As summarized in a recent e-mail to Ted, my Christmas went pretty well — my parents & sister and I hosted my dad's brother and his two kids (16 and 11 or something like that) for dinner, and afterward the younger one stuck around to play with one of my Christmas gifts, the A Christmas Story board game.* It turns out that the board game's instructions make absolutely no sense (which I kind of already knew, since I'd read reviews on Amazon last week when I was supposed to be doing real work at the office) so we created our own version. I rocked most of the trivia questions, so that was fun.
After that, we played some Monopoly. My cousin brought her "Here and Now" edition, which has American landmarks on the board and different tokens (McDonald's fries, Starbucks coffee mug, cell phone, laptop, etc.). The money, property prices, and rents are all inflated, too, and it was tough for the oldsters (myself included!) to wrap their respective heads around paying $9.75 million for the equivalent of New York Ave w/ a hotel.
After we got sick of that, we tried Frog Juice, which is a kids' game that secretly teaches you math and which my mom totally ruined by cheating. (We quit Monopoly once we discovered that my mom was overcharging on the rent for the equivalent of Baltic Ave, which is Jacobs Field in the new edition. Ha!)
Then we played a few hands of Peanuts Uno** until my mom revealed that she cheated by randomly playing a blue Draw Two on a red seven — which nobody noticed because we were too tired. So, my sister and I had fun ranting about what a cheater she is and who wants to play cards with her and no wonder her little sister wrote "Vera is a rat" on the Monopoly money 45+ years ago if this is how she does things, blah blah blah.
We're all supposed to go shopping today in Montrose, but not until, like, 11, so I have plenty of time to go back to bed. For some reason my sister woke up at 4 a.m., and I heard her downstairs laughing. I came down to investigate what could possibly be so amusing at such an hour, and discovered her watching Dawson's Creek reruns on the N. The Christmas episode from the last season was on, and we were debating plot points and trying to place some of the other actors in the scene, and I said, Ooh, I should IMDB that person*** because I could swear I've seen her on something else, and then I realized that there was a laptop & wifi handy, and voila, that's pretty much my life up to the last five minutes.
* Don't tell my mom, but I secretly wanted the Christmas Story Monopoly . . . but that's what money from Grandma is for, I guess.
** I couldn't remember what was supposed to happen with the Good Grief! card, though, so it was pretty much just regular Uno.
*** It turns out that the girl was Oliver Hudson's wife on Rules of Engagement, which I wanted to like because of David Warburton (aka Puddy from Seinfeld) and David Spade, but couldn't because it was too dopey. Anyhow, Oliver Hudson was also in that same episode of Dawson's, in case you enjoy random trivia about WB dramas from the late 90s/early 00s. And who doesn't, really?
Damn My elementary school teachers cheating at UNO....All of my illusions of youth are ruined
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