Sheep Guarding Llama

Min and I got to sleep in a little bit this morning but we were awfully exhausted at 9:00 when everyone got up to start beginning the Christmas festivities. Once they begin, it goes all day. Christmas is no little thing at the Tocco’s. Breakfast, coffee and other preparation activities took until around 11:00. We started opening presents at 11:00. The gifts were everywhere. Every spare inch of the living room and dining room were used to house the presents. Present opening continued until around 4:00 when we had to scramble to get ready and get over to the grandparent’s house for Christmas dinner. There were well over 250 presents in all not including the completely stuffed stockings and the two gifts for Min and Francesca that weren’t wrapped. Tons and tons of stuff. Min and my major present was a thirty bottle wine cooler that we have really been wanting. We are very excited. Finally we will be able to put all of our white wine somewhere so that we can just drink it whenever we want instead of having to chill one bottle ahead of time. And now they won’t have to get so cold in the refridgerator. All of the boys got Zip Zaps. They are really cool little tiny remote controlled cars. We had a lot of fun putting those together and driving them around. Simple things. Min gave me the fingerless computer gloves that she made for me out of alpacca wool that she has been working on for a year.

After dinner, we all played Scene It, the hot, relatively new game about the movies that Bennie and Francesca got for Christmas. We played a couple games of that and then Min and I turned in early because we were exhausted.

Min had to work last night so she spent the morning sleeping. I got up late and played a few rounds of Bob’s Call of Duty. What an awesome game that is. Then I watched Mr. Nice Guy, one of the weird second generation Jackie Chan flicks. It is a cute action flick, I like it. His second generation films are the best because he was no longer doing the silly, crappy, poorly dubbed stuff and got a real budget but was still doing wacky Hong Kong flavored stuff and was at the height of his game. His more recent films are taking on a different feel as he matures as an actor and is no longer able to do all of the stunts of his youth. The funniest thing about this movie is that the bad guy is played by Richard Norton, from Raiders of the Sun. How funny is that? I have decided that I think that I am going to start writing movie reviews. Now that I have well over 750 movies here, I think it is time to start writing about them. I hope to someday teach a cinema class – I think that that would be a lot of fun.

We managed to get out of the house and hit the road eastward around 11:00. That means that we rolled into Min’s parent’s house at 2:00. We were very tired. But, we have a new futon to sleep on there so that made our night to look forward to a whole lot better.

I had to run to Perry this morning to drop off something with a client and Bob and I decided to go to the Silver Lake Country Market for some subs. The market has some of the best subs anywhere. Aunt Cookies in Geneseo is really good and the Market. They are the two best places in the whole area. Yummy yummy.

After we got back from Perry, Bob and I played a couple of rounds of Call of Duty. That game is pretty cool for multi-player games. But it really needs more than just two people playing to make it really work. Because of how slow the game is, you need to have more players to keep things interesting.

I did some final cleaning before Min got home while she did some last minute shopping in Henrietta. Min got home around 5:00. She was very glad to be home for a little bit. I have a missed my Minca!

After Min got home, I gave her my present which was a new copy of The Sims because she lost her old one and the two new expansion packs. I had already installed them on her computer the other night while she was away because they take so long to install. So she played that most of the night. It has been a whole year since she had been able to play it and we had even upgraded her computer to Windows XP and gotten a faster her a faster machine with more memory just so that she could play the game. So she played that most of the evening. I played some Call of Duty that Bob left here. Min played until half an hour before she had to go to work and then she took a short nap while Andy and I watched some Fawlty Towers.

After Min went to work Andy and I went to Mama Mia’s for some dinner – delicious pizza and then we went to Walmart because Andy wanted to get the movie Tora Tora Tora but they must have sold out because they used to have it but didn’t have it anymore. We did find Jackie Chan’s The Medallion which just released today or yesterday. So we went home and watched that. I am sorry to have to report that The Medallion is one of the worst Chan flicks in years and years. Even worse than The Tuxedo which no one can seem to believe. It is lacking all of the great, classic Chan moves and is just silly. Forlani makes a decent Chan girl but that is about all there is to say about this film. There just is nothing to it.

Bob is here all day today hanging out. He got into town yesterday evening and is staying until late tomorrow. I ended up having to get up and deal with a ton of little emergencies this morning. Tons of little things came up. I was feeling pretty sick all day because of all of the Quake II that we played last night and my head was spinning from it. Andy, Bob and I hit Aunt Cookies for some subs. Mmm, mmm, good. I haven’t had Aunt Cookies in a while and it tasted really good. Since Min doesn’t like subs, I almost never get a chance to get any.

Bob really enjoyed Anyd’s Call of Duty so they decided to drop me off at the house and that they would head out to get a copy for Bob that he will just leave at our house since Bob’s computer can’t handle the game. I just went home and took a nap for most of the afternoon hoping to wear out the effects of the game from last night. When I got up, we headed straight off to Tinseltown in Gates to see The Return of the King again. Bob hadn’t seen it yet so he was really excited. Seeing it at Tinsletown was so much better than seeing it in Geneseo. After the movie we headed over to Jay’s for some late dinner.

Today is my first Minless day. This morning I had a few errands to run and then I headed over to my aunt and uncle’s house to celebrate my cousin’s birthday (which is actually tomorrow.) I hung out there for a while and then I took my cousin up to Rochester to do some shopping. We went to Media Play and then I had to head back home to get there before Bob got there after the football game (the Bills got their butts kicked by Miami – Nate and Bob went to the game.) Bob got over to the house around 6:00 and then Andy, Bob and I headed over to the Omega Grill for some dinner.

Andy has been trying out a new video game, Call of Duty. It is absolutely gorgeous. The graphics are amazing. I can’t believe what a good job they did making it. Bob decided that he really needs to get a new computer right away so that he can play it too.

We decided to play some Quake II tonight. It has been so long since we played! I downloaded tons of new maps for us to play so that we could have some variety since we have gotten to know the old Quake maps pretty well by this point. There were some really good ones. Unfortunately, after not too long, I got some motion sickness or vertigo from playing and I had to stop before I got really sick.