As I return to work this week, I'd like to reflect on some of the highlights of Christmas Vacation 2009.

As usual, I try to horde a lot of my vacation time til the end of the year. This year, with Christmas Day, New Years Day and all my vacation days, I was able to take nearly 2 weeks off work. This may seem like a lot of time, but it actually seemed like no time at all when you add up all the time spent at holiday events and such.

Tom was in town for a bit, and even though I only got to see him one night, it was still good to see him nonetheless. We ate some damn good Thai food.

As far as Christmas shopping goes, I was super prepared this year. I did just about all my shopping online and got everything shipped to me well before Christmas. Everything was wrapped and ready to go several days before Christmas.

I spent several of the days leading up to Christmas working on a video project for Colleen’s family. I was making a DVD of old family films which Colleen’s grandpa recorded in the 70’s and 80’s. I had a rough copy that I debuted at last year’s Christmas, but the DVD decided to stop playing halfway thought the disc. This new version should play fine and includes a full scene selection and cover art. Probably the hardest part of the project was the duplication. It’s a very monotonous job to burn and print 13 of the same discs, as well as print the case insert and trim it to size.

Christmas Eve was at Jonah's this year, which is definitely one of the roomier venues. That's a good thing considering the large size of our family. Colleen and I attempted to show up a little early to avoid the overwhelming onslaught of family. Not to say that I don't enjoy the company of family. But it can be a little daunting to walk into a house full of 40 family members...getting bombarded by hugs and Christmas wishes...all while trying to figure out "Where do I put my coat? Where does the beer go? Where can I find a spoon for this cheese?"

Getting there earlier would have given us a chance to get settled in before the place got packed. However, our plan failed and we were almost the last people there. Why does my family have to be so timely?

The food spread was above average this year. The highlight for me was the special recipe Italian beef. Fantastic. Of course there’s always the old standby, Aunt Cathy’s meatballs. None of this would interest Colleen of course. We brought a batch of homemade brochette. It’s a funny thing about the brochette, since I spent so much time making it from scratch, I found myself checking on it every so often to see how much had been eaten by other people. I guess when you spend a couple hours preparing something, it’s more important to you that people are enjoying it. Because I never really cared that much when we’d bring something like chips and a jar of Tostitos salsa to a party.

At most family events I choose not to bring along a still or video camera, since most of them are overly documented. I made an exception this Christmas since I recently got my HD camera. It may be the first family event to be released on Blu-ray (and without the classic, Uncle Bill style, date and time stamp in the lower right hand corner). I recorded about 30 minutes over the course of the night which should be enough to edit together a nice little segment.

“Santa” showed up later in the night and gave some gifts to the little ones. I perched up on the staircase, a safe distance away from the living room, or better known as the “Santa Pit”. Imagine Santa sitting in a chair against a wall. Santa is surrounded by a circle of kids. That circle is surrounded by circles of moms and dads and aunts and uncles 3 rows deep…all with still cameras, video cameras, cell phones, or some other recording device. Some even had multiples with one in each hand. I captured the insanity quietly from above.

Santa came and went, and so it was time for the white elephant gift exchange amongst the middle generation. Everyone who participated put their wrapped gift in the center of the pool table, and we picked numbers. One by one, people picked their gifts at random. Some were good, some were not so good. But at least none of the gifts were a giant canvas painting of a nebula.

The rules of the gift exchange allow people to steal gifts from others, instead of picking from the pile. Matt picked from the pile and opened the game Catch Phrase. That’s a game I’ve wanted for a while, so when it was my turn, I decided to steal it. When it was Sarah’s turn, she stole it from me, which was devastating, but expected. However, when I went to the pile for another gift, it turned out to be another copy of Catch Phrase. I was so excited I did a dance of joy. The crowd went crazy, it was a good moment.

I was surprised that no one tried to steal the second copy of Catch Phrase from me. I got lucky. Colleen went home with a set of Disney Cars mugs and hot cocoa, but the gift had a pair of earrings smacked on the front of the wrapping paper, which is the main reason she chose that one.

We returned home later than night and Brian slept over. We got up on Christmas morning and dad came by for a brief gift opening around the tree. Brian and dad had to leave early to make it down to the famous feast hosted by Mrs, Neumann. Colleen and I were headed up to her parent’s house to their Christmas party.

