Holiday Recap Part II

The day after Christmas we loaded the car and hit the road for Connecticut to visit Rob's family. We enjoyed the short 5 or so hours in the car this year as compared with 18+ hours in past years. We arrived at Grandma's house in time for presents before dinner. We all gathered around and took turns opening presents. Rob got another Wii controller and remote to up our set to 3 each now. I received some pretty cool quilting books that used to be his grandmother's.

After presents, we sat down for dinner and then we did the grab bag. The grab bag is always an interesting mix of random gifts that can be pretty cool OR can be pretty terrible. This year I think we made out 50/50. I got a cool purse and Rob got a Lobster statue, which I am not sure we know what to do with. For now, it hangs out on an end table to attract strange looks.

After words we cleared the table and played Cranium which was a gift from Bill's girlfriend Ellie. It provided hours of fun. I was on a team with Danielle and Steve (aka Gorgonzola). We didn't win, but we had a pretty good time. This year was Gorgonzola's first year with the family and I think he survived quite well. I could sympathize with him and was also happy to see another person's reaction to the fun chaos.


We called it a night and we left to stay with Rob's parents for the night. We usually stay at Grandma's house, but it was quite full. It was probably just as well (and probably planned that way). The next morning we came back to the house and got a welcome from Grandma singing Doo-doot-do-doo (wedding march) through wrapping paper tubes. I figure this is just par for the course and I was ushered into the living room where the entire family had gathered sitting all around with turkey feathers in the hair. I was like, umm, ok, that's cool and went back into the kitchen to remove the shoes and jacket I came in with. This was when Rob's mother filled me in as to what was happening. "This your surprise bridal shower!" OOHHH!!!!

She had planned out the whole thing and the table was decorated and everyone had known about this for a while. It was a fantastic surprise. We played wedding bingo, then did "how well do you know your significant other" interviews. Turns out Rob and I don't know each other's eye color and some other silly facts. His family came up with some great questions and that was hilarious. I think the favorite was, when privately interviewed and asked, "Who would you say your biggest celebrity crush is?" I responded, "OH! Definitely Heath Ledger, I would do him in a second, well, not anymore." It got quite a laugh when shared with the crowd. The best part of the party was the TP wedding dresses the family made for Becky and Danielle. They had a ball designing them and the girls looked fabulous. :)


I am so excited to be joining this family. They know how to have fun, the embrace silliness, and truly care about all members of the family. To show how much they have accepted me into the family, I was given an extremely treasured gift. When I opened it, I didn't think much of the gift inside, but the entire family went, "oooooooo". Apparently, they all knew what it was that I opened because it's a family tradition that they are given from time to time to only female blood relatives within the family. As I am not a member of the family yet or a blood relative, it spoke a great deal of how his family feels about me joining it. I was really honored to be given such a present. It's a set of 3 change purses linked together on a chain. Every now and again the purses get filled with treasures as they are passed along. Sometimes they are passed for significant events (like now) and sometimes, just because.

It really was a great party and while I didn't expect it at all, I really appreciated it. The wedding is just around the corner now!

Holiday Recap Part I

Gosh it's been a while since I last posted. I think it's been happening a lot lately with all that's going on, especially around the holidays. Mostly that indicates I was trying to do too many things without enough hours in the day. Some year I will learn, but I always amaze myself at what I can get done.

This year's holiday visits were a little different than those of past years. Mostly, we didn't have to drive half or even a quarter as far as we have in the last 3 years. Thank the heavens. It started out with the annual family party at my Aunt's house. We had a slightly smaller crowd this year, but still some 30 people hanging out and little ones running around. We did manage the get most of the younger branch of the family on the stairs for a group shot though.


On Christmas day Rob and I got to enjoy the morning to ourselves for the first time ever. It was actually quite nice. We opened out presents ate a bunch of cookies, made breakfast and then went to my parent's house for lunch. The flaw in our morning was the part where we made breakfast. At the time this seemed like a brilliant idea, however with the amount of food that was prepared for later in the day, we really could have skipped it. By lunch we were full for the rest of the day and still had one more stop to my sisters.

Christmas at my parents house was pretty awesome. Rob and I got new PJ pants, our bread maker, and I got my first silver bell. My parents were the happy recipients of gifts from Germany and my dad got a new shirt and tie to celebrate his weight loss and Joyce got a quilt that's not quite done, but looks like this. (Cat not included) It's my first ever attempt at making one and I think it turned out pretty darn good. ;)

From there we went to my sister's house for visiting with that part of my family and dessert. It was hard to find room, but I did my best to make room for cheesecake. We did our silly family gift exchange and hung around for turkey sandwiches on homemade bread. It's delicious! We called it a night and headed back to our house to get loaded up for the next day for the drive to Rob's family gathering at his Grandmother's house!

