things about this is that you can find the gamertags of your facebook friends more easily. Also nice, through this you can see the real name of your Xbox friends, no more trying to remember who YougartKing really is anymore. Although it does require that you both have added and used the facebook app on your 360, but whatever. I think this is just awesome, finally the Internet is starting to piece together my social networks so that there's more, I don't know, synergy(?), interconnectivity(?). All I know is that it's nice to have one list of something instead of having to copy the list at every website.

Thanksgiving is right around the corner and my mom and sister are coming up to spend it with us. Exciting! I don't really have any plans other than the feast that will be enjoyed at Melanie and Cherish's, but that's usually how I roll, or at least how I like believe I do. I do have to work at Just Food for about an hour from 2pm to 3pm on Friday.

With Thanksgiving so close, that means that a bunch of Haskell birthdays and Christmas are right around the corner. This year is Emily's 30th Birthday. I don't know what we're doing for it, but Emily what's to host it somewhere suitable for a group of people to celebrate. She feels that our house is to small for such things, especially in the winter, when you can't really hang out outside. Right now the thoughts are at her sister's. The only issue with that is that it's in the cities, so I'm not sure how many Northfielders would attend (some of them think Dundas is far). But we've still got a while to work that out, it's not until the 28th of December. There's also been talk about doing it in a Logan's Run/Renewal motif. We'll see.

Exasperation

I've been thinking and I believe that it's probably a good thing that we're not hosting Thanksgiving this year. I've been feeling overwhelmed lately and Emily is feeling constantly in pain and tired and is unable to do much at home because of it. We haven't cleaned the house in weeks and the few times we do eat it ends up being cheese and crackers or possibly fudge and chocolate squares. Yeah, it hasn't really been very productive or healthy in our house as of late.

Not only do I feel like I have try to take care of myself as well as Emily, but there's the ever looming presence of tasks and projects I want to get done. Emily thinks I schedule too much for myself, with the second job, and game nights, and D&D, and socializing with others. That's all on top of household projects like clean out the garage, and setting up coat hangers, and cleaning up the bedroom, and organizing the office, and cleaning out the kitchen. Although, it's hard to relax when your free time is just trying to finish up the things on your “fun” to-do list like finish Borderlands, or Gears of War 2, or Fable 2, or Half-Life, or Wheelman, or Dead Space, or GTA IV, or Fallout 3, or watch the rest of Weeds, or Dexter, or Deadwood, or Mad Men, or Fringe, or Leverage, or Lost, or X-Files, or Tough Love, or all the numerous movies out there to watch and the multitude of podcasts to listen to. There's just not enough time out there to get things done.

BTW Nintendo told us an awesome secret! SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

Gaming and Games

Well, my weekend has been fully booked. Tonight we're having Game Night at Nancy's, which is awesome. She makes some really tasty snacks. Saturday I have D&D, depending on how the child watching situation pans out for Todd. After that, at 8pm, I get to help Alex at Just Food move shelves and tables and things around the store to get ready for the floor repainting going on later that night. When that's done I'm heading up to St. Paul to hang out at Pipe's (sorry, I mean Paul's) game night, which could go on until 2am or so. Then on Sunday . . . actually Sunday's free as far as I know, but I'm guessing there'll be some chores and errands to do, possibly I'll get some video gaming in. Or I just might end up sleeping through the whole day.

Speaking of video games, you should go download our newest game Excitebike: World Rally for the Wii. It's a WiiWare title and is basically a remake of the classic Excitebike. We improved the graphics a lot and even tweaked the gameplay a little to make it, in my opinion, more fun. There's also online multiplayer, which I hear is popular now-a-days. It's only $10. OK, that's probably enough shilling.

Concerns and Achievements

I just found out that we are having Thanksgiving at Melanie and Cherish's this year. For the past few years we've been having it at our place. It's a little small but we were able to make it work. I feel some what conflicted over this change. On the one hand, it will be nice to have someone else worry about all the cleaning and decorating and hosting and have more of the cooking parceled out, plus they do have more space and Cherish does have a knack for party hosting. On the other hand, it was nice to have a tradition of my own and I enjoy cooking but I don't like the cleaning so I don't cook that much and Thanksgiving is an excuse to do some cooking, but I guess we'll still have to cook some of our usual dishes like Broccoli Casserole and Candied Pecans and Herbed Cheese Croissants. I also don't know if we're still going to cook the turkey or if someone else will be. I guess there's really not that much to worry about this year. I would like to know what the full plans are, in particular what we need to bring or prepare, as well as if we need to pick-up anything from Costco for others.

