XMas, solstice...whichever

So yesterday was the solstice. We celebrated Christmas with illyaa's family, including some cousins we don't see that often. Or, in a few cases, that we expect to see a little more of, since they have just moved to Toledo from West Virginia. Festivities included way too much food and chocolate, presents of course, Fluxx of both the Zombie and Monty Python varieties, which I inflicted on people to keep my kids amused, and Guitar Hero. Our nephew is pretty wizard at Guitar Hero, as is Mark, husband of illyaa's cousin Kim. We got to meet the newest addition to the family, their son Max. Some members of illyaa's family keep trying to civilize us with gifts of china and other stereotypically gifty things. It never works.

Meandering is more efficient than a straight line anyway, isn't it?

On Saturday, I went to visit my friend A. A and I have been friends since middle school. In high school, she turned me into a movie watcher with numerous movie nights which inevitably included Little Caesars "garbage can" (everything) pizza. We lived together my freshman year at UM, which was her sophomore year, and lived in apartments together the next two years after that. But we haven't seen that much of each other in the last few years, partly because I have kids and she doesn't, partly because her work life has largely been drama-filled in the last several-to-many years (which appears to be well and truly over, yahoo!), and partly because it's a pretty far haul between our residences (especially if you don't use the freeway, like I didn't on Saturday).

Anyway, the reason I went was to pick up a very important item for our family Christmas... they gave us an extra Wii they had, which came from a misunderstanding about who was buying a group gift among some other friends. Shhhh. Rock Band 2 is in the closet, along with an extra controller and some other accessories. Double Shhhh.

In any case, as is common when we get together, I had to make myself leave, several hours later, because we can talk for hours and hours. I told her and her husband of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, of which they had not heard. They showed me some Top Gear video (of their amphibious cars episode). We talked and talked and talked. About Tibetian Buddhism and roleplaying and movies and our lives and many other things. And there was tea.

Which leads to the revelation of the day: Agave nectar is a low glycemic sweetener. Score!