Moving out of the Dark Age

Today, I made one giant leap for mankind. Well, more likely for myself and Rob too. It's still pretty huge. I upgraded my phone today from one that is apparently worth $19 in the Verizon store to a Smart Phone. I got the new HTC Droid. That's right, I will no longer get angry when someone sends me a text message!

So far, I don't know how to do much with it, but I am pretty happy that I am able to check my Gmail account from work and check silly things throughout the day that the company has blocked. Not to mention that I can get directions on the fly now from google maps and I am sure get all kinds of gadgets and gizmos which I will be waiting on Rob to help me with. :) My favorite feature so far is the green robot that pops about and the snowflakes that appear on the weather report. Oh and some fun backgrounds. :) Did I mention WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE???

Preparing for Winter

Winter is upon us here in the great state NY and Rob and I are trying to get prepared. Last week I finally broke down and made a few essential purchases. First was the snow brush. This was a little more intimidating that I thought it would be with the 15 different choices they had. I just wanted one that removed the snow from my car. Thankfully I picked a good one. I got to put it to use this morning finally. Score one for me.

Secondly, I made a purchase from REI Outlet for a pair of boots. Apparently last years models are worth only 60% of their value. Like I care. I picked out a nice fuzzy pair and rolled the dice on if they would fit or not. To my absolute delight, they fit and are warm. Score another!

Now I need a hat and an cocoa dispenser for my car. I hope Santa has something up his sleeve.

Meetings - The Practical Alternative To Work

Work is full of meetings. I have been pretty fortunate to avoid a lot of them. I have one morning meeting every day that lasts all of 15 minutes and it's nothing more than a game plan for the day. Not too bad. However, I find there are a large number of meetings that aren't so short and sweet.

I was invited to a meeting this week with various customers to discuss delivery time line and installation issues of our product via teleconference. It being a teleconference should tip you off that this will not be a short meeting and in fact, we will probably struggle to stay within our time limits. This meeting was scheduled for an hour with an agenda of 22 points with about 4-5 groups dialed in (another red flag). At the thirty minute mark, we were on point number 4. I found this quite funny. Shortly after that thirty minutes, the people on the other end of the phone were having some nonsense conversation that didn't pertain to us so we had our own mini meeting, which I am sorry to say happens ALL the time with teleconferences. You can't see your attendees faces or their body language to signal to you that's not ok. So after about 10 minutes, we notice the phone has gone silent and someone says, "Hello?" This is where you have to make a graceful recovery to tell the people on the other end they were boring you, so you decided to talk about something else. Meeting fail.

At the end of our one hour, they had made it to point 6, but by the grace of gods, the conference room we had was only booked for an hour and we got kicked out. The main meeting people went to an office to finish what was probably another hour or two conversation and my boss and I left to go do "real work".

So why does this happen? I think it happens for a few reasons. One - Meetings are a chance for people to vent in an open forum. To bring up points they think are huge because it's eating away at them. Then you need to spend 5 minutes explaining they are smoking crack in a nice way and move on. Two - no one really wants to go back to work. If they are in a meeting, they can't possible be doing other things or meeting with OTHER people. The invention of the blackberry has kind of lessened this, but still, I think for people like us underlings, it's still valid. And finally, I believe that people running meetings have some phenomenon happen where time stops for them and they haven't the foggiest clue that life is happening around them back in normal land. Those who run meetings often determine their outcome and sad to say, many people are not good at it.

I am not saying, the meetings I run are perfect because they aren't. I just thought it was a funny observation that I could share with you. :) It's kind of like Office Space, probably a little to close to home. ;)

It's Christmas Time...

We have officially decorated our house for the holidays. It takes a while because we have about 8 boxes of Christmas stuff to sort out and put up, but it looks nice when we are done. So I will let the pictures do the talking. :)


Our pretty Christmas tree. We have an eclectic tree with all kinds of different ornaments that we each have collected over the years. Our favorite additions this year are the personalized engaged ornament and the ornament from Rothenburg, Germany.


The holly lights are my favorite non-tree decoration because I think they are classic Christmas.


We didn't want our entry way to feel left out, so we put a small tree down there. This particular one has a set of lights on there that blink, so really this is an action shot. :)

Rob and I aren't the only ones in this household that enjoy the Christmas decorations. Both Dory and Sparky think that we have done this house up as some sort of playland for them. They take turns sitting at the extra lights from the holly.


And they both like to camp out under the tree. In this case only one cat was being cooperative so Dory gets all the limelight on this go around. :)


Of course, they also like batting at the ornaments which means strategic placement of all fluffy/non breakable ornaments so if they bat at something, they bat at those.

Here's to the Christmas season!!

IT SNOWED!

Like an excited 5 year old, I was thrilled at the sight of snow this morning and even woke up Rob to share this news. I am sure he was just as excited as I was, but wasn't awake enough to relay that enthusiasm. It's the first real snowfall of the season and how appropriate to be on December 1st. Anywho, it was worth a photo before work because it's already melted, just like it used to in Atlanta.