The Holidays

I’ve got quite a bit to catch up on here so this might be a long entry. First of all, let’s address the whole hamster issue. When Adam got home from work on Friday afternoon he discovered that Chewy had checked out (permanently) at some point during the day. This was especially surprising to both of us since he had been so active and chipper that morning. He had gotten sick a few days after we brought him home and we had been giving him medicine and watching him carefully. Who knows what happened… Adam brought him back to the pet store and found out that pretty much every hamster in the store was sick and they were quarantined. Nice of them to let us know… Needless to say, we won’t be going back to that store. I was pretty blue most of Friday night and Saturday. I don’t know how I got so attached to him so quickly. I just hope he died while he was sleeping or something. It would make me feel a whole lot worse if he had to suffer too much.

I managed to get quite a cold sometime between Tuesday night at IMA and Thursday-ish. It remained with me until Christmas so most of my vacation time was spend sleeping or laying in bed sneezing. It usually happens that way. We spent Christmas Eve afternoon at Adam’s parents’ house. We exchanged gifts from the secret santa deal, had a light lunch/dinner of sandwiches, and hung out for awhile. This time his older sister seemed to be in a much better mood and there were no quizzes about where my family was. Good thing since I had absolutely no idea this time. :) We went home and I think we went to bed pretty early since I was still sick and we had to be up relatively early the next morning. We got up on Christmas and I went to church with Adam’s family. After that we came home and had our own Christmas thing. We went up to Adam’s uncle’s house to have some time with his uncle, aunt, and grandmother who I hadn’t yet met. They all seem nice enough although I was informed that the grandmother is always more pleasant to be around when she has a few beers in her. In the midst of opening presents and talking, Adam’s parents were invited over to our house for dinner. I’m still not quite sure how that happened. Meh. So after we left his uncle’s we came home, did some turbo cleaning, and I cooked dinner. His parents were a little late (I think they got caught up in the football game or something), but it was nice once they got here. After dinner we sat around and talked for a bit and then they went home.

We did some major shopping on this past Saturday all throughout the Fox Valley. We stopped in Oshkosh so I could buy some new bake ware. I also bought a teapot. We stopped at Kmart so I could pick up a few pant hangers. No one else seems to carry the kind I was after. Unfortunately my former manager was there so I had to hear her unpleasant voice for the first time in 6 months. That sucked. Then we headed up to Appleton. We went to Sam’s Club and bought items in bulk for the first time with our membership. Fun stuff. We also went to Bed, Bath, and Beyond and had the call the GB store and hold the food processor I wanted since the Appleton store didn’t have it. We stopped at Cub food so Adam could get his crab legs. We also happened to find some cheap champagne for the evening. Strawberry flavored… Then we headed to Green Bay, stopping to pick up some cheese at Simon’s on the way. We got the food processor – I paid $35 for a $100 item! Woo! – and then checked out a pet store nearby to see what kind of hamsters they had. I wasn’t ready to seriously look for a replacement, but Adam was. We didn’t find anything there so we headed back to Appleton. We went to Petsmart where we had seen some cute Russian hamsters a few days earlier. When we got there they were pretty wiped out though. Only a few were left and I think most of them were dwarfs that were mislabeled. The girl who helped us was pretty clueless. I don’t think she really knew what she was doing. She felt comfortable enough with us to overshare that she lived with her boyfriend in her boyfriend’s mom’s house. His mom really likes her. (So, what… geesh…) She also tried to get us to buy a very expensive bird. Who knows why. Anywho, I didn’t see anything I liked, but Adam picked out this feisty little white guy. No name has been picked out yet. This one is all his though. I don’t really like him too much and he doesn’t seem to like anyone. After we got him settled in the cage we brought with us, we headed back home. As I put away all the crap we bought, Adam got the hamster settled in the other cage.

We headed back to Appleton to catch the 7pm showing of “The Family Stone.” It’s ok, I guess. There are some funny moments and some sad moments. It’s no contender for the Oscar or anything, but it’s a cute movie. It was much more crowded than we’d anticipated and we ended up being completely boxed in by an old lady with horrible perfume and a younger woman with even worse perfume. I think both Adam and I had monumental headaches by the time the movie was over. We walked out back into the fresh air and then headed up to Green Bay. We checked out the Casino but when we saw cars parking all along the drive up to the hotel we decided it would be suicide to try and do anything there. We turned around and drove across town to Lambeau Field. We had a beer at Curly’s and hung out for a while. When that got boring we headed back across town to his Grandma’s house. His cousin worked until 11, but we were supposed to hang out there and celebrate the new year with him and a few of his friends. They sat there playing Madden ’06 while I laid on the couch, bored out of my mind. Harold had a few too many and I was reminded of all the bad parties I had gone to during my sophomore year of college. They turned off the video game before midnight and we watched the re-run of the ball dropping and toasted each other with the cheap strawberry champagne. Tasted just like Boone’s Farm… We headed back home pretty soon after midnight since Adam had to work in the morning.

All in all it was a bearable holiday season.