The Naughty Elf

Merry Christmas and here is my gift to you...Mike in an elf outfit.
Jodi and I went to Mike and Kari's last night for their Christmas celebration. What a great idea! They had all kinds of holiday drinks, hot buttered rum, apple pie, Irish coffee, and Coors light. Friends stopped by throughout the night and it was great to see everyone. We even got to see Dave and Hana which was great considering that we haven't seen them since the wedding. At one point Matt, Mike's brother in law came out in a full fledge Santa outfit. He had a bag of toys and was handing them out to all the kids stopping by. Kids were in shock. Not to be outdone by Santa Mike comes flying out in his elf costume, green tights and all. What are my thoughts at this point in time? "So wrong, but sooooooo right!" You see, if you hang out with Mike long enough you begin to realize that this is a regular occurrence. We were just glad to see that he decided to go with tights instead of green leg paint.

On a different note Jodi and I are hanging out today until we go up to VIc and Peggy's house for Christmas. It should be a mellow weekend.

Busy Weekend Ahead

The o'll social calendar has been pretty booked the past few weeks. Birthdays, holiday parties, catching up with friends has kept Jodi and I on the run. This weekend will be no exception. Tonight we have my companies holiday party at the San Francisco City Hall. It should be interesting.

Tomorrow night it's off to Marissa's parents house for their annual Christmas party. Net-Net: there will be a plenty of good food and holiday beverages.

Holy S@#% it's Cold Here!

8:30 EST - Touchdown Detroit airport. As I exit the plane there is a small gap between the plane and the terminal. In that 1" gap I take a breath and a huge white cloud forms right in my face. I just checked the temp and it's 8 degrees! Thank god I bought a wool coat last week.

I took about a 30 minute cab ride to Birmingham Michigan, a suburb of Detroit. It's really nice here, almost like a Normal Rockwell painting. Tree lined streets, brick buildings, Christmas lights, parks, etc. OH ya it's did I mention it's 8 degrees!. There are beautiful, huge mansions here. I asked the cabie how much one of them might cost and he said, "oh those are real expensive." I asked what is expensive, he says "150 -200K." The whole time I'm thinking to myself "I can't buy something falling down in the Bay Area for under 700K." Is it worth it? After 3 days of experiencing 8 degrees I'll let you know. I like what the girl at the coffee shop near my hotel said when she saw my California license, "what the hell are you doing here?"

Tomorrow it's off for a full day of site visits and then to our companies event. I fly out Friday morning and get in to SF around noon.

Time to Celebrate

I finally did it. I took the leaderboard this month for the fist time at work. Where I work it's not like one would expect to get any form of recognition for this. It's more of a personal goal. I also closed my 201 deal, which is also a personal milestone. Given that I turned 28 today and it's a new sales month I decided to exercise my floating holiday and took the day off.

It's not like I did anything all that exciting, but it was a nice reward. I feel like I am rarely one to reward myself or acknowledge that I did a good thing but yesterday I felt it was time to pat myself on the back.

Today I woke up to pooring rain. Jodi left the house and I decided to make a breakfast sandwich and organize 8.4 GB of music that I hijacked from my buddies Ipod at work. After that I emptied the packaging peanuts from this 3 Ft box in the office and cut a hole in the side to let the cats duke it out. They did exactly that. One cat would climb in the box and the other cat would stand in front of the hole. At one point I saw a whole cat arm, shoulder and all come out that small hole. That was good entertainment for 30 minutes...It's great when you find yourself laughing by yourself.

After that I decided to hop on bus 30 to go to Union Square to do some Christmas shopping. As always the bus (that goes through China town) smelt like moth balls and old polyester....SWEET! I killed some deals (oh my gosh I sound like a chick) and I was out. Oh ya, when I was being rung up in the home department the woman at the register asked how old I was. I said "well matter of fact I turned 28 today." I look behind me and there are 8 women in line and they all say, "you don't look a day over 27." Then they sing me happy Birthday. Turns out they were from Fresno....small world.

So here I am, waiting for Jodi to get into the city to meet her old roommate Jenny for a drink. I have a nice glass of Zin, and I am listening to St. Germain. If you don't have any of this guys music I highly recommend it. Jazzy, Blues, with a steady beat.