bmabray's Journal: Christmas Weekend

Christmas weekend has come & gone, and now we're back at work. All in all, it was a good Christmas. We had a nice visit with Angela's family in Texas, then came home and hosted a pretty good Christmas for my family.

In between the family get-togethers, we found time for our own Christmas. Angela got me an Audrey. This will be a fun toy. I've got all kinds of plans for the thing, and I haven't even turned it on yet. :-) I gave Angela a free-standing punching bag. There's something oddly satisfying about having something to hit after the holidays are over... :-)

We also bought a "present" for the house -- a pool table. That was quite an adventure. :-) We started looking for one shortly after buying the house -- we thought it would be fun to have in the sun room. Even the used ones, though, are way too expensive. Luckily, we found one on sale at Sears for a good price. It's a cheap model, but it's good enough for two people who are lousy pool players. :-)

So, we bought it. It had to be ordered, so we figured, since we were getting a good price (and the fact that pool tables are huge) we would just have it delivered. When we asked about having it delivered, the sales guy told us we didn't want to do that -- delivery would be about $65... and besides, it would fit in the back of our car. Oh, ok then, we'll just come back & pick it up...

Well, we come back the next week to pick it up, and two guys bring it out to our car on a big cart. And, lo & behold, the thing is huge! Oddly enough, it's as long & as wide as a pool table, & very heavy. So, there we were, with 2 stock boys looking at us like we're nuts for bringing a small SUV, and us looking at that pool table, wanting to strangle the sales guy. Obviously, he'd never even seen one of these pool tables -- if he had, he wouldn't tell everybody "it will fit in the back of your car." We did manage to get it in, with just a few inches hanging out the back. The stock boys got us some rope, and we started tying it up as best we could. We decided not to chance getting on the interstate, so we drove about 10 miles down one of the main OKC streets with that thing hanging out the back. It was quite a stressful trip -- if that pool table had decided it wanted to leave, there wouldn't have been anything we could do about it, and I didn't have much faith in that flimsy rope they gave us. But, we did make it home, and we finally got to put it together yesterday. It'll be fun to have -- definitely worth the trouble. But, if I ever see that sales guy again... ;-)

We also went to see Lord of the Rings last night. Great movie. Visually, it's very impressive, and the themes and characters are faithful to the book. Some people have said this trilogy will be the next Star Wars, and I agree. It has that same "galaxy far, far away" feel to it -- it creates a complete world that is totally different from our own. I think I'll do a review of it on the COM website.

Oh yeah, work... I knew there was a reason I was here... :-)