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Saturday

Saturday I spent basically the whole day getting ready for Fools Play, by making/wrapping gifts for my fellow Fools and my favorite audience members. While Carrie was out doing some last-minute shopping, I painted three new paintings:

<INSERT PICTURES>

I thought it would take me until, you know, noon or 1:00 to finish them, but I weren't finished until after 3:00.

At that point we thought that Susan's boyfriend and his daughter were gonna be in Texas during Christmas, visiting an aunt or something. But we then learned that they weren't able to make their stand-by flight, and so they were planning on being at my folks' place for Christmas! So Carrie & I went to Cost Plus World market so I could grab up some shotglasses for Jason (and so Carrie could get some last-minute stocking stuffers).

Instead of etching the shotglasses when I got home, though, I worked on the six juice glasses I was etching for me granmaw.

Then it was off to Fools Play for me! It was Santa's Lap, one of the more fun formats for the audience, because after every scene an audience member gets a prize, and another one gets to sit on one of our laps and ask for a gift. And then at the end of the show there's a spectacular, half-hour-long section where many, many of the recurring characters come out and sing carols. My favorites are when Pete & Bob sing "O Holy Night" (or "O Holy Blom" as Bob sings it), and Professor Horace & Cecil's rendition of the Chipmunk Christmas Song. There were many, many others, of course, and we ended with several FPRL people singing "Do You Hear What I Hear" while having a series of wrestling matches. Really, really good times.

After the show I handed out presents to everybody for whom I brought presents (including Brandy, who showed up just after the show ended; I had a feeling she might, so I brought along the present we were gonna give to her on Early Christmas). I got a couple in return, including some cloudy sake and cookies from Sandy, and this enormous, hand-sewn pillow from Leah!

<INSERT PILLOW PIC HERE>

Everybody was really, really dawdling, and I didn't want to be out too late, so I went off to the restaurant and gave my presents to the people who slipped away before I could catch them at the theater. In return I got some yummy chocolates (and a pencil) from Tia & Cupcakeface. I ordered some cheese tots to go and ended up leaving right after everybody else from the theater arrived.

I got home and worked on Jason's shotglasses before hitting the proverbial hay.

Sunday (Christmas Eve)

In the morning I finished working on Jason's shotglasses, and then we met them and my family at Diamond Jim's in Federal Way for my family's traditional Christmas Eve Breakfast/Brunch out at a diner. Carrie & I both had the really excellent stuffed French toast (stuffed with ham and swiss cheese), while most everybody else got the #2 or #3.

When we first walked into the restaurant (we were the last to arrive) we were standing around for almost a full minute before Alexis saw us, and she gasped in delight and jumped up and threw her arms around Carrie. It was very, very cute.

Breakfast was a lot of crazy fun, as always whenever you get my whole family together.

We came home and straightened the house some, but then got a phone call from Linnea saying that they had some sorta stomach flu (this would feature prominently on Christmas as well; read on) and so couldn't come over in the afternoon and exchange gifts as planned. So Carrie & I had more leisurely time to finalize all of our gifts and wrappings and stocking stuffers and whatnot. I feel like something else happened during the afternoon, but I can't rightly recall now.

At 5:00 we headed to Mark & Viki's for their traditional Quebequois Christmas Eve dinner. It was basically the same menu as Last Year, which is A-OK with us! Delicious as always. We brought a cheese ball with us for the hors-d'ouvre table, and Nancy & Brian had their new-ish (seven months?) baby with them. It was the calmest, most docile baby I'd seen in a long, long time. It didn't even cry at the sight of me like most babies do at first! In fact, she actually let me hold her without even a fuss. I swear, a burglar could break into their house and ransack the whole place and she wouldn't make a fuss. The opposite of colic.

After dinner we went to Carrie's folks' house to stuff the stockings. As usual, there were about three times as many fully-wrapped stocking stuffers as there was room in the stocking.

Finally, after all that it was home, where Carrie & I exchanged gifts. Carrie gave me some nice new cargo pants; I gave her 'Twas the Night Before Christmas on DVD. It's her favorite Christmas special, but they hardly ever play it on TeleVision anymore, and when they do they edit out an entire song. So here it was, uncut and without commercial break!

