Blog 19 – BEST. CHRISTMAS. EVER

12/27/11

I’m sure if you’ve been following my blog/Facebook/Twitter with any degree of regularity, you know that my year shit the bed with a quiet grace often reserved by an elderly Grizzly bear that consumes a diet of exclusively Taco Bell XXL Burritos (extra guacamole.)   

But hey, we all have strokes at 29, right?

*Quiet contemplation from all participants*

I’ll take your collective silence to be one of meditation and reflection.

As you emerge from your inverted-facing-giraffe positions, I’ll move onto the meat of the story.

This year was some kind of Christmas miracle fit for a McCallister. Free Pepsi for all!

Let’s rewind to last Thursday when I went into work, as I often do, and was told that two packages had arrived during the night from none other than “Valve Software.” I paused for a moment, unsure of what trickery was afoot.

The box contained a card that read as follows:

If you want to make me cry at work, this is a good place to start.

What followed in both boxes can be summed up in the following photo, though it really doesn’t do their generosity justice.

Yes, that's a huge statue of the tank from L4D2.

 I was blown away by the gift from Valve, and they made not only my Christmas better, but a lot of people at Gearbox got a piece of Swag Mountain just in time for Christmas. Truly heartfelt thank you from a slightly broken boy to one of the classiest game companies around, and remarkably, they have never been any but. As you scrape the barrel of your eggnog dependency, please raise a half-fermented glass you probably shouldn’t drink to the men and women at Valve Software. They deserve your Christmas love.

Moving on, this one will be quick, but my laser cut Catan board you guys probably all saw on the internet months ago and didn’t move on—well, that came in and here it is! The quality is mind-blowing and a true showcase of the quality of Kickstarter to get stuff done. Big ups to the guys at Boardcrafting and should you want to research further, please check out their KS site here: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/sjbrown/boardcrafting

Seriously. Holy crap.

 I’ll skip forward for a moment to something many people have been asking about. A bit of background: my family (in entirety) requested that while I’m watching the medical bills pile up, I don’t buy them anything for Christmas. I can’t say I resisted, and agreed to make all the various Christmas meals (including a 9.5 pound prime rib) to make up the difference. I didn’t feel particularly great about this, but I don’t think I’ve ever been more tired in my entire life. Between medication, blood-thinners, and just being generally fatigued, I just needed some kind of break over Christmas to try and recollect myself.

But there was one present I had already started, and wanted to finish. Recently, my nephew got into Minecraft with quite the passion and my sister did not really want him searching the internet on his own to find all the recipes and ingredients (this is what’s known as: good parenting.)

But that gave me a really cool idea. What if I made him a journal that looked like an old adventurer’s journal as if he really lived in the world of Minecraft? It would come complete with thoughts, stories, tips, ink stains, burned pages from Creeper attacks… I gave it to him on Christmas Eve. Here’s some samples:

I had to dress up the bucket a bit to make it seem cooler.

Watch out for Creepers, they burn!

I felt like the raddest Uncle on Planet Rad (sounds like an 80’s movie starring Hulk Hogan doesn’t it?) 

My nephew with his favorite page: TNT and a mushroom cloud.

This blog is already pretty long, so I’ll list so cool highlights of other things that happened of equal radness:

·       Don and Stephanie came over on Christmas night around midnight with a nice bottle of wine and a version of Clue featuring The Office. Naturally, you’re on a mission to reveal the murderer of Toby Flenderson with items like Michael’s Best Boss Mug and The Bacon Grill.

Jim did it, FYI.

·       My sister bought me this cane carved out of a 200-year-old tree branch. I am now up to seven canes, should I feel the need to switch out for different days of the week.

·       My parents bought me a vintage Ghostbusters movie poster signed by the original cast (WHAT!!!)

There are probably like a millionty things I’m forgetting about this last four days and its zealot-levels of Christmas cheer. So I’ll just end with Happy Holidays and warm internet-hugs from Casa Del Mikey.

Until next year, friends.