Once again, we tried to show up a little early, but failed miserably. We were the last ones there. People started eating pretty much as soon as we showed up. It was more a buffet style than a formal sit down dinner. People ate in random rooms wherever they could find a seat. There were large bacon chunks in the potatoes, which sucked for Colleen but was fine with me. I very much enjoyed the corn, and apparently, so did everyone else. When I attempted for seconds, I found that the dish was scraped clean aside from a few kernels.

We brought another batch of brochette to this party, as well as a plate of brownies that Colleen baked (she had to show off something that she made). They were minty and delicious.

Since Christmas Eve was a beer drinking night, I decided Christmas Day would be wine drinking night. I actually got fairly buzzed for a while.

I gave out the DVD copies of the family films to various people. Everyone was grateful for the gift. A little later on we did a white elephant gift exchange. It was a little tamer than the previous night’s exchange (less stealing), but still fun for sure. Colleen and I ended up with a binocular digital camera and a “grow your own” herb kit (so I can now grow my own basil for brochette). 

We stayed at the party for a while, long after the extended family had left. Got some good play time in with Kaylee. We were considering staying the night, but ended up leaving later that night into the freezing weather.

The next day was party day number 3. Some old classmates from St. Williams organized a Class of ’94 reunion through Facebook. It wasn’t a formal reunion, just an opportunity for several old classmates to get together and drink. It was at a bar / pizza place called Bije’s on the northwest side of Chicago.

I knew that I would end up drinking a lot, so I made special transportation arrangements. I planned to stay the night at Aunt Cathy’s, so I drove down there, and got a ride to the bar from Katie. There had been a bunch of snow earlier in the day, which I expected to prolong my trip there. Amazingly, I showed up to the bar at 7:25, five minutes before the event officially started. I was the first one there. Dennis, the organizer, wasn’t even there yet.

I sat at the bar, ordered a beer, and watched a hockey game while I anxiously waited for people to arrive. It was kinda weird, because I was looking out for people, most of whom I haven’t seen in 17 years.

Eventually, people started to filter in. At the peak of the party (not including other people’s friends or significant others) there were probably 15 people or so from St. Williams. I got a chance to reconnect with some old friends, it was definitely a good time. People must have been buying me a lot of beer, because I didn’t spend nearly as much as I should have. There were also a couple shots mixed in there at the end. By last call, I was quite drunk. I hitched a ride home with a significantly more sober Dan Escobar. I was able to convince him to stop at the Taco Burrito King before dropping me off at Aunt Cathy’s.

Let’s just say that: Beer + Shots + Mexican food = An unfortunate outcome. Somehow I managed to change my clothes, take my contacts out and text Colleen before I passed out. But I awoke to an unpleasant surprise in the bathroom the next morning, which was no fun. I spent pretty much all Sunday hung over watching TV.

On that Tuesday, we had the heating guy come out for a furnace inspection. Bad news. The heat exchanger was all kinds of fucked up. I either had to pay a bunch of money to fix a 14 year old furnace, or just buy a new one.

I bought a new one. I got one of the super efficient models. It was damn expensive, but the heating guy told me about a government program that was giving huge tax credits to people who purchase energy efficient appliances. So once I get the tax credit, the overall cost on the furnace will only be a few hundred dollars more than if I were to purchase the cheaper non-efficient version.

Right before the heating guy came back to install the new furnace, my new Dell computer was delivered by UPS. That gave me plenty to do while the heating guys were working. I’ll post a separate blog about my new computer.

After the three days of partying around Christmas, I didn’t really feel like doing anything social for a while, especially if it involved drinking. I was partied out. I didn’t even pursue any plans for New Years Eve, because I just didn’t feel like doing anything.

Much of New Years Eve I spent delivering pizzas at Papa Johns. I met up with Colleen around 9 and we had a very low key night at home eating food, playing video games and watching the countdown on TV. I was able to set off some leftover 4^th of July fireworks at midnight, which was fun. But it was probably the lowest key New Years I’ve had in a long, long time.

Much of the next few days were dedicated to editing. I really needed to finish up Mel’s wedding, which I shot over the summer. I was able to finish it up Sunday night, right before returning to work the next day.

All in all, it was a pretty good vacation. When I returned to work on Monday, it was as if I never left. Except, of course, for the 40 new emails and 16 new voicemails.