Isn’t it funny how Christmas sneaks up on you? I remember as a kid waiting and waiting until Christmas finally came… and of course I couldn’t sleep at all the night before. Nowadays it seems to come up really fast… Well, I hope everyone had a Merry Christmas (we certainly did). We started off our celebration in Detroit on Christmas Eve. Awhile back, when the Lions looked like they might do pretty good this season, we picked up a couple of tickets for the Lions-Bears game… row 6, lower section, man those seats were awesome! The trip getting there was definetly an adventure. We set out with our Mapquest directions in hand and a printout of a map that had places marked as to where we could park. On the way I figured it’d be a good idea not to fill up in Detroit and decided to make a gas stop 45 minutes outside of Flint. We pull into a BP and I start filling up the car when I notice there’s a sign in the window, “Cigars, Cigerettes, Blunts”, not your typicaly gas station sign. I went in to get a couple pops and thought I picked a real winner of a gas station since there was bullet proof glass around the cashier’s counter. As I quickly got back in the car, I mentioned the sign to Susan, she glanced at it and we laughed about that for awhile. We finally get into Detroit (where people drive like they’re crazy), took our exit, and drove by Ford Field. It was time to find a place to park, there were a couple places with signs, “Parking $60” “Parking $50” that seemed kind of pricey. We drove around and somehow found ourselves north of Ford Field. We actually could have gotten back on I-75 going south to take the same exit we took 10 minutes earlier, but my navigator didn’t like that idea. So, we ended up going down a dead end street, I recognized this as a dead end, as there was a sign that said “No Outlet”. I also realized we wouldn’t be able to turn around once we got to the end (cars were parked on both sides of the road and there was just enough room to drive down the middle of the road), but my navigator insisted there might be parking at the end, so away we went. Sure enough it dead ended and there wasn’t much room to turn around. Well, there was a small dirt hump ahead of us and a street, so what did we do… a little bahaing. Luckily there wasn’t much of a curb where we drove up, over and back down again. We pulled up to an intersection (I think we might have actually been going the wrong way on a one way… oops!) Then this guy comes over, asking if we want to park for 20 bucks. Well considering the other parking areas less than $20 looked pretty sketchy we decided to park there. We paid the man, reversed in the middle of the road (because I passed the entrance) and were finally at Ford Field. It took awhile to get to our seats, they were so far down… but it was worth it. As we sat down, we noticed there was not a Lions fan around us (sweet… Bears section). I was disappointed, I mentioned to Susan, who am I going to high-five when the Lions do something great. She gave me a look and said high-fiving wasn’t cool (that’s what she thought…) Eventually a couple Lions fans came in and sure enough the high-fives were going around when the Lions did something amazing (Susan even got into it… she even complained at the end of the game that we weren’t really in the high-fiving group, sometimes the people in front of us didn’t turn around…) The game was awesome, the Lions were holding their own against a first place team. The last few seconds were really intense as the Lions were driving with a couple minutes on the clock. When they got to the 25 yard line (right in front of us), there was about eight seconds left on the clock (4th and 2, no time outs left). Kitna snaps the ball, he’s in trouble, he manages to break free, pressures coming, he’s scrambling, finally an oppurtunity presents itself, Kitna passes, it’s caught in the endzone, Lions wi… doh he landed out of bounds! So they lost by five points, oh well it was still a good game… It sounds like we’ll be going to a game next year (as long as Susan has a Mike Furrey jersey, #87… and yeah I got her to wear some Lions gear to the game 😉 ).

