Xmas'ed Out

As backlogs (or BcLogs) go, mine's been backed up like a constipated sumo wrestler.

The day before Xmas Eve I had a late dinner w/ Eileen at Cyma in Trinoma. She got me a gift while I gave back some of her DVDs. Not the fairest Kris Kringle exchange, I know...

First Xmas with Liza, both Eve and Actual. For the Eve we first had a light dinner at her house, where I presented gifts to her mom (stereo) and dad (really nice umbrella). For her part she gave me Fuji apples branded w/ various icons like Xmas trees, Santas and even some "I Love You" signs. Turns out they were done by placing stickers on the apples a month before harvest.

At my place there was an actual party, so we ate even more, from BBQ to lechon and tasty chicken pie, although she preferred the pork soup and Chinese fried chicken. Popsicles for dessert (twin for me, pinipig crunch for her). Ate Penny was nice enough to write up for me a request for an X-ray to check out my shoulders, w/c have been aching for some time now. Save for one family I managed to get groups portraits for almost all the guests. Mine were even gracious enough to have Liza included in our shot.

And for the first time I had someone else help and participate in making my annual Xmas Clone Card (see result in previous blog entry). Previous experimenting w/ night photography helped make up for last year's cut-and-paste disaster.

I slept around 4AM, only to be awakened 5 hours later by Liza asking me to attend morning mass w/ her and her folks. This event I was sorely tempted to sleep and skip over, but she used the "3M Phrase" ("Mean so much to me"), so for the first time in several forevers I found myelf in a church w/o any previous wedding or baptism ceremony arranged, and before lunchtime. On the plus side Liza joined me at my place for the latter. Mmm, leftover chicken pie...

After lunch we all rested a bit, then headed to SM MoA to brave the traffic jams and the mall crowds, the likes of w/c I hadn't seen since the last 3-Day Sale at SM North EDSA. In the midst of looking for someplace to eat Liza decided to play Poke Your Partner's Private Parts in Public. Far be it from me to refuse this kind of challenge.

While it didn't help she was making up the scoring rules as we went along, in the end I gave up trying to earn points and just did it for sh*ts and giggles. She still insists I lost when she gave herself 2000 points for biting my finger in front of my brother Wilson, who was seated across the table from us at Fish & Co. (Don't worry, he wasn't looking. I think.).

After the early dinner we spent some time in Fully Booked, where Liza bought more vampire books and got me the paperback edition of Bob Woodward's State of Denial. Afterward we made the unfortunate decision to walk all the way to Tom's World in the South Wing to look for the kids, only to find out everyone was at Haagen-Dazs back North. I tried to take her mind off the long walk back by offering to carry all her things and telling her expensive servings of ice cream are better than queuing at Starbucks.

At The Dazs she sampled whatever flavor she could. The servers forgot my double scoop order entirely, so I ended up sharing Liza's caramel apple crumble and choco-choco chip combo. Everybody went home late again, but I had to keep her books in storage as she doesn't want her folks to find out she went on another book buying binge. :)