The first week of vacation was spent on Christmas and family related activities which was a heck of a lot of fun. To minimize their shopping effort, I had given my parents a Christmas list of CDs and even marked all the ones that would be really easy to find. I then promptly forgot about it. As I opened each CD on Christmas morning, I was like Grandpa Alzheimer, getting genuinely shocked that they had found all these obscure CD’s that I really wanted. My parents actually went through the trouble of only buying CDs from my list that I didn’t mark as easy to find, including a CD that was a compilation of songs from the only LP that I miss losing in my house fire. It was a compilation of early electronic “music” from the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center. As if that wasn’t good enough, my sister got me a velvet painting of Mr. T, which now sits next to the first item removed from my burnt house: my Mr. T. head bank. Both now guard my living room against foo’s.

After Christmas, we tore into all of the new card and board games, and when we all weren’t trying to figure out the obscure rules to games like Munchkin and Killer Bunnies, my sister and I took stole a couple of hours to play co-op and head-to-head games of Guitar Hero II. There is a picture of the event floating around a memory card somewhere that perfectly expresses how we both felt at the time. I was seated and relaxed, my feet up and a pillow behind my back like an musician who needs a stool on stage. My sister, on the other hand, stood in a certified rock stance, with the pained and horrified expression of someone who was playing against the devil for their very soul. To even the playing field, I played expert to her medium, but I have to say that she solidly whooped me a couple of times.

After the first week, the Christmas festivities came to a close and my sister returned to her coast, leaving #1GF! and I with nothing to do but slow down and unplug. The average day would start by waking up naturally at 8 AM without nightmarish earworms being jammed into my brain by the one FM station that actually comes in on our clock radio. On the off chance that I chose to shower, the natural mental quiet would make the shower feel like a real shower, rather than the damp, looping, musical Chinese water torture that I face on most normal work days.

In the interest of conserving nature’s resources, I would usually skip the shower and transfer myself directly to the big, purple couch to enjoy breakfast and an episode of Jerry Springer. Afterward, a portion of the day would be spent on emptying the DVR, watching shows from Peekvid, or chipping away at six seasons of Trailer Park Boys.

My sister gave me three of the six seasons of the Canadian comedy on DVD for Christmas, and once we chewed through that hysterical shit blizzard, we watched the remaining three seasons by searching for them on Daily Motion (Shows are marked with season and episode numbers such like S01E01 for “Season 1 Episode 1″ so that you can watch them all in order.)

To tell you the truth, I may have overdosed on the show, because at one point while playing a web-based game, I told #1GF! that I sucked at the game because I could figure it “oot”. She stared at me and cautiously asked “Did you just…”
“I did,” I said, ” but I didn’t mean it.”

Somewhere around 2 PM, I would eat lunch, start talking like Bubbles from the show, and maybe remember to brush my teeth. Then, I would return to the couch until I got back into bed at 11 PM.

I didn’t think about work.
I didn’t check e-mail.
I didn’t blog.
I didn’t even turn on my PC.

And, now I have returned to the connected world once again. Welcome me back, bitches.

Posted in #1GF!, Gaming, Happy, Music