Last week was dominated by holiday parties and an internet outage.

Tuesday was our Toastmasters Holiday Party. It’s always interesting to see what luck comes from the potluck – and it was a pretty decent spread. Unfortunately, we needed to leave prior to the white elephant gift exchange. One of the cats decided to pull a disappearing trick. Missed dinner, missed treat time, could not be found. Very unusual for this cat. The Wife was worried enough that she couldn’t enjoy the party. So, with heavy hearts, we bid the club adieu and headed home to join in the hunt. Only for the cat to show back up when we were five minutes from the house. At that point, we were too exhausted to even contemplate going back.

Thursday the Ward family woke up to an internet outage in the neighborhood. This is something of a concern as both The Wife and I are teleworkers. Plus, we have a lot of smart home stuff. Okay, well, outages happen. They usually resolved by the time we have to go to work. Um, nope. Damn. The Wife and I manage to tether our work phones to our work laptops. The Wife gets almost as good speed from hers. Mine is… well, let’s just say anemic was being nice. Annoying, but outages happen. It should be resolved before lunch. Nope. By dinner? By bedtime? WTF happened? We awoke at 0300 the next morning, and I was still seeing the red ring of “no internet” on my Echo. The Wife informs the outage is resolved. Maybe for the neighborhood, but not for Ward Manor. We get on chat. Go through the usually “have you turned it off and on again” steps. They end up having to send out a tech. Who comes in early enough that we didn’t have to work most of the day off of our phones. Some sort of issue with the cable. Which meant I didn’t have to spend time doing maintenance getting stuff on a new network. Yay!

Which was really good because that meant I didn’t have to miss my office holiday party. Since most of us are fully virtual, this is one of the few times we see each other in person. Sometimes it’s a challenge for me because all of the normal meeting places are usually a good hour away. This year was at an upscale bowling alley/family fun place. Whatever. I wasn’t bowling. Shoulders said no. But the food was good – and it’s good seeing my teammates in person on occasion. Our supervisor always gets annoyed with us at the White Elephant because we don’t get into the larcenous side of the event. We’re just too laidback. I got a ten dollar bill stapled to a candy bar because one of our teammates left her present and that was what she could come up with on short notice. Hey, cash and sugar. I wasn’t going to complain.

Saturday was the Ward family holiday. Mom, The Brother, The Brother’s roommates (who are long-time friends), Rocket Engineer Brother and his family, The Wife and I traveled to Bok Tower for food and frivolity. The weather was cooperating and the food was plentiful. We don’t do white elephant for the family. The Brother runs a Secret Santa for the adults and everyone buys stuff for the niece and nephew. Secret Santa (SIL) got me a signed screenplay from an episode of Firefly and a little sign with my name from gun things. (You’ve probably seen the ads). The Wife got a small whiteboard desk cubby and some dry erase erasers in the shape of paw prints from The Brother. Of course, getting back home was a bit interesting due to one of the main state roads getting closed due to an accident. The only way to move traffic was an access road on the property of one of the major phosphate companies – who was reluctant to allow a large volume of vehicles go screaming through their area of liability. I think some of the deputies had a talk with security – who had a talk with their higher-ups – and we were finally able to get around.

All in all, not a horrible week. I don’t care what my calorie counter says.