Well, letsee here.

It's been a while since I updated this puppy, so let's get up to speed, shall we?

Diana and I attended my company Holiday Party on Saturday. That was a lot of fun. It was a "Masquerade Ball". The HR department provided plain red or black masks that they encouraged people to decorate. Diana did a little feather and sequin number, and I draw black markings on the red mask that I thought looked pretty cool. Iwan and Sara came over on Friday evening to hang out, and thanks to them for their creative input on the masks.

When we arrived at the place, we quickly noticed that out of the maybe 700 people at the party, only about 30 people were wearing masks. Pretty weak showing, but it was fun. We were there early, and cashed in on some hors d'oeuvres and drinks before the crowd showed up. Like cheerios in a bowl of milk, we quickly clumped together with the other computer geeks and had good conversation and a pretty decent dinner.

At these parties, they give away prizes. Each person gets 3 raffle tickets to place as they choose into drawings for about 15 pretty good prizes (iPod, golf/spa package, gift certificates... typically about $350 prizes). We didn’t win any of those. Then everyone gets a single entry into the grand prize raffle, where they give away things like $2000 gift certificate to Best Buy, $1500 towards airline tickets, etc. We didn’t win any of those, either. A couple years ago, however, I *did* win $2000 in gift certificates to Westfield shopping malls, and I still get a hard time at these parties about how I can't win again.

After the dinner they had a Casino Night set up, with blackjack, roulette, craps, and some Hold'em tables. Diana and I left dinner a little early and reserved a spot at a poker table. Along with raffle tickets, each couple got a certificate that could be redeemed for $500 in chips. So, we turned that in, and Diana and I played with our $250 for a while, winning some and losing some. The quality of the dealer and game left something to be desired, but it was pretty fun. At some point, a friend slipped another certificate for another $500 in chips in my pocket, and when I found out that it was pretty common practice to redeem multiples of these, turned that in as well. We left the table and fooled around on the blackjack tables a little bit, when I decided to figure out exactly how the casino raffle worked. You could redeem $750 in chips for a raffle ticket towards a $15 dollar gift certificate to Starbucks. Or, you could turn in $1000 in chips towards a raffle for a $50 gift certificate to Westfield shopping centers. We got ourselves to exactly $1000, and entered the raffle. At that time, since most of the people were still gambling, there were only about 10 tickets in the thing, and they were drawing every 15 minutes. So, 15 minutes later we won $50, and headed out the door. A pretty fun party, all in all.

Sunday evening, we went to a little White Elephant gift exchange thing with some teachers that Diana knows. This was a really casual and fun event. It looks like it's been happening for some number of years (there were lots of references to gifts that people at brought before), and I felt somewhat honored that we'd cracked the inner circle.

It was eerie to be at a party full of teachers. I relate more to the "student" mentality than a "teacher" mentality, for some reason. But everyone was really nice, and we had a good time. Most people brought really junky gifts, but we walked away with a nice little glass ornament/decoration thing, as well as some pictures frames, one with a nice little matted Escher print in it. Pretty sweet.

Last night, Diana's sister and her boyfriend came over to visit, and it was fun to see them. I particularly like David, who is from Sweden and in this country for the first time. He's a really nice and funny guy. We played a customized version of "Guess Who", which defies description here, but was a lot of fun, and then a rousing game of Cranium. David had a hard time with some of it, but did surprisingly well given the (slight) language/cultural barrier.

My eyes our on our upcoming week. We leave Christmas morning for Montana with my parents, Dave and Elaine and Ben and my aunt Jocelyn. That's going to be a lot of fun. Our flight is at 6:40am on Christmas morning, which is going to suck, but we've flown on Christmas before, and it's actually a pretty good day for traveling. We're there all week, and then return on the evening of the 31st, hopefully in time to meet up with whatever New Years Party celebration people have planned while we were gone. :)

And that's about it. Tomorrow is Christmas Eve, and I have the day off from work. I think we're going to pack in the morning, then head to Diana's family's house for a late lunch, and then to some other family friends house for dinner?desert? and games and stuff. And then, off to Montana. Good times.