Monday: Christmas

Christmas morning Carrie & I headed on over to my folks' place at 9:00 in the AM so we could (in this order) open stockings, have breakfast, then open presents. Bad news of bad news was that Susan had a horrible, vomitous stomach flu and did not think she would be able to make it, and therefore neither would Jason & Alexis (Carrie's very sympathetic response to his news: "It's Christmas; suck it up!"). We were unfortunately forced to plunge ahead without them.

Breakfast was the traditional Harris Family breakfast: Scrambled eggs, Mandarin oranges, li'l smokies, and orange rolls. We ate and ate and ate, especially Mike, who ate more li'l smokies than most of the rest of us combined. Man, what a great combination of breakfast foodstuffs.

Then it was prezzy time! The way it works in my family is that a present is given to each person there, then each person takes turns opening the present. These rounds continue until there are no more presents. It usually works out that all of one person's gifts are given out at once, i.e. in one round Mike will pass out the gifts that he got for everybody, then the next round Susan will, etc.

I got some cool stuff, including Mega Man ZX and TransFomers Season 2 Part 2. I also got a Hello Kitty waffle maker, which is extremely cute. Cute to the X-Treme! The coolest thing of all, though, was a new Nintendo wallet. Carrie got Project Runway Season 2, Stick It, and a new flax seed pillow (made personally by yours truly).

<INSERT PIC OF NES WALLET>

At 11:30 we trundled over to my grandma's place for her portion of the day, where I received some Batman comics (the ones based on the animated series).

Then at 1:00 it was off to Carrie's folks' house for their segment of the day. It began, as per usual, with opening of the ungodly number of stocking stuffers. I received one INCREDIBLE stocking stuffer from Carrie. I can't actually believe it's a stocking stuffer:

<INSERT PICS OF STOCKING STUFFER>

After the stockings was the exhausting process of opening the gifts. In this house, one person hands out one gift to each of the other people there, and then one to himself/herself. Then everyone opens their presents simultaneously and then shows them off to each other. There were many, many more rounds at Carrie's folks' house than there were at my folks' house, but it always ends up that way. And this was actually a smaller Christmas than last year!

Anyways, I ended up with more really cool things, including tonnes of geeky video game T-shirts, the complete Adventures Brisco County on DVD, and Yoshi's Island DS.

Carrie got a tonne of stuff as well, including Tetris DS (from me!).

After that I was very, very exhausted, so I took a nap in the later afternoon for an hour or two while the rest of the family played the card game "fascination." It took my entire nap for them to finish.

Around 6:00 was a very excellent dinner of goose, parmesan mashed potatoes, broccoli casserole, frozen cranberry salad, and Gulliver's corn (which I did not eat).

After dinner there was another card game, this one of Skip-Bo. I participated in this one (in fact I dealt), and came within two cards of actually winning it. By the time that game was done everyone said it felt like it was practically midnight, even though I don't think it was even 8:00 yet. The day had just been a marathon up to that point. But we decided to call it a night, not least of all because I was beginning to feel a cold coming on something fierce.

So we packed up all of the gifts from that house (so many bags) and headed exhaustedly on home, where we just lined the front of the fireplace with our un-packed gifts before going to bed.

Labels: Fools Play, Life, Pictures

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Trevor:

A framed Robot & Bird #3 (me)

A T-shirt with pictures of Mario through the years, from Donkey Kong all the way to Super Smash Bros. Brawl (Carrie)

A T-shirt with a World of Warcraft joke on it: "Level ?? Humanoid" (Melissa & Travis)

Julian:

A framed Robot & Bird #2 (me)

A 1-Up Mushroom T-shirt (Carrie)

A World of Warcraft Shirt: "Home is where the Hearthstone is" (Melissa & Travis)

Sophia:

A shirt and skirt outfite (me & Carrie)

?? (Melissa & Travis)

Mark:

A Cheese Ball with Crackers (Carrie)

A six-pack of Stella Artois beer & two Artois glasses (me)

Fancy caramels (Melissa & Travis)

Viki:

A necklace and some mega-hoop earrings (Carrie & me)

Two fancy coffee-table books about fancy & expensive shoes (Melissa & Travis)

Carrie:

A Julia Sweeny CD thing (Melissa & Travis).

