Christmas 2007

Well, we traveled west for Christmas this year, to the very edge of existence. A place where the internet is either absent entirely or runs slowly, a place where the coyotes outnumber the people. A place where darkness is really, truly dark. That's right, we went back to the scene of the crime (anyone else remember being trapped for 5 nights in a blizzard last year?).

This year there was no blizzard, which almost qualifies as evidence for a divine ruler. Fortunately, there was also a tiny revelation in the form of the Nintendo DS. Pretty damned awesome, and, for the record, I despise hand-held games. Still I did my part to try to save a certain princess from the forces of evil, even if said princess appeared to be dumber than a box of rocks (sure Zelda, just jump into the evil Ghost Ship...really). The fact that I failed had more to do with the fact that other people wanted to play the DS (those selfish jerks!) than any lack of skill on my part. Oh, and thanks to DC for bringing the games!

The baby got spoiled. And I mean it in a bad way. Today my son spent the entire day throwing a fit if he wasn't being held. I'm not sure the baby's butt hit the floor (bed, etc..) for more than half an hour when he was awake for the entire 5 days we were out there. Anytime he got mad, someone swept in and picked him up.

My philosophy: You gotta let the kid whine a little to even see if he's serious. Half the time he's just making noise to hear himself.

Anyway, we got blessedly few presents, and one of the ones we did get was an electric vibrating chair cover. Which pretty much means I'm going to have to hurt my back so that I can justify using the thing nightly for the next, oh, six months or so.

I also got Tequila...awesome.

And K, I see you got a Wii. I'm going to use that as justification for us getting one: "But dear wife, we can't fall behind K-man on the technology curve!"

So the weekend...

Straight up brilliant people.
1st annual convention.
2007, Ha Ha Tonka, MO.

Ahh, brief recaps:

Thursday Night:
For some reason the weekend revolved around playing games designed to let everyone know that the other people in the room think they are:
-a scary driver
-not from earth
-bad smelling
-‘modest’

There was drinking as well.

Friday Night:

Well we went to the world famous Bridal Cave. The east wall of the cave (east? West? Who cares..) had a ‘drapery’ with over half a billion square inches of surface area. Oh, and we had the world’s most boring and unresponsive tour guide. Imagine someone constantly rambling on about the ‘mysteries’ of the cave, the ‘symbolism’ and doing it all with a dreary, uninformed monotone. Yeah, good times.

Way at the back of the cave was a naturally occurring pool. The cave had been isolated until the 1980s, except for a little passageway that you could barely fit a person through. Yet at the bottom of the pool was a bunch of lumber and a wooden ladder. The pool was called the mystery pool, and the mystery is: How the hell did that ladder get there?

My explanation: The some employee building the cave’s lighting or something dropped a ladder in there and then came up with the bull-shit explanation that ‘it was there when I got there!’ Right guy.

After we got out of the cave we went to the top of the nearby hill and climbed up to the top of a forest-fire watchtower. Amazing view. Very beautiful despite the rain.

Then we grabbed some groceries, ate a fantastic dinner of baked rigatoni, guacamole, Caesar salad, other stuff, and drank. We drank a lot. I went to bed at 11 because if I had stayed up any longer I would have kept drinking.

I lost at Scrabble but by the time the game was over I couldn’t remember how to play. I drank a lot.

Saturday:

Finally, sun! An unbelievable breakfast casserole, then off to the Ha Ha Tonka state park. We saw a snake, we saw skinks, we saw 1 crayfish fighting another crayfish. The trip reached its high point as we sat skipping stones along the shores of the Lake of the Ozarks. Ahh...happiness.

Then that night we cooked burgers (mine was bison) and played what can only be described as an incredibly tense series of games.

First off we played 4 rounds of Catchphrase. The teams were girls versus boys. Let me begin by pointing out that the guys went 4-0. Let me continue by pointing out that everyone became increasingly competitive as the guys were racking up the wins, to the point that in game #4 we had one cheating ‘incident’, multiple ‘discussions’ about the rules, and after the game the women didn’t want the guys to have any of the strawberry shortcake. I’ll also point out that the guys would have been even better if I hadn’t cost them 5 FREAKING points by being an idiot (said the word 3 times, couldn’t figure out what I was reading once, couldn’t figure out how to convey the concept once).
I can’t remember all of escalating comments that ensued, but I remember laughing so hard I started to cry. There were comments about the guys being lucky, about the guys not likely to get lucky in the future, about whether or not the guys were going to get to walk home. Seriously, it was a good time.

Then we played Pictionary. Of course it was guys versus girls. The girls started off with a tremendous run, crossing half the board with 4 straight successful attempts and 3 straight 6’s. Whoa. The guys started mentioning that ‘lucky’ comment from earlier. Then the guys came roaring back. The guys ran to all the way to the finish spot while the girls were still 15 or so places back. Of course, the girls then responded by taking control and answering a ton of correct answers and both teams were on the finish spot.

At which point the guys won.

From the girls, dead silence.

From the guys: “Hey man! High five!”

Oh man!

Then I won at Scrabble (2^nd time in my life).

There was some other fun stuff that happened as well:

-We stopped by Bass Pro Shop on our way. Got some shirts. On the way back we stopped and ate at Hemmingways, which was largely forgettable except for a tomato bisque that I could have eaten all day. Sooo good.

- On the way up we also stopped at the Springfield Brewery. That place was fantastic. I had their Santa Fe pasta. So delicious. A Tex-mex-italian thing. Man it was good.

- There was a place by the side of the road selling bison, so we picked up a bunch of bison as well. Including bison brats. Now I need to get myself some good beer to simmer them.

- We also stopped at a Wendy’s for dinner. I kinda like Wendy’s. How lame is that?