New Year's Day

Woke up late again, of course, and Oren came over. For lack of any better ideas for lunch, we went to Uwajimaya, where we met up with Zach. I got thai noodles and everyone else got sushi, and we took it all back to Oren's house, where we sat around playing cards for several hours -- first Mhing (a mah-jong card game we hadn't played in aaaaages) and more Tichu, where Carl and I teamed up and actually beat Oren and Zach, thus ending the debate about whether Oren always wins or Deanna always loses.

Because it was a Sunday night, Zach and Oren and Carl and I went to Taste of India. It still amuses me to no end to type a sentence like that, being as we used to have a group of friends back in college who went to the Taste of India restaurant in Pittsburgh every Sunday night. Whee. Carl and I split some matar paneer and I ate too much bread.

Came back here, watched a few episodes of Sledge Hammer, played some 4-player Mario Kart, and then Zach and Oren left. Carl and I stayed up talking for a while, but not too late because he had an early morning flight today, and infact, as I type this he should be in the air somewhere. Bleh, guess I'll see him at Carnival or something.

So, yeah. I'll do new year's resolutions soon, but I should go do some productive-like things today.

Santa secrets

So, tonight was our secret santa thing at Justin and Colleen's house. I had been pondering for the last week or so what to get for Heidi, who had been randomly assigned to me. I decided on a knitting book of some sort, and something gym-related. After dropping off Carl at the airport and all, I went shopping for a few hours today. For the book, I went to Barnes & Noble, and I found something perfect -- a book with like 50 knitting projects for babies and toddlers, with all sorts of varying difficulty. I couldn't think up anything gym-related at the bookstore (and I was in danger of getting sucked in to read something in the baseball section), so I left. Went to REI in the hopes of finding something gym-related. Realized that I couldn't actually buy anything gym-related because I didn't know appropriate clothing or shoe size. Oops. I tried on a few shirts that were on clearance though, and the first few were terrible but the last few were awesome, so I bought three of them. I also looked around at travel bags, since Oren and Brad had these awesome backpack suitcases on our trip to Japan four years ago. I found some pretty spiffy bags, except they all cost like $200-250. Ugh.

Anyway, I got Heidi a gift certificate from REI as a "virtual gym outfit" or a "virtual shopping trip".

Later that evening I went over to the secret santa thing (wearing one of my spiffy new shirts -- whee!), and we all ate food and hung out for a few hours first, until Jarrett showed up, and then we did presents. Ironically, Heidi and I had somehow been assigned each other -- and she got me a gift certificate to the Alderwood Mall with a note saying "your present is a shopping spree with your secret santa!" So, that's sort of funny, but the good part is I guess we'll get to go shopping sometime! I think most people were happy with their presents, or so it seemed.

Now that the entire gift-giving season is over, I suppose I can go raid Half Price Books and actually get new books again.

Also, I want to see the movie of The Producers. Does anyone want to go with me? I don't really have very many plans in the upcoming days/weeks at all, it feels like.