This past weekend was another full one.  Friday night was an old-school Gears party and a great time, as usual.  The chainsaw is still overpowered but what can you do.  Saturday was another painting day at the condo as we try and class up the joint for the new tenant.   It went pretty well and I was even able to get home in time to watch VT pull ahead in the ACC championship game — in HD on my new TV as well.  I told Christina later that might have been one of the best hours I’ve ever had.

Anyway, I then had to head out for my company’s (very early) Christmas party.  My company always does something a little different than most — we can get away with it since we’re so tiny — and this year we had a bowling outing and then dinner at McCormick and Schmick’s.  It was fun despite my worst bowling game ever — need to do Wii Bowling next year so I can show them up.

After dinner I was finally able to get in a co-op game of Left 4 Dead.  All I can say is that it lived up to my expectations.  Exceeded them.  Chris, Frank, Lucas, and I teamed up and played through the No Mercy level and I can honestly say I’ve played few games that were as non-stop intense as Left 4 Dead.  The forced co-op works as advertised;  You simply cannot wander off alone no matter how good you are because the zombies will overwhelm and kill you in less than a minute.  The game is extremely polished with a lot of attention to detail, plenty of humor, and just an all around well-made game.  The other highlight is that each play-through is completely different due to the “AI Director” who randomizes everything on the level and adjusts based on the current status of your progress.  Very cool concept and adds tons of replayability.

Sunday was a bit more tame as I met my sister Erin in Fredericksburg to swap the van for my Celica.  So very glad to have my Celica back — it might not be the fanciest car in the world but it suits me perfectly.  The evening was wrapped up with a birthday dinner for Christina’s grandmother.  Whew!

Thanksgiving has come and gone and my least favorite holiday is now behind me.  It’s not that I dislike Thanksgiving — I’m just not a big traditional meal kind of guy so a holiday devoted to just that isn’t really my thing.  A few days off work, on the hand — That is something I can get behind.  Regardless, on my new rotating holiday schedule (thank you Married Life!), this year was Turkey Day down in Richmond.  True to my family, it was a loud and boisterous affair with people coming and going and upwards of 25 some people tucked away in every nook of my grandmother’s house.  In a rather bizarre turn of event, I somehow ended up spending a good portion of the day watching Dallas with a bunch of Cowboys groupies…  Ack!  Ah well, I’m more of a college fan anyway.

Speaking of college football, due to the crazy parity (and mediocrity) of the ACC conference this season, VT is somehow going to the ACC Championship game this Saturday.  They will match up against BC - Sound familiar?  That’s right — all of the twists and turns, the unexpected upsets, the week-by-week changes in division leaders… at the end of the season, the exact same teams from last season are playing for the ACC conference championship.  Surprise!

Now that the college football season is winding down, I finally got a new TV for my basement.  My too generous mom dragged me out to Circuit City on Black Friday and coerced me into picking out a new TV for my downstairs “man cave.”  After moving into the townhouse a bit over a year ago, I had given up my nice HDTV for the living room upstairs and had made do with a 19″ monitor down in my basement that was also hooked up to one of my computers. No more — I’m back to the sweet goodness of a big HDTV.

There was a catch, of course.  My car, which is ideally sized for me, is not quite as ideally sized for an HDTV.  I had a few different options for transferring the TV back to my townhouse but in the end, I settled on my mom’s minivan.

My mom will tell all who listen that the minivan she has, a Mazda MPV, is the only minivan that drives like a car.  She may be right but whichever car it is that it drives similarly to… well, it is definitely not a Toyota Celica.  While it’s a very nice vehicle in it’s own right, I just can’t get past the notion that I’m driving around in a minivan.  On the other hand, my mom can’t stand driving around “an inch from the ground” in my car either so I guess it’s good that we’re supposed to be swapping back next weekend.  I’m just glad I hadn’t chosen to borrow my uncles truck.

Welcome, Sarah.  My sister Amye popped out #3 a couple of weeks ago and between that and the eldest niece’s birthday, our not-quite-monthly trip down to Richmond took place last weekend.  Sarah is a little young to hold my interest — they’re much more entertaining once they learn how to talk — but Abigail and Samantha are endlessly amusing.

Christina and I made it down just in time to catch the latter half of each of their soccer games.  There is a dramatic difference in their approach to the game: Abigail is a non-stop motor, devoted to the game, and a true athlete in training.  Samantha has a much more lackadaisical interest in the game and is much more focused on being subbed out so she can get more juice boxes and snacks.  After they came off the field, Abigail was more interested in playing laser tag and basketball while her sister kept cornering people so that she could play “pretend”.  Samantha does a great kitten impression and seems to find no limit to the scenarios she can dream up.

There was one more birthday for which I was asked to visit Richmond for and that was my own.  Living up to his reputation, my uncle Steve showed up at Texas de Brazil ready to embarass me.  Texas de Brazil is not exactly a “low brow” restaurant and I’m sure the wait staff appreciated stepping over the inflatable walker extolling my new age and numerous infirmities.  It was good for a laugh, though.  I did snag a copy of Spore as a present so I’ll probably be writing about that in the near future… that is, as soon as I have a free bit of time to play it.

Christina and I are back to work today after our Vegas trip. Jason & Adrianne joined us in Vegas for the last 2 days and we mostly wandered the strip, stopping for drinks and the occasional craps session. Jason was a big proponent of playing craps while we were out there and it worked out pretty well for us. Christina was “rolling bullets” and we walked away a solid winner — enough to cover the poker tournament buy-in from the first day out.

