On Monday night I went to the knitting group Christmas party. It was potluck (pretty good food), followed by the usual gift swapping game, except this time gifts were mostly handmade. I’m kind of sorry I never got a shawl made ahead of time--I tried to but tiny complicated shawls are not my bag, baby--because hoo boy, did this crowd go nuts over them and steal them. One woman must have stolen and lost 5-6 times alone. I donated a belt/possible neck wrap, which went next to last and of course ended up with someone who wasn’t going to fit it. Awkward...next year if I’m gonna do this, better come up with a fancy shawl started more than 3 weeks before the event. And also do better wrapping, because the sadder my wrapping is (I stuck it in a little red bag and that was it), the less interesting it looks. I ended up with a crocheted bowl and handmade soaps. We then finished up with a demonstration of tai chi to holiday music.

I have finally finished my Christmas apron (and I redid the lights in my Christmas tree hat, as they finally keeled over and died), so I brought it over there to show off to an appreciative audience.

On Tuesday we had the work party--catered good food, gift swapping game. I wore both the Christmas apron and my (previously made years ago) Christmas tree hat and people enjoyed it. It’s nice to give some people something to look forward to. I bought a potty golf game (straight from Grocery Outlet) that the girl who drew it was very unhappy to get, even though everyone else there thought it was the funniest gift of the year. I sound biased, but it was! Anyway, she eventually had it stolen from her and she was very happy.

I ended up stealing a small terrarium with an air plant in it, which is very cute. I didn’t get a shot at any of the game gifts this year--a game called “Five Second Rule” that’s apparently about how much you can yell out in five seconds rather than eating off your floor, and some kind of party crafts kit I could have made use of. Ah well. Mostly people were stealing food items and blankets from each other...which kind of sounds terrible when you say that. Also lottery tickets, which the various stealers were not allowed to scratch off first. Also, one person ended up with “escape hammers,” something I did not know existed but apparently this is a thing to keep in your car should you drive your car into a lake.

I was at the table with the guy who had been #1, and he had gotten a fairly good gift--a glow in the dark T-shirt in a nifty bling box--and you could tell throughout the hour that he was totally undecided on whether or not to do a last minute steal. However, when the last guy to go opened the last gift and it was THE HAMILTON MIXTAPE...STEAL! He was delighted and I was delighted for him.

For the record, things at work have been lovely lately, everyone is being nice to me, go figure. I have heard through the grapevine that my boss has met with higher-ups (presumably about me), but then my boss called in sick to deal with a sick kid today, so who knows if I’ll hear anything this week or not.

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