I had quite a
satisfying day yesterday. What could be better during the
christmas holidays than baking gingerbread cookies and watching
christmas movies with good friends?
After having lunch at my place, Camille and I drove out to Surrey in
the early afternoon to hang out with Shari for the day. Camille
being away at acting school in Victoria for the past term (leaving
again January 2nd), and Shari having been in Japan for the past year
and a half, we all had lots to catch up on. Not only that,
spending a day doing something fun (and dorky) with my oldest friend
and my - by far - most entertaining friend was the first holiday outing
in a very very long time that I felt was genuinely
worth doing. If I weren't fighting off getting a cold, as I have
been for the last week, it would have been a near-perfect day.
Camille's been a little sleep-deprived, so her tired delerium resulted
in some humorous discussion about the level of innuendo in Phantom of the Opera,
random "Arrogant Worms" sing-along, and general silliness on the drive
down. Camille and I got there around 2 or so... maybe a little
later (we'd originally planned on getting there around 1). Shari
was already hanging out with Chandra, her highschool friend visiting
from Saskatchewan - so we finally got to meet Chandra. I think we
started some of the cookie-making right at the beginning, but part of
the fun of it was none of us really knew what we were doing, to varying
degrees. Shari got the recipe online, but we were all newbies to
baking gingerbread cookies, so the ensuing confusions and debacles of
baking were quite a riot.
Shari and Chandra had hit on the wonderfully unexpected geekiness of
watching "the He-Man and She-Ra Christmas Special" on DVD, which
Chandra had picked up somewhere, still in plastic-wrap. Very
entertaining bit of nostalgia. I haven't seen He-Man since I was
under ten, but I'm surprised how much Shari remembers about both He-Man
and She-Ra... Must be because she did a websearch for the characters
some ten years back for one of her hotmail/msn addresses, but she
really has the whole cast of characters and all their names pretty
fresh in her mind. Excellent dorky fun, re-experiencing childhood
tv, and laughing at the more dated - but still endearing - parts.
Dorky is Shari's word, but I feel it appropriate to appropriate it at this appropriate time.
While we were waiting for the dough to sit in the fridge (hmm... what
were we doing that for?), we watched another christmasy movie from
Shari's tv-recorded vhs collection (hahaha, dorkiness) - While you were Sleeping,
I think. Sandra Bullock, Bill Paxton movie from a little while
back - I never realised that was over *ten* years ago. My, time
flies when you're still in school. Chandra had to leave halfway
through. We went back to baking, got the cookies in the
oven. Odd cookie icing colours, thanks to Shari's interesting
unique blend of red and yellow food colouring. First time I've
had salmon-coloured icing.
We'd ordered pizza too. Mmmm... haven't had pizza in far too long.
One Ham & Pineapple, one Shrimp somethingerother, with garlic dip
and jalapeno ranch dip. Yum.
Hmm... did we watch something else between pizza and
cookie-decorating? I don't remember. Shari's other
highschool friend Mark (or Matt?) popped by just before pizza, helped
with the icing decorations once we got the cookies out from the
oven. We got pictures of our creations that I'll post once I get
them from Camille. LOL. Camille's dirty cookies, heh heh
heh.
Mark/Matt left after
cookie-decorating, but not before some unique cookies with super-sized
icing. Camille had to leave too, not long after, so Shari and I
drove her to the skytrain. I'd bugged Shari to rent Click,
which we hadn't gotten to watch earlier, so we went back to Shari's to
finish see that. Movie was a combination of slapstick/sight
gags with an It's a Wonderful Life/Christmas Story-like storyline. Henry Winckler - The Fonze - was in it! It didn't quite live up to It's a Wonderful Life
to Shari, but I still enjoyed it. We watched all the special
features, deleted scenes, and movie previews, set a few upcoming movies
from the previews to see in the theatres, had another of our long
meandering discussions about what's good in movies, about interesting
reading, nobel prize-winning writers, christmas commercialism vs
generosity, news-watching. I think it was 12:30 when I decided it
was time to go. Shari wouldn't let me go without taking some of
the cookies home.
I made it to Angela's party just in time for a brief appearance before
everyone left, to drop off her card with the gift-exchange present,
pass on the Juuni Kokki copies to Kev, and see everyone I haven't seen in a little while. Feli gave me a bag of chocolates to take home.
So far, this is probably the best holiday I've had in a very long
time. No paper-rushing stress. Good time with good
friends. Just hanging out. Holiday season activities.
Much needed.
. (I 
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