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…)