Margie came down with the bug on Saturday, which meant she was under the weather for the Ks’ Christmas Party. She still seemed to have a good time, though, and the party was the usual smash. Relatively light attendance this year, around 80 or so — which didn’t keep the place from becoming incredibly warm. Fortunately, the promised rain held off for most of the evening, so it was always possible to duck outside to cool off — as many people did.
The night before was Our Night Out, as my folks took possession of Kitten on Friday morning for a day and night of cousin-filled revelry, Robbie and Sean being also there on a visit. John & Paula reportedly went out for a romantic dinner.
Since Mary was visiting, Margie and I went out with her instead to Catal, a very nice Mediterranean-themed restaurant at Downtown Disney (Calif.). Had some faboo osso buco.
Wandered around DD for a while after that, picked up some Lego goodies, enjoyed the ambience, then back to Catal’s again for dessert. The waiter had informed us if we were out on the balcony at 9:30 we could see the nightly fireworks show, and so we did and were and could. Very nice. Huge after-dinner drinks, very rich desserts, plus coffee. We rolled back to the car.
But going back still earlier in the day, we got a green light from Jim & Ginger and went ahead and picked up a new PC for them from CostCo — an eMachines unit, very nice, very fast, pretty cool. They decided to keep the flatscreen monitor we’d picked up earlier. Mary, on the other hand, is buying the Firewire external CD/RW we couldn’t use, saving us a trip to Fry’s return line.
Sunday (to leap back ahead) was show time for putting the new beast together (after the traditional party post mortem and opening of associated gifts). It all went smooth as silk. A quick trip to Fry’s in the afternoon netted us a program called Conversions Plus, which (a) converts native Mac files to Windows format files, and (b) lets the PC read Mac-formatted disks, including Zip disks. Sweet, though the old Excel 3.0 files on the Mac need re-saving as Appleworks ones.
(Also picked up a Shanghai program. Alas, the one they prefer — Shanghai II – Dragon’s Eye — isn’t available anywhere for love or money. Dagnabbit.)
Also got to play with my new toy a gift I got for Margie for Christmas, a 128Mb Cig@r drive, a little USB RAM disk that works on both the Mac and the PC. Sweet.
Last night did dinner, put Kitten to bed (again and again), and then played Fluxx with Mary and Margie. A nice day.
As to the rest of the week …
… Today I worked. Work, work, work. Eat a monster lunch. Work some more. Actually got some stuff done, too.
… Work with Ginger and Margie to ID files that need to be moved from the Mac to the PC. It’s like cleaning out the garage. Ditto for the mail system.
… Install stuff from my PC to Jim & Ginger’s. Burned CDs for backup today, which will also be useful next week when I move into my new machine. I hope.
… Show Jim and Ginger how the PC works. They use PCs at their offices, so it’s not a complete culture shock, but I want to make sure that they know what’s what, and that there are no huge surprises.
… Go see Two Towers again. Snickering may ensue, I fear.
… New Years Eve party at the Ks! Hors d’oevres! Games! Pointy hats! Champagne!
… Bid Mary farewell on Wednesday.
… Work on Thursday. Bleah.
… Visit with Tracy on Friday afternoon (huzzah!), and dinner with my folks in the evening.
… Fly home on Saturday, jiggity-jig.
In between, lots of sleep, twiddling with the new machine, and a ginormous packing job that may challenge both Jim and Margie’s space-warping ability and the newly-inquisitive gremlins of the TSA. Stay tuned.