We got back into Midland around 7:00 PM, I know this becaues we wanted to pick up a few things from the grocery store for Christmas Day dinner. Well, all the grocery stores closed at or before seven (even Wal-mart…) We did managed to get into Meijer as they were closing, but they didn’t have any ground pork left (which is something we needed). We managed to find some food around the house to eat and decided to have our fancy Christmas dinner on Friday. We each opened a present before going to bed (it’s tradition), I opened one from my folks and it was a beef jerky maker. After I opened it, I told Susan, “I bet you any money that’s a dehydrator.” (pointing to the big box that had both our names on it, also from my parents). As you can see on the Picture of the Day page, we had quite a few presents. We didn’t get up super early (6:00 AM) to open them though (as kids we use to get up and wait until six before we woke our parents up to open presents…) Low and behold we did get a dehydrator (and I’ll be making some venison jerky with that this week). After opening all our gifts we were happy with what we got. I had to talk to the big man himself (Santa) to get a hat and glove set like the one Susan use to have (the hat had gone missing and we couldn’t find it anywhere, Susan was pretty bummed out… we couldn’t even find any on the internet). I think she was pretty excited when she opened that gift. Scout must have been a really good kitty as she got a ton of new toys. Since she has a tendency to lose her toys, we decided we’d put most of them in her cat carrier and leave a few out she could play with. We went back upstairs, to our presents, and after we were up there awhile, I noticed Scout wasn’t meowing at the door, like she usually does when we are in the computer room. I ended up going downstairs for something and wouldn’t you know she had every single toy out and was running all over the house just as happy as could be. We decided to shut the door to her carrier so she couldn’t get to all the toys in it. Every now and then she’ll sit in front of the carrier looking in at all those toys… We also got her a new laser pointer and boy she was excited for that too, she was literally running up the walls (trying to catch that little red dot…)

Figuring to save a buck or two, we thought we could stroll into Target and pick up an artificial tree (a little bigger than the one we had…) There were still quite a few left and we had saw one a couple weeks before that we both decided we wanted to get (too bad we couldn’t remember the display number or the type of tree, as they didn’t have the display up anymore.) I somehow ended up opening three different boxes (these things were taped shut) to find out if the needles looked real enough… they didn’t so we ended up not getting a tree (they were 50% off too!) That was pretty exciting, then we went over to Wal-mart to pick up groceries for the week. It was only slightly busy, luckily we didn’t run over any unsuspecting pedestrians or hit any cars that thought blocking the aisles was a good idea… it was close though… 😉

For all of you patiently waiting for an update, here it is! I meant to do this sooner, but unfortunately Zelda was consuming a lot of my time (ok not that unfortunate =P ) and I’ve been busy with Christmas stuff too (like surprises for the wifey!) The first of these was to come a couple weeks ago… During mid-November tickets became available for Dow employees (and contractors) for a Ray Charles tribute, “I Can’t Stop Loving You”. I figured this would make an excellent Christmas surprise for Susan and the scheming began. I figured we would go somewhere romantic to eat and head over to the Dow Event Center in Saginaw to watch the show. I made reservations at a place I’ve been to (not ate at, but stopped in for some wine-walk tickets) and was able to book a table next to the fire place (doesn’t get any better than that). Of course I mentioned to Susan to keep her plans open on December 9th and to figure out something dressy to wear… well then the questions came. I played it cool and managed to get her to think we were going to Mount Pleasant, when in all reality we were going to The Atrium in Bay City. During my planning, I remembered way back in June, around Lori’s wedding, Susan had mentioned she really wanted some beach glass earrings. I thought about driving all the way back past the “End of the World” to pick up the earrings she liked, but couldn’t see myself doing that and decided to hit the internet. I found a site that had Lake Erie beach glass jewlery and ordered not only a pair of earrings but a necklace too! Everything was coming together, until Susan comes up to me the day before saying she has to play at 4:30 PM mass on Saturday (sigh… thought I said keep your plans open). So she called the church and said she wouldn’t be able to do it, alright… one bullet dodged. The day has finally come, we start getting ready when Susan realizes she doesn’t have any shoes to match her dress or pantyhose to wear (didn’t I say get something dressy to wear a month a head of time… women…) A quick run (quick so we could make it to dinner on time) to JCPenny to get pantyhose (and shoes while I was waiting ever so patiently in line). The person ahead of me wanted to ship something and the sales associate that should have been helping me was helping her co-worker sort out what the customer wanted (I think we waited 20 minutes before we could actually check out…) The rest of the night went unhitched. We got to the restaurant on time, Susan really liked the beach glass jewelery and we managed to survive going to Saginaw late at night (though the parking ramp guy was kinda scary) and enjoyed a fantastic tribute to Ray Charles. As for the rest of Susan’s presents (she must have been a good girl), she’ll just have to wait and see…

