Doug and Geoff went out and got our Christmas Tree last night. Normally we go up to Byfield to Pearsons Hardware and Deer Farm off I-95. They have a bazillion trees for sale at a really reasonable price. But they closed at 5pm, and Doug and Geoff got there at 6pm. Who closes at 5pm on what could be the biggest weekend of the cut down tree buying year!?
So Doug was on his way home and passed a roadside sale by the Jaycees, and figured he'd stop in. They had 20 trees left, out of over 400, and he scored a nice one for 20 bucks. Earlier in the week the sign said 35 dollars.
He didn't come home treeless. Which is good. Because I think Geoff's head would explode if they had to come home empty handed.
Geoff is obsessed with calendars, dates and time. Around my birthday he wanted to start decorating for Christmas. I told him that in my little world, Thanksgiving has to be celebrated first, and then after that the Christmas stuff could go up. Well, you know the day after Thanksgiving he's all "when are we getting a tree? Can we put some lights up?" and the nagging continued day after day...
I've said it before, but without the constant Geoff lighting a fire under my assness, I would never get around to doing any decorating at all. I would just leave it until Christmas week. It was obvious when we drove home one night and everyone around us in all directions, including the dentist's office, was lit up for Christmas. And our dark brown house sat in the middle of the lights (all very tasteful and colonial and pretty mind you, nothing wacky...) and it made us look as if we didn't want to participate.
Doug likes the lights IN the house where we can see them. "How often are we outside admiring our own house's lights? I want the lights inside so we can enjoy them where we sit..." So that's what we do. We get strings of little white lights all over the living room and put the tree up and decorate it, and we sit and enjoy.
I had wanted to get a fake tree for the pink room that has little white lights on it and just set it in the corner so it can be seen from the outside, glowing and pretty, in a colonial tasteful way... but Doug doesn't want to waste the money. Maybe next year. Maybe a second tree when we have the brown room all set up (we're looking at furniture and stuff for up in there) to have more formal look in the room. It'll be nice.
Anyway -- that's our tree story. It'll be decked while we watch football, and drink eggnog. And Christmas will finally be underweigh in our house.
Earlier I had mentioned Geoff's calendar and date obsession, how he starts anticipating things weeks in advance and rides the proverbial horse for days until he wears us down by dragging us behind him.
He is equally obsessed on the tail-end of things, when holidays are over. For instance, at school they are reading a book about some haunted town at Halloween time. They started reading it in November, after Halloween was over.
Geoff went ballistic and yelled at me and his teacher, that they cannot read this book because it is Halloween themed and it is not Halloween anymore!!!! She told him that the book came in late from the order, that she'd intended to have them read and report on it earlier, but that it was now there and it didn't matter because it is a good book no matter what date it is.
So he fought her on this and he'd come home crying every day because he didn't want to read a stupid Halloween book at Thanksgiving time. "This book sucks! It is awful! It is a stupid story! I hate it!!!" and he'd just go on and on...
Eventually, as the story got more interesting, like when a creepy hand goes crawling across the room, he got into it and now he likes the book and seems to be enjoying it. But I would almost put money on him writing his book report and having a sentence in there somewhere that says "Even though I had to read this book after Halloween when it was irrelevant..." or something like that.
Equally, Geoff likes him some Egg Nog. We got some egg nog and he'll go nuts drinking egg nog until he gains 15 pounds just from egg nogging. And then, December 26th, no more egg nog is allowed. It's not Christmas anymore.
Last year Doug bought a half gallon of Egg Nog the day before Christmas and Geoff only had three glasses out of it. We tried to get him to drink the rest. After all, he's the one who loves it. And he refused. Because Egg Nog Season is over.
The day after Christmas, he wants to take the tree down. We like to keep it up through Epiphany and even the day after, which is Geoff's birthday. So he nags and nags. But, to be fair, without his constant reminding it would be April by the time I got around to taking the damn thing down. Just like Homer Simpson.
Anyway -- pictures from my company holiday party are up. What is really scary is I posted the exact same amount of pictures this year as last. The yankee swap didn't get nearly as cut-throat as it was last year, but a good time was had by all.
For my swap gift, I bought a bunch of incredibly inappropriate things from a company called Blue Q, and placed them in a wine bottle tube which my girl C had brought in to put a bottle in and put it under the tree. Her bottle of choice wouldn't fit inside her tube, so it was the perfect hiding place for things that were not wine. My company thrives on alcohol gifts. And I knew there would be a lot of booze related things there, so I wanted to go a different route. My stuff fit right into her tube, and I know people would fall for the ruse.
We have this guy who does our produce content for the screen (produce as in fruit and veggie, not produce as in make) and he always wears these Hawaiian shirts.
But I stumbled upon these totally inappropriate things, and thought it would be a lot funnier. And it was. They were a huge hit, especially with this guy. This is the guy. He was all over these candies, and laughed his brains out, and it was awesome. I love that he plays along when I'm retarded and goofy... so cheers. Here's to you JM. You're not a stalker! I'm so relieved.
Last year our friend Mike got this wicked girly candle and he hated on it. This year, he got a gift that someone asked my girl C to pick up for him. We decided to wrap it in about 8 layers of giftwrap... and it was so funny that Mike picked up the gift. The look on his face as he unwrapped a layer, and then saw another layer and then...
My girl C was passing out behind him laughing. It was a real riot.
We all had a good time. It is nice to see the people from our Connecticut office, and from out in the field. For me, in my line of work, I have to interface very infrequently with these folks, so once or twice a year is a ton of fun.
Well, Doug wants to bring the tree in... more later.
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