Spycow

Ahhhh… second day back at work after a nice long vacation. Feels good.

With the newly rented Grand Prix, Karen and I set out on a whirlwind tour of the northeast, from MA to CT to NJ, back to MA, and up to NY before finally finishing back home. We visited my family in Dudley, Karen’s family in CT, my brother’s family in NJ, Karen’s family in NJ, the cat back in MA, then Karen’s college friends in NY.

We each got and gave a bunch of great gifts, and what’s awesome is that my parents gave us a dishwasher! I finally got to meet the entirety of Karen’s family, which was also awesome and a little intimidating as there were 20ish of us all staying in the same house.

There was a ridiculous amount of snow falling on the 30th in Albany, but luckily it was light and fluffy so the car swept off easily enough. New Year’s Eve was fun. We got dressed up and drank champagne and played Rock Band, whose guitar broke after 4 days of ownership by Bill. He was not pleased. But it was fun anyway.

All told, things are looking up for this year. :)

This coming month (October, that is), a lot of people are incrementing their age, myself included. Also included are Karen and about 500 people she knows. I’ll be turning 27, she’ll be turning 30. The problem is that when you write it out, it makes us sound like we’re on Old’s doorstep, but I know I certainly don’t feel old, and Karen doesn’t feel like she’s old either. So what’s the number? It’s crap, that’s what it is.

Plus, karaoke and Chinese food on Saturday. What better way to watch the number tick over (well, sorta… her party’s a few days before the birthday, but that’s just nitpicking)?

As you may or may not know, Saturday was the release of the 7th and final Harry Potter book. As such, it was cause for a little celebration, which Harvard Square was keen to provide. They changed the name, for the night, to Hogwarts’ Square and had a bunch of HP-themed stuff. Tealuxe had butterbeer (which, oddly, but not surprisingly, was made with tea). One other store had “wizard cakes” (rice cakes, but unfortunately they said “contains some wheat”). There were Nantucket Nectars stands strewn about manned by guys in wizard hats. Milling about was your usual assortment of Gryffindors, a handful of Slytherin, some Death Eaters… and, of course, no one from either other House. All in all, though, it was kinda lame walking around, so Karen and I went to the Border for dinner and then headed to Harvard Yard, which proved to be much cooler.

At the time, the set from Harry and the Potters, who were headlining the evening, was about half-ish over. We still got to hear some great songs, though. And there was a great ending to the evening, when the singer shouted “Now let’s go kill Voldemort by reading!!!”.

The next day, we got our preordered copy delivered to us and Karen had to physically restrain herself from sitting and reading it straight through right then. But bigger plans were afoot! Our destination was Bill and Laura’s for Laura’s birthday party. ... ... ... and Karen read the first 2 chapters out loud in the car on the way. But really, though, it was a good party, and fun was had by all. We played Carcassonne and Scotland Yard, followed by some of the TMNT arcade games on MAME. We started a game of Munchkin but never finished. Everyone else was annoyed at the fact that I had a crapload of stuff.

So the next morning we all awoke and had copious amounts of bacon and some pancakes. Karen made a coffee cake, which was quite nice. Then we headed to Amber’s for the disaster movie party in which Evolution, The Day After Tomorrow, Twister, and Mitchell were watched. Well, most people left after Twister, so we popped in Mitchell. That made us leave around midnight, though, which is bad as Amber’s house is in the middle of nowhere, so it took us a while to get home.

A good weekend, though. And tonight, Karen and I will be reading HP to each other until we’re done. :)