This last weekend was also pretty fun. We went to the DeHate family Christmas party. Boy was it an adventure to get out there. Being internet-savy I decided I’d mapquest the directions. Mapquest marked the path and the maneuvers and I thought we were set. We grabbed the directions and headed on out. We’re doing good until we were suppose to turn right onto old M-30 N. We turned on an old M-30 road but that must have been south because it dead-ended after about a mile. We get back onto M-30 and continued heading north. After about 10 minutes we see the road to turn on for the next step and did so (I still don’t know where old M-30 N is, unless M-30 just changed into it). This is where it gets tricky, the road splits and there is only about 5 or 6 street signs with different names on them and arrows pointing every which way. We took a guess to go right and we guessed wrong, but we did get a nice scenic view of the area (needless to say Mapquest had let me down). Finally we got back on track and managed to miss the turn for their driveway. Luckily no one was on the road and I just backed up and we headed down the driveway (which must have been close to a 1/4 mile long). We got to see my family, eat lots of food, and had a really good time. We got to play the panthose reindeer game. The objective was to blow up balloons (there were all kinds, long balloons, big balloons, and water balloons) and fill the pantyhose with them. The first team that could get the pantyhose on someone’s head and to stand up (like reindeer antlers) and sing Jingle Bells won. Our team was really close… we had the pantyhose full of ballons and standing up but the other group had already started singing. Probably a good thing as I was the one elected to put them on my head (whew…) Susan’s group couldn’t seem to get the balloons in the pantyhose (probably should have had a girl doing it…) There was also a gift exchange at the end that went by birthday (starting after Jesus’s birthday). The presents were laid out on a table and each person got to pick one, according to what day they were born, and open it up. If they didn’t like what they got they could exchange it with anything that had already been open (kind of neat idea). When it got to my turn, I somehow picked out a 6-pack of beer (lucky me… :\ ), though I’m glad I didn’t pick the “man” gift my aunt got. I ended up exchanging the beer for a set of Nascar mugs. Susan must have sniffed out the M&M’s… as she picked out the gift that was almost a pound of M&M’s (she got to keep them). It was a pretty fun-filled occassion. When we were ready to leave, we were of course blocked in… We got the car moved and were on our way. Only one problem… there were enough vehicles there to the point I couldn’t turn around and ended up backing the whole way out the driveway (that was pretty exciting…)

Recently me and Susan decided to apply for grad school at good ol’ Tech. Susan got her acceptance letter yesterday and mine came last week. It doesn’t look like we’ll be getting any funding so that’ll probably be a no go… I finally beat Zelda the other day and man I thought I was going to be disappointed. The boss of the last dungeon was super easy to beat and I thought that was the end of the game, well it wasn’t… there was still one more boss to go and man was he tough (which made it rewarding to beat). I forgot to mention above Susan had made Taffy Apple salad for the Christmas party. Well, it was so good we decided to make it for our work Chirstmas parties (both yesterday). The plan was Susan was going to make it Monday night for both of us to take to work with us on Tuesday. She wasn’t feeling very well and somehow I got the job of making it. Mine didn’t look nearly as good as the one Susan had made earlier, but everyone at Dow Chemical seemed to like it. Dow Corning on the other hand, didn’t seem to appreciate it as much (oh well… I tried…) After work yesterday I decided to try and get some of our packages sent at the UPS store. The line was almost out the door when I got there and I subjected myself to this again today. Though, I didn’t get puked on yesterday (or today) and that made me happy. As I was waiting in line, yesterday, I decided I’d fill out the form indicating I had three packages and where to send them. As I was going up to the counter to get one, I see this milky white liquid spraying to my left. I turn only to see this poor kid throwing up and luckily I was out of the projectile’s path (but just barely…) The poor little guy just kept vomiting and everyone felt bad for him (never thought the UPS store could be so exciting…) I did managed to get 2 out of 4 packages shipped. Your probably thinking that’s not too good, well I forgot to grab one present for the package (they box everything for you) and Susan wrote down the address for the other one to the point where I didn’t know what the road name was… That’s why I went back today and managed to get everything shipped out (without any puking…)

The weekend went by way too quickly. After finally getting out of work on Friday (my job has gotten to be quite boring), I ran a couple of errands and picked up a bottle of champagne for later that evening. After eating I surprised Susan with the bottle… We put in Lake House (pretty decent romance movie, gotta love Keaneu Reeves acting, or lack thereof), snuggled on the couch and sipped champagne in our flutes that we got from Beth and Matthew. It was a nice relaxing night.