Last weekend I played Chez Geek at Adam's with some of his friends. I had a blast and it was nice to meet new people. Saturday I had to work at the coop (to Nancy's credit I wasn't originally scheduled to but I ended up switching with Monica) and I followed that up with some gaming at Scott's, which went great. Usually when Scott hosts a Game Night at his place we only get in one maybe two games due to all of the food prepping and hosting and teaching of new games. This time that wasn't a problem. It was only Scott, Chris, Janine, and me so there wasn't as much corralling needed. We also played games that the majority of us had played before, cutting down on the game teaching. Of the games we played (Pandemic, Chicago Express, and Kingsburg), I only won one, and that was because Pandemic is a cooperative game so either everyone wins or everyone loses. I still had fun though.

Sunday, since it was so nice out, I got some yard work done. I put away the last of the hoses, mowed up all of the leaves around the house, put up and stored the hammock, and finished getting the mulch where it needed to be. I would still like to get the trees pruned before it snows, but I don't know anything about doing that, so I'm a little hesitant to start cutting. Other then that, I think we're ready for the coming of winter.

Game Night tonight

Adam has offered to host Game Night at his place, which I think is awesome of him. We figure we'll start at 7:30 or so. I know he has Guillotine and some Settlers of Catan games and Carcassonne as well. I also plan to bring a few games in case a number of people show up. I'm looking forward to it. If you want to go and don't know where he lives, ask me or him. He lives real close to the golf course.

I know, short post, but whatever.

Portland Trip

Portland was fun. Emily had a good time at her conference, learn a lot of good things and made a few friends while she was at it. She and Paula really hit it off, which is nice. I'm glad she has some HR friends now and doesn't feel so lost. While she was at her conference, I spent the time wandering around Portland and reading the graphic novels I brought along.

Graphic Novels I read: Invincible (1-7), Preacher (1-5), Scott Pilgrim (1-4).

Places I ate at (that I remember): Henry's Tavern (awesome vanilla banana creme brule), Voodoo Donuts (open 24 hours!), Cupcake Jones, Pazzo's, Saucebox (tasty cocktails and appetizers), Kenny and Zuke's Delicatessen, the Flying Elephant deli, Fuller's Diner, Whole Foods, Pizzicato (had a delicious pear and caramelized onion pizza slice), The Macaroni Grill, various food shack vendors.

Places I visited: Portland Art Museum (crazy layout but some interesting pieces), Finnegan's Toy Store, Powell's Bookstore (big bookstore that happened to be re-organizing all my favorite sections), Counter Media (small alternative comic shop), the Chinese Garden (with a small tea house inside), the Japanese Garden (everywhere you look is a great photo opt), the Goodwill on 10th (one of the fanciest goodwill's I've ever been in), West Elm store, Bonnet.

We planned to rent a car the last day to drive out and tour the Tillamook factory as well as see the Pacific ocean, but when we went to pick the car up we were told we needed a credit card and not just a bank card. The only credit card we had on us had been used for the hotel room and so had no available balance on it. Instead, we decided to walk the 10 or 12 blocks to the Japanese Garden, which just happened to be uphill the whole way. It was quite the hike, but it turned out to be a lovely destination. Afterwards, we walked back into downtown, ate some dinner, and passed the time in a bookstore until it was time to get a cab to take us to the airport.

We caught our 9:00 flight to Seattle (where they served a complimentary glass of local beer or wine), waited/slept for 2 hours until we could board our flight to Minneapolis, flew/slept-as-best-as-we-could-with-babies-seated-in-front-of-us-and-a-loud-snorer-a-few-rows-behind-us-in-seats-that-barely-recline our way home in time to drive back to Northfield and start back up at work.