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Dec. 26th, 2011 08:02 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dmxratedAs usual, I was the first one to wake up yesterday morning. Played Angry Birds, Mom and Dad woke up, and we waited for Brian and Marie to wake up as well. It was already bright outside by the time we started opening presents, but still dawn.
(The other day, Marie was the one to do most of the tree-decorating, and she found a present that had remained unopened for at least the previous year. We decided to make that one of the pickle gifts, but since Mom forgot to hang the pickle, we decided to have her tie a real pickle to the tree instead.
First off as usual: stockings. Got most of the same stuff as usual, such as scratch cards, chocolates, pistachios, and a MAD magazine (and also a box of Pocky). Along with those, though, I also got a small, cylindrical tin of breath mints... except that it contained a spring-snake instead. Mom mentioned that a Pringles can would've been too obvious, and I told everyone that I know someone who one time had a fire extinguisher w/ snakes in it.
For regular presents, some of the more interesting presents I got were the entire Lucky Star manga series (or at least the eight volumes that have already been published) and gift cards for Barnes & Noble, Amazon.com, and Bobbique. Also got a whole box of Yoo-Hoo, which I actually stopped drinking ever since a year ago (when Marie pointed out that it's actually chocolate-flavored water), though I'll probably have a bottle each time I make myself a burger for lunch. My presents to everyone were as follows:
-Mom: The entire Daria DVD series, since my parents and I used to watch that each Sunday at 9 when I was in early 6th grade.
(For the record, I have known that all the songs used in the broadcast version had been replaced with a regular soundtrack. Would've been funny, though, if the producers used the same one from something like Lucky Star or Pani Poni Dash! Or maybe even from The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, since Kyon and Yuki are a similar Deadpan Snarker and bookworm meganekko respectively to this show's titular protagonist.)
-Brian: A gift card for Applebee's. Mom's suggestion while we were shopping the other day, since he did take me and several others there a year ago.
-Marie: A solar-powered bobblehead of a kitty-cat eating a fish (see here). (I accompanied her opening of the gift with that jingle that plays in Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time when you open up a treasure chest), after she told me I look suspicious about something.)
How I thought to buy that for her? Well, a month ago, Mom made a stop at Costco while driving home from somewhere, and I hung out by the car. I noticed that figure, and also a bunny-rabbit eating a carrot, on the dashboard in another car. Since there was someone reading a book in the driver's seat, I figured I'd wait until either Mom or whoever that person was waiting for came back before asking. Mom came back first, and I offered to show them to her (or something like that), and she told me to just knock on her window to ask. (According to that person, someone got them for her on Amazon.com.)
-Dad: A snow shovel with a "backsaver" near the head. That, so that none of us has to use that slightly chipped plastic shovel that he has in the garage. According to Mom, Dad was planning on buying a snowblower, but apparently still hasn't yet.
As for other stuff we got... Well, Mom got a couple of sliders for the silverware drawer. She and I have complained to Dad several times about how it tends to slide out on its own if you don't close it gently enough, and he kinda just blew us off each time, saying that the whole house needs to be fixed (although he did show all of us how to fix the basement doorknob the previous night). She also got an old-fashioned radio, and Dad got a coffee maker with a bunch of different-flavored cups of coffee cream. (There were also two presents from Grandma Ella to Dad that we originally planned to wait to open in her presence, but she eventually gave us the get-go. Inside one was an ice cream maker, and the other had some dishes to go with it.)
And finally, for the pickle gift. I managed to find the pickle before Brian or Marie could, and proceeded to eat it even though it was a bit dried up. Inside the aforementioned gift that Marie found was an ornament. Mom also had another pickle gift for in case that one didn't have a very good present. Inside that one was a box of cocoa truffles.
After the gift-opening ended, Brian decided to play one of those Daria DVDs. At first, he was going to play the last season, but we asked that he start from the beginning. We reached a compromise, and he started with season 3, claiming that Daria didn't really become a character until then. Watched a total of four episodes.
While watching the first of those four, The Old and the Beautiful, we had to pause mid-episode to eat breakfast. We left a couple of soda bottles outside to cool, but most of us had something called mimosa to drink (I had egg nog instead), so we had forgotten all about the soda. After having a couple of pancakes and some bacon, I poured myself a second glass of egg nog, assuming that Mom would still be making more pancakes. Turned out she had originally stopped, but she did have some waffle batter to make more with, so I had one more before deciding it was enough.
Second episode of Daria we watched was Depth Takes a Holiday. Not only does this coincide with the actual holidays, but that particular episode made it onto TV Tropes' Western Animation page for Dethroning Moment of Suck for turning an otherwise slice-of-life cartoon into something resembling the plot of a Family Guy episode.
(Didn't see any real opportunities to crack a Lucky Star joke, but here's an analogy that occurred to me: In this show, Daria and Jane, two of the core characters, are closest friends, and Daria has a crush on Jane's brother Trent for the first three seasons, though Wikipedia states that whether he reciprocates those feelings is unknown. In LS, we have supporting characters Ayano and Misao, the former being the only teenage character to have a boyfriend (who never even appears), and according to the manga, said boyfriend happens to be Misao's unnamed brother.)
From that point on... nothing much happened. However, I did complete the remaining levels in Angry Birds, so I'll wait a short while before I download the Windows version onto our regular computer. Today, we are due to visit everyone in New Jersey, so tomorrow might be a better time to actually start over w/ Japanese in Mangaland, volume 2. Also, we ate dinner at around 8, and Mom made ice cream sundaes more than an hour later.
