Almost through with the season, current damage assessment is only four stress headaches and two tanks of gas.  Not bad.  I am certain that everyone is still busy making New Years preparations and taking advantage of the after-Christmas sales, so I will be brief.

Thursday I only had to work a 1/2-day, so we made it to the Brooksider a tad early for a little Christmas Eve cheer.  That bunch down there are quite the pro-Christmas lot; Nearly enough to put one in the spirit of the season.  We stayed an hour or so and then bailed out to make a nice dinner at home.

Christmas day we headed up to the Northlands for Christmas with Donette’s family.  The roads were a little dicey but the ol’ Honda handled pretty well.  I will have to admit one positive for that oversized, gas-guzzling, road-hogging behemoth.  We enjoyed what I guess would be considered a “traditional” Christmas;  Delicious dinner, enjoyed in excess, and a big gift exchange.  I got a nice haul, including one of those sweet flexible keyboards that you can roll up and stick in your laptop bag.  According to the roughly translated directions, I can even use it in the fog!!  Nice!

Saturday we originally had planned to be a bit…  Overextended.  Our calendar included a trip up to my Mom’s for Christmas, and then I was going to make dinner for my Aunt & Uncle from Des Moines.  As it turned out, though, the weather canceled both events.  We did a very little bit of post-Christmas shopping, hit Chipotle for lunch, and then hunkered down in the house for the rest of the day.  Since we already had a rib roast in the ‘fridge for dinner, we went ahead and cooked it up for dinner.  The Martins came down to help us eat it, and then we spent the rest of night playing some Wii.  (Of note, I had a perfect game going in bowling through the 8th frame, then fell apart under pressure.)  The rib roast???  Well, I’m glad it was “just” the Martins over for dinner.  It was OK but I overcooked it a bit.  According to the wife I shouldn’t have used the “convection” setting on the oven;  Oops.

Sunday the roads had cleared enough to make the trek to Mom’s, so we headed down there for lunch.  More food, more gifts, more Christmas!  We got more nice gifts and had more delicious “Christmas food,” including possibly the hottest cheese on the planet.  Of course I had to just keep eating it, sweating all over the place like I was going to pass out.  But it was good!  After that we ventured out for more shopping.  I wanted to use my Christmas money on a new game console, but good ol’ Costco let me down.  They didn’t have anything I wanted.  Quite possibly the first time I just couldn’t find anything to spend my money on at Costco.  We left empty handed and headed to 75th Street for a little dinner, then went home and watched football for the rest of the evening.