Bah, I never did come back after lunch. Indeed, it seems lunch lasted for a good long few days, hm. Anyway, let me go on now at some further length about my holiday. Rick and I returned together to my mom's on Friday night. We had a nice time there. It's nice bringing Rick home now, since he's really come out of himself with Mom. Originally, he seemed sort of on guard, but since his time up at the cottage, stuck with me, Mom, and her friend Ray, he's become a great deal more relaxed. Saturday, I suppose that was the 29th, we all went to see "Ali" which we enjoyed greatly ! Mom got all excited about it, whispering in my ear, "I saw that fight !" and "I remember that !" at several points through out the film. She also told me that my Godmother, Liz, actually went to Zaire as a translator or some such thing and that's damn cool !

Sunday, Rick and I went to D&D at Ryan's house, which lacked a little, but was still pretty enjoyable. We packed up early in order for Al, Carrie, Rick, and Ryan to head back to Toronto. Sadly for Tanya, she arrived in time to discover that we were already packed up. She decided to come over to my house and chat since neither of us have seen each other in a one-on-one capacity since our hike over the summer. Over hot chocolate and Christmas cake we talked about everything from the personal to cats, and then we discussed it all further with my mom who likes Tanya a lot. What's not to like? Tanya has her head screwed on right. If she could just stop wanting to help everyone, she'd be perfect. This is not to say that I think people should avoid other people's problems and turn a blind eye, not at all. I simply mean that there comes a time when she should concentrate on her own life and its improvement rather than wasting her time on other people that never listen to her anyway.

Monday was New Year's Eve day, and Mom was hosting a party for her good friends. I haven't spent New Year's Eve with Mom for a long time, and this year, since my friends didn't come up with anything exciting to do together, I decided that I'd stay at home. It made no sence for me to go into Toronto for one night, or for Rick to come back into Peterborough for one night, so we weren't together. Anyway, it was okay, at least for me. I'm not sure how much fun Rick had since he was suffering from stomach upset. Mom set a magnificent table, as usual, and the food was grand. Mostly it was a good time with good conversation (though, boring for me at times, which is sort of unusual since I find my mom's friends very interesting) and shortly before midnight, we all put on silly hats or masks and clustered around the TV to watch the ball drop in Times Square. I think NBC, or whichever station shows Leno, should NOT have combined Times Square with a live Leno show. It was dumb.

New Year's Day saw me mostly relaxing, which was well deserved - heck, I think all relaxation is well deserved even if it isn't - and there wasn't much to do. Mom and I watched a very good TV production of "Nicholas Nicholby", or rather, the first part, and that was good. Wednesday, I took Willi to the vet because we'd discovered she was full of worms, probably from her days as a stray some 10 months before. Uhg. I got her shots, too, so she really collapsed into an ill-feeling funk by mid afternoon. I dropped by Kerri and Mark's place, but naturally, Kerri was elsewhere so I hung out with Mark and Darien (the baby). Darien has grown tons and is now quite the going concern. I was pleased that he's decided I'm not evil incarnate and actually decided to interact with me. When he was about seven months, all I had to do was look at him and he'd wail. Now I'm okay, and even worth a smile or two. That night, Mom and I watched the second installment of the Dickens story, and then the "West Wing" that we'd taped. Then, bang, I came down with a migraine. This does not mean I went to bed, no sir, I had to take down some decorations. So I did, and I took some Tylenol, which did nothing, and then medicated myself more effectively and watched half of some amazingly weird French film about some school kids that help one of their classmates bury his dead mother. I really needed to go to bed by that point, so I didn't see how it ended. I'll have to look for it now that I have a VCR.

Thursday I was planning to come back to Toronto, but instead I took my sweet time doing other less important things. I denied the need for me to get home to work on my project - I guess I need to work up enough panic in order to finish it - and instead wrote the log entry to the D&D journal. I packed up my stuff and still didn't leave. I finally left early in the afternoon on Friday, in time to get Willi home and settled in, and to clean out my email before getting ready for David and Jeannie's wedding.

I'll write more fully about the wedding a little later, when I need a break from my school work, but now it's time to get busy. Rick's getting his stuff together and so I need to get down and dirty.