Yule Never Believe It...

I returned home from Austin today to find that Christmas started early this year.

Lying in the middle of my living room floor was a big white box, which upon further inspection was white because it was wrapped all in Chipotle napkins. Also, the famous dry erase board from Renegade Improv (mentioned most recently in the "who forgot to feed Tasha?" post), was sitting on its tripod below the TV...which told me who was involved.

Sure enough, added to the old Tasha message and the chord changes left over from improv, was a note reading "Merry Christmas Kev, from Matt and Zack (we gave it to you early so no one else would)." This left no doubt in my mind that inside of the box was a DVD player.

That's right--video-wise, I've entered the 90's now. ;-)

Needless to say, I was too blown away for words. The element of surprise was complete (evidently, however, they'd been plotting this for nearly a month now). They were both on AIM fairly soon after I got on, and all I could "say" at first was ":-D"--nothing else. I'll have to send a "pre-emptive" warning to family members, just in case they were going to get me one, since I've been talking a lot about it lately. But the fact that I can play DVD's at Casa de Kev opens up all kinds of other possibilities for stuff to give me now (hint, hint).

Now the one snag in all of this was that Zack and Demon Matt were here for two hours this afternoon (using yesterday's blog entry as a timetable for when I was going to get back) setting the thing up, and my vintage 1992 TV wasn't exactly being receptive to newer technology. Matt came back to try some more, and Fizban and Dingus came over with the idea of "breaking it in" with a movie night, but by the time we took our second (my third) trip to Super Target, after two different new remotes didn't make a difference, and we had to buy an RF modulator box to get it to work right...long story short, by the time it was all set up, no time was left for a movie; everyone had to go home so they wouldn't fall asleep in church in the morning (or in Dingus's case, "Atheist Church," a.k.a. IHOP). But still, it's all ready to go for the next time, and it's gonna be awesome.

And I'll expand on one of the things I said in my Ode to a Summer post: I have the greatest group of friends anyone could ever want. I noted the other day that I have a lot to be thankful for...and they're a huge part of that in a nutshell.