The Coast(er) Is Clear

I spent most of yesterday in a face-to-face meeting with one of our vendors, followed by a lengthy lunch with them.
While we were at lunch I was going to send Scott a text message, and while "flicking" my way through my list of contacts I hit the entry for my brother Brad and inadvertently started dialing his cell phone, but I thought - incorrectly, it turns out - that I ended the call before it finished dialing.
Later that evening Brad called me back wondering what was up, and so I had to explain the accidental dialing.
Speaking of brothers, today is my brother Stuart's birthday. I've always thought that it had to suck to have your birthday so close to Chrismas, but I don't really remember him getting short-changed at all, so I guess it couldn't have been too bad.
Last night was Riff Trax night, though one of the movies we watched was just a regular, non-Riffed movie, the original The Day the Earth Stood Still. We're planning to see the remake that's coming out, so we figured we should watch the original. We then watched the Riff Trax version of X-Men, which was funny, but there were some Riffs that, as comic geeks, Scott and I found kind of grating. For example, there was this presumption that because it was a movie based on a "funny book" it couldn't contain references to serious, real-world events. In this case, said event being the Holocaust. Anyone who knows anything about X-Men knows that the history of Magneto, the X-Men's opponent, has long been connected to the Holocaust. It's part of what makes him tick; as a Jew he experienced persecution and the deaths of his loved ones, and as a mutant he fights to prevent something similar from happening to his people. I should think that the Riff Trax guys, of all people, would be nerdy enough to know that.
And as for the argument that something as serious as the Holocaust has no place in comic books, well, tell that to the Pulitzer Prize comittee.
Other than that they were quibbling about stupid shit like the fact that Wolverine isn't literally a wolverine.
Those irritations aside, most of their Riffs were, as usual, pretty damn funny.
We ordered a pizza for dinner. Specifically that "Pan-normous" pizza from Pizza Hut, which is actually two pizzas. I didn't think about that when ordering, so even though I ordered a Pepperoni Lover's on the whole pizza, I failed to specify that I wanted that for both of them, so one was just cheese. Oh well.
Whatever was wrong with me on the day before Thanksgiving is apparently some bug that's going around. My boss was out sick with it yesterday, and several other people (and their families) around the office have been hit with it.
Speaking of my boss, this morning she came by my cube and asked if I'd gotten the invitation to our group's holiday lunch. I said that I hadn't, and she apologized, as she'd assumed that I was on the original distribution, so she saw to it that I got the invite.
The lunch was going to be held at a local restaurant, and there was a "Secret Santa" gift exchange.
And it was today.
I ducked out a little early so that I could pick up some kind of gift ($15 limit) before heading to the restaurant. I stoped at Office Depot and picked up a 2 GB flash drive for $14.99. Technically, with sales tax, I went over the limit.
The way the gift exchange worked was that everyone picked a number. Number One then went to the table and picked a gift, and all the people thereafter could either keep the gift or swap with a person with a lower number.
My boss ended up picking - and keeping - the flash drive I'd bought.
As for me, I got a set of coasters, which was cool, because I've been meaning - and forgetting - to buy coasters for a long time. The coasters in question are the kind that you can put photos in. The idea of putting pornographic images in them amuses me, but I'll probably end up just printing out some of my drawings to put in them.
I also got a holiday ornament that has an LCD screen and flash memory that lets you display digital pictures.
Given that I don't decorate because, well, why bother, I don't have too much use for that, so I'll probably end up re-gifting it.
Driving home from the restaurant - the "lunch" didn't start until 2:30 - was kind of a pain, as I ended up leaving later in the day than I would have if I'd left from work, so there was more traffic to deal with. Plus it's rainy, so everyone on the road was reduced to the level of panic-stricken children.
I'm sure that if you went to a grocery store around here it would be sold out of milk, bottled water, toilet paper, and batteries, because ZOMG IT'S RAINING! THE END IS NEAR!
Even worse, it may dip below freezing tonight, turning it inot a "wintry mix," which is worse than a thousand apocalypses, apparently.