Weekend review

My weekend follows below, read on if you are interested.

Friday daytime:
Friday started out like any other day at work, phone calls, emails, crazy people, all par for the course.    Karl came by around noon-ish with a crave case from whit castle, so he, Kendall and I had lunch and talked for a bit.  Most enjoyable.  Then while Karl was still there I got called up to the front desk for another visitor.  It turns out my sister Sharon and her daughter Jessica were in the area so they stopped by for a visit.  I introduced them to Karl and we all talked for a while while Jessica discovered every journal in the library that had Animals on the cover, or cake. 🙂   Smart kid. 🙂  I then took them all over to the Science building and introduced Jessica and Sharon (Karl’s already been there) to the slat water aquarium.  Jessica impressed me quite a bit by rattling off the different types of fish in the aquarium.  Thank you “finding Nemo”…  While we were watching the tank the Dean for the department walked by, so I introduced him to the family and asked him about the few fish our resident expert didn’t know about. After the tank could no longer hold Jessica’s interest everyone said their goodbyes.

Friday Night:

Friday after work I headed up to Gurnee for the gift exchange with our little core group of faire folk.   On the way I made a slight detour to pick up Karl and Gabbi who followed me there.  Once again Karl and I seemed to prove that we share a brain, as we were pretty much synchronized in our driving on the tollway.  While making a wrong turn (the directions didn’t say left or right after getting off the tollway so I guess, and of course guessed wrong) I found myself stopped at a stoplight.  I was wearing a santa hat and of course have my beard. A car pulled up next to me and honked and the woman rolled down her passenger window and pointed.  I rolled my window down too thinking at first there was something wrong. Then I noticed a little girl about 3 years old peeking over the window edge. “Wave to Santa!”, her mother said.  She grinned and waved.    I smiled and waved back, “Merry Christmas”.  We arrived about 20 minutes late to the restaurant, but we not the last to arrive.  There was an issue with the waiter and Chris and Molly, but overall things went well I thought.   Julie had me in the gift exchange and she got me a card game called “Killer Bunnies!” It looks absolutely hilarious and I hope to break it out for the next game day.   I think the gift that got the most usage around the table was the Marie Antoinette action figure with the “ejector head”, what a riot.  Some surprise guest appearances included Lindsay, the twins from Bounding Main and a friend of theirs who’s name escapes me.  I ended up sitting next to Dean and had a nice time catching up with him.  Overall, it was a good evening.  After the gift exchange I headed up to Chris and Molly’s to spend the night so we could hang out Saturday, and then go to a party Saturday night.

Chris and I stayed up until about 1:30 talking and catching up, and that too was enjoyable.

Saturday:

Saturday morning got off to an oddly early start considering how late it was when we went to bed.  Both Chris and I were awake by 7.  After loafing around a bit he and I went off to get breakfast and run a few errands.   We wandered Target and Office Max.  We marveled on how target could have so many door made of fire… “FIRE DOOR” I’m pretty sure they are to repell the invading snowman hordes… 🙂  Yes we were in a silly mood.   After returning to the apartment we picked up Molly and went to pick up some of the things for their wedding.  The invitations looked nice, and Molly got her shoes as well.  Chris and I tried to be as out of the way as possible in the bridal shop, but I did convince Chris to try on a tiara much to Molly’s dismay. 🙂

After the Bridal shop we headed to Brookfield mall to visit Ho Ho HO-T-B AKA Thunderclause.  There was a really long line for him so rather than get in the way Chris and I stood to one side and watched for a while.  When Santa noticed us he pointed us out to a number of kids as his “elves”.  We were “On a secret mission” for him.  It was cute, the kids got all wide eyed as they passed us, and I just smiled and waved.   We did some shopping, ate, hit another mall, did some more shopping and then went back to the apartment so Molly could change for the party.

Saturday Night:

Saturday found me at Stephanie’s curry party with a whole host of other faire folk.   I’m not to close with most of the people that were there but I had a great time anyway. I knew pretty much everyone thought so that made it much less uncomfortable.  And honestly, after about 10 minutes or so I felt completely at ease and just relaxed and had a good time.   The food was excellent, and I think everyone had a good time.  I again worse the Santa hat, I figured I might as well, I have it after all.  I was standing in the kitchen and heard the patter of little feet.  I was spotted by Stephanie’s daughter and again had to take the Santa role. 🙂  Later in the evening I was sitting in a chair and she came up and climbed into my lap.    She sat there and looked up and grinned at me.  It was quite cute.  It’s funny though, my beard isn’t at all white…   Oh, I also got a chance to play some DS while there, mostly Mario Cart.

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