Me:

A $20 gift certificate to a pop-culture store in here Tacoma that I'd never heard of, but is apparently right up my alley (Melissa & Travis)

Carrie & Me together:

A gift certificate for three 4-hour cleaning visits from a maid service (Mark & Viki).

Whew! I think that's it.

I also brought a present for Brandy, because she was originally supposed to join us all. But she got an extension on her final, so instead of staying up all night after the Christmas party she decided to sleep and then do her final the next day (yesterday). Much more sensible on her part. We'll have to give her present to her some other time (I'm sure there'll be opportunities).

It was nearly midnight by the time we got back home. We were both exhausted and I had the beginnings of a massive headache, so I took some Tylenol and read in bed (the reading actually helped distract me from the pain). After the headache went down some (after about an hour) I played a little Animal Crossing and fell asleep.

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In the north Atlantic there was an island so remote that it had never even heard of Christmas. It was ruled by an evil Miser who lived in a manor on the edge of a volcano. He was superstitious and lacked common sense (as did everyone who lived on the island). Fearful that the volcano might some day erupt and destroy his manor (as well as the town below at which the volcano was aimed), the Miser had his Chief of Police (unfortunately named "Phallus") collect everything pretty in the town and throw it in the volcano to appease it. Therefore the town was a very drab place.

One day a fisherman from this drab island caught something strange: a magic fish that could turn anything into valuable and beautiful gems and precious metals. Realizing that he couldn't take the Fish back to the Drab Island (for the Fish was so splendid that it would be thrown in the volcano right away), the Fisherman rowed away to parts unknown.

The Fisherman soon came upon the home island of the Fish, where it could talk and sprout legs. They realized they had to somehow stop the Miser from destroying everything beautiful, and they decided to set off to find some help. They rowed into the Forbidden Fog and got quickly lost.

Soon they stumbled upon an island populated by boring, nerdy scientists, who believed in reason. Realizing that his people had no ability to reason (why else would they think throwing stuff in a volcano would keep it from erupting?), the Fisherman and the Fish gathered Dexter Clayton III and they decided to go back to Drab Island, where Dexter's reason would conquer the Miser's superstition.

However, since they had to pass through the Forbidden Fog they got lost again and ended up at the North Pole. It was so beautiful there that the Fish's ability to make things prettier didn't work; there was no way to make it any prettier! Dexter Clayton III stumbled upon Santa's workshop. Santa was surprised to see anybody because it was still 10 months until Christmas. Dexter explained the predicament, and after inspiring Dexter with the Christmas spirit, Santa gave him, the Fisherman, and the Fish a sleigh ride back to Drab Island.

Meanwhile the Miser and Phallus had run out of pretty things to throw in the volcano. Miser realized that the island was still covered in trees, and they were pretty, so they proceeded to chop them all down and throw them in the volcano. All of the trees except for one, that is. There was one tree near the center of the island whose trunk was so thick that there existed no saw long enough to cut through it. The Miser decided to use explosives to fell the tree, but he and Phallus had so little common sense that they kept on exploding the bombs early, damaging only themselves and not the giant tree.

Just then Santa dropped our three heroes off at the island. Dexter Clayton III realized that he could use all those explosives to make a breach into the volcano's magma reservoir, so that when it did erupt all of the lava would spew harmlessly out to see instead of all over the island. He and the Fish stole the explosives and did just that. When the Miser saw that his manor and island were saved by reason, Dexter was able to convert him away from superstition and over to the side of reason.

The Fish then made the giant tree to be covered in gems and baubles and beautiful things. And then in turn the Fish made the entire island just as splendid to behold. It was so beautiful that the islanders decided to decorate their island just like that once every year. Since Santa was the one who delivered Dexter, the Fisherman, and the Fish to the Island, they decided to decorate every Christmas in his honor. Also, they ate the Fish because it was being really annoying and kept randomly turning people's body parts into heavy metals.

