Anything but Silent Night

Last night, we had a great time putting the "fun" in "dysfunctional" at the Fosters' holiday party. Their house was decked to the nines in Christmas cheer, including a gorgeous tree, hundreds of lights and a variety of cheery (and sometimes eerie) elves and Santas. The food and drink were plentiful and delicious, the fire was roaring, and the music was festive.

At some point (after the children left), the atmosphere shifted from "family festive" to "costumed madness". Various props, such as a mountain bike and swords, appeared. The music transitioned from Bing Crosby to Alice In Chains. Elf hats were abandoned in favor of sheikhs' robes. It all came to a head (bang) as the guys displayed their 90's heavy metal talents. Eventually, they tired themselves out and started disappearing downstairs to watch ski movies.

While all of this was going on, the ladies were enjoying wine and conversation around the fireplace. How civilized!

I'll let the pictures fill in the details. Remember, you can view their captions by mousing over them.

Stevens? Pass!

Chris made plans with Mark to ski at Stevens on Saturday. He asked if I wanted to come, but I wasn't very enthusiastic about going to Stevens again. I told him that I'd rather just stick around Seattle and take care of last-minute holiday errands. That was on Friday afternoon.

Friday night (at Mike & Jen's going-away gathering), Meg mentioned that a group was going to Crystal the next day. She asked if I wanted to join them, and of course I said yes! It's not that I didn't want to ski...I just didn't want to ski at Stevens.

So on Saturday morning, Chris headed north while I headed south. Meg and I met up with the whole crew and caravaned down to Crystal for a day of fast groomers and decent snow. It was hard to get a lot of runs in with such a big crowd, but we had a good day on the hill and got to spend some time catching up on the drive.

Keep on Truckee-ng

Mike and Jen have decided to make me insanely jealous by moving to Truckee, CA. (Yep, I'm positive that's the only reason they picked Truckee.) A group of us met up at Norm's in Fremont to wish them off before they hit the road. Chris spent a lot of the evening expounding on why he'd never live in California while I wistfully pined (pone?) away for the Golden State. Needless to say, Mike & Jen should expect at least one of the Hills to take them up on their offer to visit...


By the way, I know it's pined and not pone...but pone just sounded better to me. "I pone for the times when I was wone and done every night."

Parker turns 30

Aran Parker went over the hill today (well, not "today" as I'm writing this, but "today" as I plan to pre-date this post). To help him celebrate, his girlfriend Kirsten arranged for us all to surprise him at the K&K. What better place to celebrate a birthday than at an Australian bar with cricket playing on TV? Well, Aran is an Aussie, so I guess he can appreciate cricket in a way that I can't...

Lesson learned

Don't go grocery shopping the evening before the biggest windstorm of the year, because you will end up having to throw most of it away after your power (and thus refrigerator) goes out for 18 hours.

However, be thankful that you decided to take down the unstable giant of a tree in the backyard before the big windstorm.

People often mistake me for Chuck Norris

At least we got one Asian in there (Chiang Kai-shek), even if it is one who imposed a repressive, authoritarian, single-party state -- consisting almost entirely of non-Taiwanese mainlanders -- on Taiwan. And even if it is a man. Apparently, I'm rather androgynous.

Note: I did run several photos through and got more standard (and female) matches, but this set was the funniest by far. Also, when I ran photos of Chris, Fabio was always one of his matches...

Jingle Bell Fun

This morning I ran in the Jingle Bell 5K with Katherine and David. We formed a team for the Java Gym Fitness Bowl, which is a fitness competition based on college football. Each team of 3 represents a college team (we are the Kansas State Wildcats), and we are pitted against other teams every week. We earn points by working out, and the biggest way to rack up points is to participate in a fitness event (such as the Jingle Bell Run) together -- that's worth a touchdown each! So this morning, we got up early to earn our Jingle Bell touchdowns. It was a great run -- 10,000+ participants, perfect running weather, lots of bells.

When I got home, I tried to encourage Cowboy to share in my holiday cheer by wearing my reindeer antlers. He wasn't really into it. Since I can't seem to get him to happily wear holiday gear, I thought I'd give it a "virtual" try.

Krispy's blog (see link at right) pointed me to a site where one can "elfify" oneself. I really enjoyed watching Krispy-the-Elf dance around (who knew that Elf Krispy and Real Krispy have the exact same dance moves?) and thought that Cowboy would make a pretty good elf too. He can be Krispy's sidekick. Click on the picture below to watch CowElf dance!

Thanks for the link, Krispy-oh-Krispy-oh-baby (buh-dum-bum-bum).