Hanshin

Merry Christmas!

Hope everyone had a good Christmas Eve. Mine started off at 7:15 AM when my alarm rang. I had to go take my parents to their bus pickup spot cuz they were going to Las Vegas for Christmas. I came back super tired and went back to sleep...but it wasn't really good sleep because I was anxious for the UPS guy to come. I wrote a note for him to leave my package at the door just in case I didn't hear him, and lucky I did too cuz I didn't. What was I waiting for? Christmas gifts! More on that some other time...

So the plan for the night was to go to Nancy's group's gift exchange and then go to Nancy's family party. I sure wish I had a gift exchange or family party. But at least I don't have friends that make me wait outside of their houses for an hour in the freezing cold. Cuz that's what we had to do while we waited for a couple people to get their nails done! The gift exchange was pretty weak too...it seemed like no one cared about it. Plus I didn't get anything...

After driving through a little holiday traffic on the freeways, we were at one of Nancy's uncle's house. It was really nice there. Something I could imagine myself living in in the future. They had a super kewl theater room with a widescreen projector, 6.1 suround sound and tons of other high-tech audio/video equipment. They even had stadium seating! After eating, came the gift exchange. They were a ton of gifts and the gift exchange lasted well over an hour. Nancy's relatives are super nice. They all gave me a little something for Christmas. Mostly candy...maybe I'll gain a few pounds over the holidays. Oh yeah, I also got a super kewl headlamp. No, it's not for my car. It's a lamp for my head! Gotta post pictures of it later.

After the gift exchange, Nancy's uncle busted out his card table. He had wood chips and everything. It was pretty crazy. We were playing blackjack. At first I was losing a lot and I was pretty sad. But then Nancy came to watch and gave me lotso good luck and I won all of it back. Dealing is pretty scary. That's where I lost/won most of my money. In the end, I was up $3. Overall, I had a fun time cuz I bonded with Nancy's relatives. Nancy's grampa is the kewlest. I wish I could talk to him though but I don't speak any languages that he does. Oh wells, maybe I'll learn Vietnamese through some software or something...hope everyone has a happy holiday!

Not Just an Extended Edition

Three and a half hours. That could've been how much more sleep I got the past couple of days. But instead, we spent three and a half hours watching The Lord of the Rings - The Fellowship of the Ring: Extended Edition. We wanted to watch it before we watched The Lord of the Rings - The Two Towers...I thought it was just gonna be a refresher and that the extended scenes wouldn't be that important. Lots of deleted scenes on DVDs have good reasons to be deleted from their movies but not in this case! It was almost like a different movie. In many scenes, the mood was totally different because of the new/extended scenes. There were additions all over the place. I definitely liked the extended version of the movie better and I highly recommend Lord of the Rings fans to watch it because there were so many things that were unexplained and so many parts of the book that were skipped but are now included in the extended version. If the regular version of the movie was a 5, I'd have to give the extended version a 6.

For a list of the changes in the extended version (spoilers), take a look here. I can't believe it still got a PG-13 rating.

Top 5 Signs I Work Too Much

5. I worked a 12 hour day without any breaks at the end of finals week.
4. One of the managers gave me (and nobody else in my group) a tin of caramel corn.
3. I've been so occupied with work that I haven't had time to look for DVD deals.
2. I worked 40 hours last week, was always the last to leave the office, went back to work on Monday for 8 more hours of work, and can't wait until January 2nd so I can go back.
1. I recite IP addresses in my sleep.