Saturday, we got almost all of our Christmas shopping done and had quite the experience with a couple of sales associates at Wal-mart. We printed off three 4×6″ prints at the Kodak printing machine. Written clearly above (I know because I went back and checked) was 28 cents a print. A logical person would think three prints at 28 cents each, a total of 84 cents plus tax (as you might have guessed, logical is a hard concept for Wal-mart to grasp, or simply put, the wheel’s spinning but the hamster’s dead). We took the two slips (yes… two slips, one slip was for two printouts and the other slip for one printout… this is important…) We finished the rest of our shopping and proceeded to the checkout. As per typical Wal-mart there wasn’t a whole lot of checkout lanes opened (hmmm… Christmas season is upon us, let’s have fewer lanes opened!) and we had well over 16 for the express lane. When we finally got to check out, the sales associate greeted us (yes… some don’t and you can actually provide feedback on the credit card swiper machine, but that’s a different story…) She began to swipe our items after which I handed the two slips for our pictures. As she swiped the first I noticed a sale of ten dollars came across the screen. I thought, whoa that seems pricey and sure enough the second slip also came up to ten dollars. At this point I mentioned to the sales associate, “Ten dollars for a 4×6″ print?!” Her face went blank; she shrugged and said “I don’t know”. So I asked again and she went through the same dumbfounded actions. I thought, okay this is getting me nowhere and figured if I wanted something done I better not deal with her. After paying the ridiculous amount of twenty bucks for three pictures, we went over to the service counter (after I ran back and checked the sign…) We showed this other sales associate (after again waiting in line) our receipt that had two (this is where it gets tricky) items labeled ‘PM 4×6″‘ with a price of ten dollars each. We said we had three pictures but only two slips. This sales associate was like I only see two items not three (yes, but this receipt only shows we had two slips, and one slip had two pictures on it…) Sigh, after about ten minutes of trying to convince her we actually did have three pictures (we did show them to her) with two slips (guess the hamster had a jolt or something) we managed to get our money back. An after thought of this occurrence was, gee I could print a thousand pictures get one slip and it’d only cost ten dollars (better try this quick before they fix the machine 😉 ).

Sunday was a pretty fun filled day as well (I know, it ranks just a bit higher than going to Wal-mart and having the fun I mentioned above… just a wee bit of sarcasm). We went to church and as Susan said after choir practice last Monday (she plays her violin in church) St. Anthony’s/St. Joseph’s Parish have a thing for O Come Emmanuel. Just about every song sung had the same music behind it, just different words (even the Alleluia… this is going to be an exciting advent… well I guess it’s better than no music at all). Afterwards we stopped for a bite to eat and headed to Grandma’s house (over the river and through the woods, well sort of). Me and Susan took part in the annual frosting of the sugar cookies and had a pretty good time visiting, frosting, and eating any cookies that were “accidentally” broken (a rules a rule…) We managed to get back just as the third quarter of the Lions-Patriots game ended. Somehow the Lions were keeping up against the once World Champs. Of course if I were the Patriots and I saw the Lions put the 2nd string quarterback in as a wide receiver I wouldn’t know what to think either… I’m not just saying once or twice, but I guess Josh McCown played quite a bit of wide receiver and he did make a couple of catches as strange as that may be… Well after the Lions got a safety I was thinking, oh boy wouldn’t that be something if they win (at this point they were up 18-13). A turnover and another field goal for the Lions (21-13), and I was getting pretty excited. Somehow the Patriots managed to stomp down the field, go for two and tie the game. The Patriots then come up with another touchdown and pull into the lead. After the kickoff the Lions turned the ball over again (this makes the third one this game for them) and I thought eh it’s over now. But somehow they managed to get the ball back again (Patriots now had three turnovers). I look to Susan and say two plays and Jon Kitna throws an interception. Sure enough just like clockwork, two plays and tada an early Christmas present for the Pats… those stupid, stupid Lions. Feeling a little disappointed, I flipped on Zelda (which made the thought of the Lions losing another game by seven points or less go away) and got to play a few hours. I made dinner (lemon chicken, always a favorite) and watched Law & Order and went to bed in anticipation of another exciting week at Dow (doing not much at all…)