(The other day, Marie was the one to do most of the tree-decorating, and she found a present that had remained unopened for at least the previous year. We decided to make that one of the pickle gifts, but since Mom forgot to hang the pickle, we decided to have her tie a real pickle to the tree instead.
First off as usual: stockings. Got most of the same stuff as usual, such as scratch cards, chocolates, pistachios, and a MAD magazine (and also a box of Pocky). Along with those, though, I also got a small, cylindrical tin of breath mints... except that it contained a spring-snake instead. Mom mentioned that a Pringles can would've been too obvious, and I told everyone that I know someone who one time had a fire extinguisher w/ snakes in it.
For regular presents, some of the more interesting presents I got were the entire Lucky Star manga series (or at least the eight volumes that have already been published) and gift cards for Barnes & Noble, Amazon.com, and Bobbique. Also got a whole box of Yoo-Hoo, which I actually stopped drinking ever since a year ago (when Marie pointed out that it's actually chocolate-flavored water), though I'll probably have a bottle each time I make myself a burger for lunch. My presents to everyone were as follows:
-Mom: The entire Daria DVD series, since my parents and I used to watch that each Sunday at 9 when I was in early 6th grade.
(For the record, I have known that all the songs used in the broadcast version had been replaced with a regular soundtrack. Would've been funny, though, if the producers used the same one from something like Lucky Star or Pani Poni Dash! Or maybe even from The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, since Kyon and Yuki are a similar Deadpan Snarker and bookworm meganekko respectively to this show's titular protagonist.)
-Brian: A gift card for Applebee's. Mom's suggestion while we were shopping the other day, since he did take me and several others there a year ago.
-Marie: A solar-powered bobblehead of a kitty-cat eating a fish (see here). (I accompanied her opening of the gift with that jingle that plays in Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time when you open up a treasure chest), after she told me I look suspicious about something.)
How I thought to buy that for her? Well, a month ago, Mom made a stop at Costco while driving home from somewhere, and I hung out by the car. I noticed that figure, and also a bunny-rabbit eating a carrot, on the dashboard in another car. Since there was someone reading a book in the driver's seat, I figured I'd wait until either Mom or whoever that person was waiting for came back before asking. Mom came back first, and I offered to show them to her (or something like that), and she told me to just knock on her window to ask. (According to that person, someone got them for her on Amazon.com.)
-Dad: A snow shovel with a "backsaver" near the head. That, so that none of us has to use that slightly chipped plastic shovel that he has in the garage. According to Mom, Dad was planning on buying a snowblower, but apparently still hasn't yet.
As for other stuff we got... Well, Mom got a couple of sliders for the silverware drawer. She and I have complained to Dad several times about how it tends to slide out on its own if you don't close it gently enough, and he kinda just blew us off each time, saying that the whole house needs to be fixed (although he did show all of us how to fix the basement doorknob the previous night). She also got an old-fashioned radio, and Dad got a coffee maker with a bunch of different-flavored cups of coffee cream. (There were also two presents from Grandma Ella to Dad that we originally planned to wait to open in her presence, but she eventually gave us the get-go. Inside one was an ice cream maker, and the other had some dishes to go with it.)
And finally, for the pickle gift. I managed to find the pickle before Brian or Marie could, and proceeded to eat it even though it was a bit dried up. Inside the aforementioned gift that Marie found was an ornament. Mom also had another pickle gift for in case that one didn't have a very good present. Inside that one was a box of cocoa truffles.
After the gift-opening ended, Brian decided to play one of those Daria DVDs. At first, he was going to play the last season, but we asked that he start from the beginning. We reached a compromise, and he started with season 3, claiming that Daria didn't really become a character until then. Watched a total of four episodes.
While watching the first of those four, The Old and the Beautiful, we had to pause mid-episode to eat breakfast. We left a couple of soda bottles outside to cool, but most of us had something called mimosa to drink (I had egg nog instead), so we had forgotten all about the soda. After having a couple of pancakes and some bacon, I poured myself a second glass of egg nog, assuming that Mom would still be making more pancakes. Turned out she had originally stopped, but she did have some waffle batter to make more with, so I had one more before deciding it was enough.
Second episode of Daria we watched was Depth Takes a Holiday. Not only does this coincide with the actual holidays, but that particular episode made it onto TV Tropes' Western Animation page for Dethroning Moment of Suck for turning an otherwise slice-of-life cartoon into something resembling the plot of a Family Guy episode.
(Didn't see any real opportunities to crack a Lucky Star joke, but here's an analogy that occurred to me: In this show, Daria and Jane, two of the core characters, are closest friends, and Daria has a crush on Jane's brother Trent for the first three seasons, though Wikipedia states that whether he reciprocates those feelings is unknown. In LS, we have supporting characters Ayano and Misao, the former being the only teenage character to have a boyfriend (who never even appears), and according to the manga, said boyfriend happens to be Misao's unnamed brother.)
From that point on... nothing much happened. However, I did complete the remaining levels in Angry Birds, so I'll wait a short while before I download the Windows version onto our regular computer. Today, we are due to visit everyone in New Jersey, so tomorrow might be a better time to actually start over w/ Japanese in Mangaland, volume 2. Also, we ate dinner at around 8, and Mom made ice cream sundaes more than an hour later.