Holiday wrapup

Okay, I finally managed to drag myself away from games and installing and tweaking, and can now run down everything I've done in the past few days.

Christmas was the standard affair, my dad's side on Christmas Eve, my mom's side the next day. Two giant dinners, presents, the whole nine yards. The dinners didn't disappoint, as they never do, and I ate entirely too much, as I tend to do. I'm once again sick of turkey, and hope I never see it again. until next year.

Presents were a fairly mundane affair. I got a lot of socks, a new toque, some shirts, and a pair of jeans for clothes. For fun stuff, I got my aforementioned computer, an electronic Sudoku game, and the last 3 parts of the Dark Tower series. But not the first 4 parts, so I couldn't refresh my memory or have the complete set. No matter, it all came back as soon as I started reading part 5, and I was back with Roland's little ka-tet in no time.

Don't know what a ka-tet is? Shame on you. Pick up The Gunslinger and read the series. It's awesome. Standard warning about Stephen King, if you don't like his style, you might not enjoy these. Same if you're stupid or insane. Otherwise, you'll probably enjoy it.

Rounding out the cavalcade of gifts are a lot of food, and useful stuff like a mug, battery charger, and electric toothbrush. Here's a picture of the mug:

Click to see it full-size. Quite amusing.

I'm sure I'm forgetting something, but that's the bulk of my presents. Overall, I'm happy.

Although it wasn't a present, I also got some money. My grandfather passed away in October, and on Christmas eve I got an inheritance. I'm reluctant to say exactly how much money I got, but it's significant. I have no idea what to do with it. I want to spend it, obviously, but I'm afraid of wasting it. I also want to invest it so I can have more money later in life, but I don't want to lock it all away. I figure I'll eventually find the right balance, but I don't want to leave it sitting around for too long. I don't want to become one of those guys who gets paranoid over his money, and the longer I sit without a decision, the more chance that has of happening.

Why am I telling you about this? I have no idea. Maybe someone can make a good suggestion for investing. I've already heard mutual funds and RRSPs, but I don't know what I want to do.

Anyway, the rest of Christmas day passed uneventfully. I played a lot of Sudoku, and I've solved puzzles in times ranging from 20 minutes to 8 minutes. I think that's fairly impressive, because until I got the game I'd never even tried a Sudoku puzzle. Amazing how 9 rows of 9 numbers can make such a fun and frustrating puzzle.

On Boxing Day my brother and I got lost in the woods. There's a large expanse of forest behind my grandma's house, and apparently she owns part of it. Eventually it either belongs to other people or is public land, and there are rough paths running through it in places. We used to get dragged up there every year to cut and haul wood, so I'm very familiar with the lay of the land, for one section of the forest. Away from that, I'm fairly clueless.

We got up into the limits of where we recognized stuff, and then decided to go cross country. We had no idea where we were, where we were going, or where we'd come out, but it was fun. The woods are pretty easy to get around in, except for the ocassional hill or rocky outcropping.

My brother tried to cross a valley on a log, but fell off after 3 steps. I told him it was a spectacularly bad idea, but he just had to try it. Luckily he avoided all the rocks on the ground and only hurt himself enough to be funny. After that I started a running monologue like in a documentary, referring to him as my guide and pointing out every act of poor guidance. It was pretty funny, if I do say so myself.

Eventually we came out behind a house neither of us recognized. No idea where we were, but we found a connecting public driveway and made our way back to the road. After that it was really easy to find our way home, and the adventure in the woods came to an end just in time for dinner. Amazingly.

Before finding the driveway we (well, him mostly) considered climbing a fence. We could see the road through a hole in the trees, and there was a fence in our way. It was a funny floppy kind of fence, full of barbed wire, so we very quickly rethought the entire idea. He refused to abandon it, but eventually one of us pointed out how stupid it was to try to climb over barbed wire. On the way home we saw that the other side of the fense had a rather long, steep drop down a rocky wall to the ground. He was glad we went around after that, I'm sure.

Following the saga of the forest, we had dinner and then drove home. I installed my new computer stuff and started playing games. I still haven't unpacked everything, but I'm getting closer.

And now you know the rest of the story.