‘Twas the Season … for Rocking

You guys are awesome!  I was hoping for one comment, and I got 3! (And several IMs too!)  So that’s absolutely reason enough for me to blog again!  Also, that list of 6 things from last time – I’ve decided not to be organized (even though Vince’s dequeue suggestion was a fantastic one..), so I’m just going to do things in random order and add things at will (this entire post, for instance..).

This has been a pretty awesome holiday season.  Despite having only 2 days between getting home and Christmas Eve, I managed to get all my Christmas shopping done in those two afternoons.  That’s not to say say that I rushed and got crappy gifts for people, I found some really awesome things very quickly!  Aunt Ann and Uncle Ed hosted the Alvarez family get together that Saturday before Christmas, and it was great seeing their new place and hanging out with that whole crew (they’re always a fun bunch – and Emily Elizabeth was just as adorable as ever).  On Christmas Eve, Mike’s kids and family came over to have a little gathering.  And Christmas day was also at our place, with a couple people from here and a couple others from there (including Ami and Jarrod coming up in the evening).  It was the farthest Christmas has ever been from the norm, but it worked out in the end.  As long as we make a Christmas tape somewhere in the Christmas season, I’m happy.

(In case you don’t know – the Christmas tape is a family tradition that’s been around since long before my time (I want to say it’s 27 or 28 years old now).  Every Christmas Eve (until recently, we’ve been mixing it up), the family gets together to record an audio tape of, basically, a year-in-review.  We go from youngest to oldest, asking the generic questions of “And how old are you this year?”, “Anything interesting happen to you?”, “You sure?  That’s it?  You didn’t happen to [insert event here that the person forgot about]?”.  If anyone ever asks me if my family has any neat traditions, that is always the first one that pops into my head.  It’s something that I remember doing from a very young age, that I hope continues on for a long time, and that I can also start it as a tradition with a family that I hope to start some day!)

So yeah, we did our Christmas tape pretty late on Christmas day, but that was much better than the July tape for Christmas 2005!  And Michael and Barbara were still in San Francisco (they’re coming for a visit in just a couple weeks!), so we used the wonderful Google Talk calling feature to connect them with us and the tape-making.  I really do love Google and all that it does (if I haven’t mentioned that enough to you already..).

Other family gatherings (sorry about my tape tangent), included going to Grandma and PopPop’s on Friday afternoon (after Vinny’s soccer tournament) and going to Aunt Beth’s on Saturday afternoon (and getting to see Sonny and Steve and each of their daughters, as well as Kevin and Lisa, Gram and PopPop, Al & Liz, and Beth, of course!).  I always have so much fun catching up with the Iachini half of my family.  There is always so much to talk about, they’re always very supportive (they had me go on and on about THON and I had a blast doing so!), and I just get a warm feeling inside when I’m around them! :-)

So that’s the extent of my visiting.  As for the little kid aspect of Christmas (presents!) – it was awesome.  I got my LCD monitor, KVM switch, and new video card, so I’m going to have my amazing desk setup at school (if I haven’t bragged to you about my awesome idea – you just wait for some cool pictures.  You’re going to be jealous. I promise.).  I also got some clothes (none of which fit.. sorry mom!), some awesome headphones, some movies (HP5 and And Now for Something Completely Different (Monty Python)), aaaand a car (we gave my car to Ami at the end of the summer, and Julie and Wade gave me Wade’s old car – so my present was that being fixed up for me!  So now I have a car again! And it’s Penn State blue! And it’s comfy and it works!  Woo!).  And after we opened all these and we all thought we were done, mom says “There’s one more little thing.. it’s kind of for the whole family, and I’m not really sure if you guys will like it.. but here it is.”  Vinny unwraps a PS3, and I immediately know the box underneath is Rock Band.  It was the hugest Christmas surprise ever (oh yeah – forgot to mention the HDTV to round it off), and we have been spending so much time playing it ever since (I seriously have blisters on my hands from playing the drums so much – I tried taking pictures, but they didn’t show the actual disgustingness of them.).  So I would’ve been perfectly content with the pre-PS3/RockBand combo, but that was icing on the cake, and it has really brought the family together to have some awesome fun!

All-in-all – this was one fantastic Christmas.  I hope all of you had similarly awesome holidays, and if anyone wants to Rock out with me at any point while I’m home – let me know!

Brace Yourselves for the Onslaught!

The Fall 2007 semester is finished!  That’s fantastic!  What’s even more fantastic is that right now, I do not have school or any schoolwork to worry about until January 14, 2008.  That’s next year!  I have 3 weeks and 3 days before I have to get back into the school groove, and because of that – I intend to blog several times in the next 3 weeks.  I want to blog about:

• The car chase at the beginning of Thanksgiving break (it’d make for an awesome movie or sitcom episode)
• The internship interview (because traveling on my lonesome was monumental)
• A summary of this past semester (complaining about certain classes/profs, praising others, and pointing out some highlights)
• Brotherhood 2.0 and how full of awesome it is (which happens to be “very full”)
• xkcd and how it is amazing in every way (seriously – it is.)
• THON and everything that goes along with it (lots of things for me..)

So I have six things on the queue (should i make it a stack instead? I dunno..) which I’d like to talk about at least somewhat (and I’m sure Christmas will provide me other talking points).  If I can just have one person comment on this entry (either on my blog or the Facebook note – either way is fine), I will know that someone read this one, and therefore writing other blog entries wouldn’t be completely useless.
I hope everyone is on vacation now and I hope you are all enjoying it! Hope to see ya soon!! <3!