Santa, will being teleported to our doom be fun and christmasy?

Yep, Christmas is almost here, less than a week away even. At this point I find myself trying to avoid going anywhere, seeing anyone or anything involving me being exposed to the holiday chaos. Since we have moved into our new house, we have had a total of zero unexpected visitors. We usually spend our evenings doing things (typically homework) in the piece and quiet of an empty house. That streak was ended last night in terrible ways. The first interruption came in the form one of the bishopric extending a calling to Nikki. She, being an optimistic person and always willing to help, quietly accepted her doom in primary (yea primary, the same place we’ve served since we were married and one of the causes of our unwillingness to engage in baby making!). Actually, I was quite surprised that he didn’t call me to something as well. So Mr. Dude-man leaves and it’s quiet and nice again….. until Nikki gets a look on her face like she’s forgotten something rather important. Apparently we were supposed to do our Tithing settlement last Sunday. However weather and traffic saw to it that we not only didn’t make it there on time, but completely forgot about it as well. So we ran over to the church and were able to squeeze right in due to a gap in appointments. This was the first time either of us had met our bishop, and it was rather a pleasant experience. He’s a very easy person to talk to and actually caries on a conversation at normal speed. He seems very down to earth and speaks very straight forward as Nikki was about to find out. Apparently word had gotten back to him (keep in mind this is within about 10 minutes of her getting her calling) that she was… less than excited to be called into the primary. The bishop came right out and said it to her. “So I hear you’re not very excited to be called to primary” he said in a very light hearted and respectful manner. “I’m not NOT excited to be in primary. It’s just that we’ve been there for 4 years now” she replied. She said she’s happy to serve in whatever calling she’s needed in and thus condemned herself to 10 year olds (though I’d estimate that is about the maturity level I have aspired to by now, so she should feel right at home). After this little exchange he looked at me, who was happily stuffing myself with the candy he’d offered (that’s right. CANDY IS DELICIOUS!!!). I gulped down taffy as he asked where my interests were in relation to a calling. That’s when I told him I felt that a calling right now would work, but when school started back up it’d be a problem. Thus the meeting ended and we were good to go. About 20 minutes after getting home, the doorbell rang again. This time it was the OTHER councilor who then requested that we speak in church. I guess we were on the hit list for that evening. I figure speaking in church is acceptable in place of a calling, especially right now where I can afford to put some effort into a talk. Meanwhile, Christmas draws slowly closer like a massive slow moving storm. It’s entertaining to watch everyone prepare at the last minute while you sit comfortably behind the walls or your “I-finished-early” fortress. Anywho, to those of you who haven’t yet finished, I send a loving wave of mockery in your direction. If you must travel, do so cautiously. Stay safe and have a great Holiday!!!

Share the road? USE THE SIDEWALK!

Well it’s done. I’m officially done with my finals. Now on to bigger and better things, namely more classes that’ll inevitable have more finals. Anyway, at least I get a few weeks off to catch up on some other things. So I assume everyone has heard that we’re having a Wintereenmas LAN party on Saturday the 16^th. I think it’ll be a lot of fun. So we had our company party a while ago and it was great. But the fun doesn’t stop there, because apparently the R&D group has an annual Christmas party as well. This is of course much smaller, involving only about 20 people of which I am one. Anyway, it was a pot luck function so the food sucked, and they also did a white elephant gift exchange. Normally I am not a big fan of the white elephant game because all the stuff is crap, but in this case they specifically mentioned to bring gifts that you’d like to be getting with a $10 limit so I was actually looking forward to it. Well, as we all draw numbers I end up with #4. So my turn comes and I open up a 14.5 Volt cordless drill, it was just a Harbor Freight cheapie but still. I had it a total of about 14 seconds before it was stolen. After seeing some of the gifts I was getting kind of excited because they were nice things. So after I had my gift stolen I got to open a new one. It was a Hollywood Video gift certificate and popcorn, and I HATE popcorn! Well no one even looked twice at my gift because everything else was so much more betterester. So after the game ended I gave away the popcorn and kept the gift certificate. Also, our HR dude found out that we were having a party and donated 3 envelopes that we could draw for in what ever means we wanted. So we had a passer by write 3 random numbers on the enveloped and drew for them. Somehow I managed to draw one of the winning numbers. I watched as someone opened the first envelope which contained a $25 gift certificate to the University Mall. The second contained the same thing. When I opened mine all I found was a piece of paper that said Merry Christmas and had obviously been written in haste. It sucked. Anyway, that is about as eventful as life has been lately. Certainly it’ll become more exciting as I start preparing my truck this weekend. I plan on taking many pictures and may actually post a few on the Wiki or even right here on everyone’s favorite site…. to poop on (a little exert from Comic the insult dog there). I’m sure this is just fascinating, much like watching a Lion on the Discovery channel devour a Wildebeest, gruesome but you can’t look away. Suffice it to say that I am glad to be done with finals, my grades should be acceptable and if you’ll excuse me I’m going to go remove my brain for storage until the weekend is over.