Barb's Christmas Party.

Ah, so finally it is beginning to feel like the holidays.

Last night Barb had her yearly holiday party, and nothing quite makes you feel like it's close to Christmas like hanging out at Barb's place with all of their friends. This marks my third year in coming up to this party, and finally they realized that maybe, just maybe, it was time to open up the invitee list. Barb's party, so far as I can tell, has pretty much always been a girls night out type of pre-holiday get together, and for the last two years I was the odd man at the party, and thus treated like that odd sideshow circus attraction that people look at but don't really want to get to close to...

Last night, finally, there was some relief in that I wasn't the lone man at the party. Since I had broken the all women barrier a few years ago, Bridget was allowed to bring her husband Mario to the party. It's nice to see these things opening up to all, and it was a great night of fun which centered mainly on Tina telling China stories and showing off her new language knowledge.

And, as another note, our luggage decided to show up too. I waited all day, mostly watching Discovery and the History channel which I didn't realize I missed that much, and around 15:00 I received a call asking for confirmation on the address to deliver our bags to. Only problem was they only had one bag to deliver. "Where's the other bag" I asked only to hear "We just deliver, we're not the airline, I can't answer your questions..." Yep, that's fun.

So, wait I did and around 18:00 another call came in, this time to tell us that our bag would be delivered before 23:00. Great, so the window of noon to six had now moved to six to eleven, and they still only had one bag. Tina made a few calls to the airlines and somehow our second bag was found. Our bags were delivered mid-party at 20:00 and 21:30.

All is well in our world again.