04 January 2011

Christmas Week 2010

Monday night after work I went out with Frank and Joe to DJ's Dugout to watch the Bears play the Vikings on Monday Night Football. The Bears won, and got themselves into the playoffs. I still find it difficult to believe that the best team in the NFC, the Packers, may not make the playoffs. You have to win your football games. Not only did the Bears win, but there may have been some Keno money won too.

After I got home I decided to stay up for the eclipse on a clear, cool night. I was rewarded with some pretty amazing shots. The only problem was the lack of sleep on Tuesday and a bit of confusion about how to geotag the pictures.

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You can see the rest of my pictures of the eclipse here. I can't believe people who could see it didn't stay up to see it. It was the first lunar eclipse on the winter solstice since 1638.

Tuesday was a food day at work, but despite having my face jammed with food, I went out to lunch with Kimee at Runza, she got food but I didn't. We talked, I know that Shannon has moved on and has a fiancee, but I miss Kimee, Kamber, and the littles. I think it'll probably be too hard to keep the littles in my life, but hopefully Kimee for sure, and hopefully Kam and I can hang out on occasion. After work, I came home and went to sleep.

Wednesday we had a large group and were going to go to (the stupidly named) Indulgence Lounge for a jazz night. When Brianne got there no Jazz, they canceled for Christmas. So we resourcefully moved to our house, and played Dance Central on the XBox 360/Kinect for about three hours. We even got Jillian up and trying it. That just makes me smile.

Thursday I went to Best Buy after work to get myself a replacement flash drive. I came home and worked for two hours to transfer the data from the back up ... unsuccessfully.

Friday I had off for Christmas Eve, I started playing Borderlands on the xBox all over again. Soon afterwards I started driving all over to run last minute errands. I probably put 120 miles on my car. I played some more video games after my errands. I got a short nap in before heading over to a Mass Chaos version of midnight Mass. After Mass we went to IHOP on north 72nd street until 0400. It was a hoot.

Saturday I went to Christmas dinner at Vivian's during the afternoon. We did the traditional stockings, but not the traditional cutthroat solitaire. It was really fun.

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It was a rough dinner, I had to go catch my meal before I came in.

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Don't ask why we are wearing crowns. Photo credit: Matt

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I don't know why Diggy decided my shoulder would be a good place to hang out. Photo credit: Matt

You can see the rest of my pictures here. Matt had some Christmas pictures too, they are here (the set includes other events). After I left Donna and Jack's house I went up to CJ's house for his Christmas party. There was plenty of left over food, and games to be played. We played Betrayal at House on the Hill, Ben betrayed us, but we prevailed. I like that game a lot, but we hardly ever get through the haunt without a misinterpretation of the rules.

Sunday was the first Sunday off from Mass Chaos in a while, so I was going to watch the Bears play at noon and then go to Mass at Saint Mary's in Bellevue. Then my friend Marilou mentioned that there was a Mass at the Holy Family Shrine (on Holy Family Sunday) being celebrated with Archbishop Lucas. Cool, so we met out at my work, and with her friend we carpooled out to the Shrine and arrived just in time after some exciting driving.

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You can see the rest of my pictures of the shrine here. Afterwards we got some lunch at Mama's Pizza (on Saddle Creek). I hadn't been there since I moved out of the neighborhood and to Papillion. Later, when I got home, I saw that VK had organized a skating party at the ConAgra rink. I rushed (meaning drove safely) downtown to skate, which we did for a couple hours, eventually ending up at Golden Palace on Dodge for dinner. P.S. the Bears won!

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