You would have no idea the economy was in the dumps by the amount of construction out in Vegas. CityCenter, in particular, was ridiculous. The Venetian is still my favorite casino — I’m sure the excellent poker room there has nothing to do with it. They expanded the Venetian to add the Palazzo and the Wynn had added the Encore since I had visited last. I guess there are always people willing to go out and gamble though I don’t know how people can afford to stay at some of these casinos.

The last time Christina and I were in Vegas, we did a television screening where we rated tv shows using a little dial. You don’t know what show(s) you’re going to see until you’re in there but we ended up watching clips from 3 primetime comedy shows. The only one I remember was “How I Met Your Mother” with Doogie Howser but overall, it was actually kind of fun and interesting. Anyway, as we walked through MGM on Saturday, we talked it up a bit and so the 5 of us decided to do it again. As luck would have it, we ended up screening “Wellington” — some reality show Animal Planet is developing. I thought for sure it was another reality show MTV was creating and was a bit stunned that Animal Planet was the channel behind it. Imagine The Hills or Laguna Beach merged with horse shows… if you can imagine such an abomination. I dialed up “0″ from the get-go and rode it until the very end of the 40 minutes of my life that I will never get back.

Our overnight flight back was fairly uneventful and we got in about 5am on Sunday morning. After a nap, the rest of the day was spent doing yard work and watching football. Early to bed last night and now I’m back to the daily grind.

Brian and I played in a 140-person poker tournament at the Venetian. I haven’t played too much in the past several months and there were probably a few hands I could have played differently but didn’t due to my rusty abilities. More troublesome was a dire lack of playable hands (Brian claimed similar issues). As it was, I really only played four hands: pocket aces for no action, AQ for a split pot, all-in A8 that was called and sucked out on by QT. My final hand was shortly after that last one and saw me take my AJ up against AT, A3, and 54. As is typical, the 54 took out my “best of the bunch” hand when the flop came A54. I finished around 60th, besting Brian but not much else.

In college, I was almost universally referred to simply as “gergi”.  Since then, there have been numberous times I’ve come across an old college friend where they can’t recall my real name but can usually pull “gergi” without a problem.  No complaints from me - I like my nickname.

On the other hand, Christina acquired the nickname “killer” at her previous job.  When she quit there last year, she thought she had finally outlived down the nickname.  Unfortunately, at her new job there are many Christinas, Kristins, etc so they mentioned that they’d have to give her a nickname.  Christina foolishly told them about her previous nickname, they readily took it up, and now she’s stuck with it again.

At the wedding this past weekend, her friends family has referred to Christina as “peanut” as long as they’ve known her.  I’m sure it has nothing to do with her dimunitive size.

Most likely, the two of us will be known as gergi and the killer peanut for many years to come.

Rained out of our camping trip to Douthat State Park, my in-laws and I met up with the Coopers down in Charlottesville for dinner & game night.  There weren’t many complaints about missing out on the camping and we even played a full game of Trivial Pursuit, boys vs. girls.  Quick: What are the eastern-most and western-most states?  The ladies missed that one though they gave us a pretty good game overall.  There were several out-of-thin-air answers from them that kept the game close.  Our victory was aided by a distraction in the form of Fred…

Fred in baseball uniform

We got home fairly early on Sunday and Christina squeezed in as much anxious worrying as she could — Today was her first day at her new job.  On a day when the economy blew up, it’s quite reassuring to have two incomes again!

Dreams are funny things.  Every guy knows that all girls do when having sleepovers is have pillow fights but somehow, when I’m there to see it, it doesn’t seem quite as exciting as I thought it would be.  Granted, in my case, this is almost certainly due to the fact that 1/2 the girls are feline.  That’s right, Argo and Christina are at it again.  Argo has rekindled her love for Christina’s pillow and each night consists of Argo gradually pushing Christina off her pillow until she has the whole pillow and Christina is left with her head hanging off the side of the bed.  It would be funny except that Christina doesn’t seem to find it so very funny and that means I get to deal with the resultant grumpy Christina.  Somehow, I thought these pillow fights had a happier ending…

This weekend, I helped my sister Amye move down in Richmond.  She moved into a good-sized house though she seemed to have enough furniture for 3 or 4 houses.  I pity her for having to get it all straight.  We didn’t get it all unloaded until about 9pm Saturday night and, by that point, no one was particularly interested in helping to get it organized.  I have a feeling her boyfriend is going to be sore for several days (as I am) and my 8-month pregnant sister probably isn’t going to be moving too much furniture for awhile.

I was supposed to repeat the process next month to help my other sister but unfortunately, Erin moved up her move out date to one of my otherwise busy weekends.  My mom is about to have whiplash as she goes from a house of 5.5 girls to just herself in just 2 weeks.

Interesting weekend.  Eisenhower came back to his birth state and obliterated Houston.  I played golf with some friends and somehow managed to win.  VT won a game they shouldn’t have… much better than losing games they should have won.  On the political front, Karl Rove, of all people, called out McCain on his less than truthful political ads.  When Karl Rove thinks your ads are going too far, not only are you going too far but the apocalypse must be near.  Tina Fey out-Palined Palin in the once-a-year-SNL-moment-worth-watching.   On a ridiculously hot Sunday morning, I was outside mending fences… literally, not figuratively.  Later, I went to a Batman-themed birthday party… for a guy who just turned 25.  A very busy, and very odd, weekend all around.