Then every year the islanders would go to another island and teach them how to decorate for Christmas. And that island in turn would tell two more island, which would each tell two more islands, and so on until the whole world knew how to decorate for Christmas

When I type it out like that, it sounds frighteningly accurate to a real Rankin/Bass special. Except for the Police Chief being named Phallus. And them eating the fish at the end.

Then Mike did an Island of Misfit Toys bit, which are always rather funny. This is when Geoff showed up from his Nutcracker performance. I briefed him on the second special and he performed in it. It was a cautionary tale about how you should beware of the other holidays that happen around the same time as Christmas. This one was about watching out for Solstice:

A very Christian father tells his increasingly homosexual son about Solstice: A long time ago, the moon didn't wax and wane as it does now. It was always full.

Since only idiots don't worship Jesus, a whole bunch of them banded together to form a Council of Idiots to decide what to worship instead, and they eventually settled on worshiping the moon. A Roman Centurion overheard them, and ran and told Yum-Yum the Christian-Eating lion. If these idiots succeeded in converting people to their pagan worship of the moon, then there would be no more Christians for the lion to eat! So the lion set out to stop them.

The idiots made their way to the moon by way of a tube, though exactly how was never really explained. They asked permission from the moon to live on it and worship it, and it said that'd be okay. They were idiots, though, and they were worried that Yum-Yum might find them, so they asked the moon if it could disappear. Slowly, in phases. Also, they convinced it to hide behind the earth on the longest day of the year so it would be hidden for the longest possible time.

Yum-Yum noticed the moon slowly disappearing and made his way to the moon via the tube (somehow), and attacked the pagan idiots there. Being idiots, they all threw themselves in Yum-Yum's mouth. But since Yum-Yum was a Christian-eating lion, the pagan idiots were like poison to him, and he vomited them up and was defeated.

And that's why pagans celebrate solstice, in remembrance of when a bunch of idiots defeated a lion on the moon during the longest day of the year. And six months later the shortest day of the year happened, and since they were idiots they celebrated then.

Whoo! That one was not at all like a real Rankin/Bass special, but it was very, very funny. At one point the Father and his Son sing this song:

When a fork touches a spoon down there
It gets embarrassed
And that's what we call
Buffoonery soup!

Good times. Afterwards we all went out to Rib Eye as usual. Some people were saying they still didn't have power, like Leia & Kedar.

Since Taisha isn't going to be at the show next weekend, I gave her her Christmas gift early. I gave her a Ghostie Pint Glass. She lubbed it! She gave me one of those Kinder Eggs. It had a samurai monkey inside. Tiare also gave me a gift, a light-switch frame with raw chickens doing Olympic sports, and a couple of cool magnets.

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HOLY FUCKING SHIT (pardon my French)

OUR OWN HOUSE

CHRISTOPHER GRANT HARRIS: HOMEOWNER

Oh, and also, just a few days ago my printer died. Y'know, the printer that I need to do ALL of my business stuff? As well as print out earring card and tags for ALL of Carrie's jewelry stuff? Yeah. Phut. Broken. So I bought another one for $65 that I really shouldn't have been spending, considering we're buying a $200,000 house. But I can write the new printer off as a business expense come tax time, so it'll work out.

Oh, and Carrie and Lisa also did TideFest last weekend (my stuff wasn't deemed good enough to get me in), and a woman there was very impressed with their jewelry. She also happened to be the owner of Red, a cute little shop in Gig Harbor. So now you can find Carrie & Lisa's jewelry for sale at that shop.

Whew! I think that's about it. I have a few glasses to etch for gifts/orders and some other Christmas gifts to gather (Carrie & I are doing a much smaller Christmas this year due to budgetary reasons), but since we signed the Purchase & Sale agreement yesterday, things are going to slow down quite a bit for me personally. I might actually have time to hang out with people again! I'm going to Tia's birthday party on Friday, so I'll see some of you there, no doubt.