I'm off to Las Vegas! I'll be back Saturday afternoon sometime. The Beavers kicked Norte Dame's ass again last night, 38-21, so that made me a very happy boy.

The "highlight present" of the year was my new MP3 player:



It does a lot of crap:

-Plays mp3/wma/wav
-FM Radio Receiver
-FM Radio Recorder (jack music from radio!)
-Voice Recorder (has microphone... up to 16 hours)
-15 hours battery life on one AAA

Best of all, it just functions as a removable storage device, so there's absolutly nothing extra to install. Just plug it into your USB port and transfer. That's it. You can store any type of file on it as well so it acts as one of those keychain hard drives as well. Anywho, it's cool, I'm happy with it. It has 256MB, which is good for me. That's actually quite a lot of music if you're not spoiled by a 20GB iPod or whatever the hell they hold now.

A MUST SEE (excuse the "Trouble in the 'Hood" description... forget to change after the last movie I made when there was four police cars, a fire truck, and ambulance in my block):

http://www.zolknetwork.com/misc/thomas/moemoecharades.wmv

Grandma Graf playing charades (part of "Cranium" the game) with us... after she tried doing "Road Rage" I grabbed the camera. The last one is so halarious its funny....

Last night we left around 4:30 to go pick up my sister from work. Once we picked her up we went to a fancy bar in a hotel and had pre-meal cocktails (not me of course). It was a restaurant/bar, but we had to sit in the restaurant part because of me. :( Anyways, after that we went to Il Piato, a really nice Italian restaurant. I had a pesto dish and a Caesar Salad... both were really good. The whole sham bam fam enjoyed their meals, so it was a success. The tab was in the $130 range including the tip, but what the hell, it was Christmas Eve, eh?

Next we went to a church service at the First Presbyterian Church in Portland. It's a really pretty place and the service was pretty quick so it wasn't too painful. I also must add that they said that quote in Kevin's blog two times, and both people who said it said "clothes". It's probably "cloths" in the Bible... but God shoulda used Microsoft grammar check or whatever.

And so now some pictures:


Going to meet my sister and get drinks.


Having drinks... the start of much alcohol which would be consumed.


Mom and Dad at the restaurant. Dad is still happy... hasn't seen the bill yet.


Adrienne getting a little tipsy.


The church. We were up in the balcony... much warmer. It's were just about everyone went at first until it was filled because down there was soooo much colder. I kept thinking that if they put a basketball court on the lower level it'd make a really cool old funky arena.

Had a good Cristmas Eve with the family. I'll post more later and probably some pictures, but it's 11:00 and my sister needs to sleep in this room. Oh well, I'll just go downstairs and watch the repeat of the Hawaii Bowl since I missed it earlier today.

Tonight Tualatin beat the #2 Lake Oswego Lakers in girls basketball 63-54 in overtime. We were down 9 at halftime but stormed back in the 2nd half to take the lead and eventually send it into overtime. In the overtime period we dominated them, so it was a good win. Lots of people were there and it was loud, so it was fun. Much more fun than watching the Blazers, who fell to the lowly Bulls.

More pictures:

A couple of my favorite Christmas carols:

Hark! The harried
Blazers sing
Glory in so vanishing
Sheed is gone, he was reviled
Bonzi's sins got him exiled
Woeful coaching, prices rise
Joints in cars, bricked three-point tries
Missed flights, dogfights, what a shame
Fans are bored, we don't got game.
Hark! The harried Blazers sing
Glory is so vanishing.

---

Deck Iraq with bombs and rockets
Fa la la la la la la la lujah!
Emptying the taxpayers pockets
Fa la la la la la la la lujah!
Reconstruction is for certain
Fa la la la la la la la lujah!
Profits now for Haliburton
Fa la la la la la la la lujah!

So I read something about the NHL having no chance of ending the talks and starting the season this year. That is good news, I hate that crap polluting ESPN and ESPN2.

Hmmm, what to say. Went to a Portland State Vikings basketball game. They were playing NAIA Evergreen State, so it was an easy win. At halftime you could go down to the court and shoot a halfcourt shot for a chance to win Blazers tickest (had to pay $1 every shot... went to Doernbecker's). My shot was SO close, it hit the backboard straight on the hoop but it was a little too hard. Oh well, getting Blazers tickets is like a punishment sorta (heh, just kidding... unless it is like the New Jersey game).

School is boring, work is boring, I hate that it is dark at like 5:00. I can't do anything after work before it gets dark... no more football games or something like that.

Beavers to play Notre Dame in the Insight Bowl, December 28th. They were bumped from the Sun Bowl against Purdue because California was screwed, Texas going to the Rose Bowl instead of them. The Pac-10 needs to dump the BCS and the Rose Bowl will follow... it keeps screwing the west coast over and ruining the tradition of the Rose Bowl.

Kinda glad the Beavers will play Notre Dame though. First, they have a better chance of winning, and second, time to lay the smackdown on the stupid Domers again. In case you forgot, the Beavers smacked the Irish around in the 2001 Fiesta Bowl 41-9. They ended that season #4 in the country.... twas a glorius day.

Well, I guess I'll update. The reason I haven't been doing it much is... well there's nothing to update. During the summer I did stuff... yeah, I'm not really doing it now. Here's my typical schedule:

1. Get Up
2. Go to School
3. Come back and shove food in my face
4. Go to work
5. Get home
6. Eat dinner
7. Do Homework
8. Sleep

Anddddd repeat. I could fall asleep right now I'm so tired, but I'm not going to out of principle. I will never willfully go to bed before 11:00pm.

Oh, guess where we're going for Christmas Break (Dec.28th - Jan. 1st; I think):



*Looks at $3,240 sitting helplessly in bank*

You have to be 21. :(