Xmas seasonings

The past week has been full of holiday events. Last weekend was Jeff's annual Chrismakkuh blowout. I was one of the lightweights that evening as I had curled and imbibed in a few in the afternoon on Saturday before even getting to the party. I crawled into bed at Jeff's house around 3am, only to be violently awoken by Joe stating that Calvin and Doug were heading home and offering us a ride. In a hazy stupor, I collected all of my things, or so I thought, and went home. It wasn't until Sunday that I realized I had left a whole bunch of stuff at Jeff's so Joe and I whipped past his house on our way up to Red Deer.





Joe and I made it up to Red Deer in the late afternoon and visited with my mom, dad and Trezlie while Owen and Chloe went to Chloe's company's Xmas party. We had a lot of good conversation and food -- not so many drinks though, my stomach was saying 'no' to that.

We had our official Xmas dinner when Chloe came home from work in the morning on Monday. After a fantastic meal, we did a quick gift exchange and headed to Costco for a quick shopping stop before Joe and I hopped in the car to head back to Calgary. I was pretty relaxed after that trip and really wanted to take all of Tuesday away from work as well, but there was too much work to do so I went in anyways.


The rest of the week was a flurry of web server deployments and hours in the gym until Thursday rolled around. We had our work Xmas get-together at James Joyce Pub on Stephen Avenue. We all ate and did Secret Santa.



Unfortunately I had to leave before all the festivities get well underway since Joe, Jeff and Doug were meeting me in Gulf Canada Square to take in the employees-only viewing of the Holiday Train, which stopped just east of headquarters downtown for about 45 minutes. Wide Mouth Mason and Lisa Brokop played a few tunes for the small crowd that gathered and then continued on to its stop for the public in Bowness. This was the first time I had seen the train -- pretty cool.





Joe and I went home and got ready for the Apollo Xmas Mixer at Dakota. We stuck around there for some conversation with some people we knew but headed home early.

After the workday on Friday, I headed up to Peak Power for the Xmas party hosted by them. We did some drinking/timed sport events, and then hopped on the PartyMachine bus to head downtown. We ate at Classic Jacks on 17th Ave. and then the group headed over to 1410 to continue the party. I headed home to drop off my MP3 player and sole remaining leather glove (I lost the other somewhere between the Peak Power office and the Party Machine), and once I got home decided to crash since the next morning was the Frontrunners Xmas brunch and run.

I headed over to Tim and Doug's house and found that only six or so Frontrunners showed up, but we made the best of the beautiful morning and headed out for our run. We got back to Tim and Doug's around 10:15 and proceeded to gorge on the fantastic brunch setup. Joe showed up around 11:30 and visited for awhile. After many coffees and mimosas, Joe and I got home around 2:30 and began cleaning the house. We finished putting up the remaining decorations and spent the evening quietly at home.

I went out for a run with Ross on Sunday morning and spent the rest of the day cleaning house and email. I'm finally updating the blog now because I'll have to post another one at the beginning of next week with the low-down on the Xmas Eve dinner festivities!

We're also planning our NYE party, so be ready to receive the invites.