Dinner With the Burnses

It's always great to spend time with good friends. Ever since I last saw Polly and Bob, she was insistent that I needed to come to her home for dinner. After a couple of missed opportunities, tonight was the night. Once I arrived, the ulterior motive came to fruition. Polly really wanted to know about Facebook, and how to get in touch with all the friends I've introduced her to through the annual December Disney World trips.

So, the student becomes the teacher and I walked her through how to upload photos, and how to use IRC to chat with the gang of us that meet regularly on Wednesday and Sunday nights. We got photos off an XD card thanks to a slot on her printer/scanner, and every photo led to great stories.

The meal was nothing special, but the company, the conversation and the memories were wonderful.

Gift Fight!

Alison and Graham show off their gift fight winnings

Today was the last of the big holiday get-togethers. What started as our book club's Christmas party has long outlasted the book club itself. We tried to figure out how long we have been having the annual gift fight, and came to the conclusion that it had been at least 10 years.

It was good to see everyone who was there. 2009 was such a busy year that there were many people I hadn't seen since last year's gift fight. Moe and Pam's new place on Lake St. John is beautiful, can't wait to see what it looks like when the lake isn't frozen.

The highlight was the gift fight itself. Many gifts were highly sought after. This created great drama and it may go down as one of the best in the long history of the gift fight. In the end I took home a Glee CD and some flash drives. My gift, a copy of Jeff Lemire's Essex County Trilogy was desired by several people and it is always heartening to see it passed from person to person knowing that they all wanted to take it home. Of course the Stimulator made its annual appearance. It is looking quite bronzed these days. I think this year it went home with Graham.

I hope that in 2010 I get to see these friends more often. They are all great people and we have good times when we are together. Hopefully we can do this kind of thing again before 2011.

TV: an episode from series 3 of QI which I had recorded quite a while back