Grrr…I got a call after I got home. Damn pager. Ahem. And NOW, the REST of the STORY…
<Tennis commentator>
8:45–The gift melee began with Chef Jr graciously allowing everyone to select numbers from the hat he passed around. There was some speculation as to how many advertising circulars gave their pointless, annoying lives to provide the numbered slips. As it happens, I got to go first. Now, to the play-by-play:
1–Balance cleverly selects the Godiva bag. Although he suspects that this may be a gag gift, he can’t resist anything that suggests a naked woman on horseback. It pays off, as some clever person has placed in the bag…a box of chocolates! Who would’ve guessed it in this crowd?
2–Meephead goes for one of the mystery packages, a genuinely wrapped gift. Inside, he finds a mousepad with a gel wrist rest. Hmmm…useful, but not terribly inspiring. Is there someone here with incipient CTS who will steal it from him and give him another chance?
3–Palmyra finds a handsome tin of dominoes in her parcel. She forms tentative plans to save them until she’s a septagenarian, and able to properly enjoy them.
Chef Jr has begun thanking everyone for not selecting the gift wrapped in ?Teletubby? paper. He is universally reassured that this is not a problem, although Shadow pretends to contemplate taking the package…
4–Grace proves that lightning can strike twice–she finds another box of Godiva chocolates.
5–Chef Jr pounces on his prized package. Within is a Pets.com dog hand puppet. Little Chef is so excited that he forgets that fire and wrapping paper are a volatile combination.
6–The incipient conflagration quelled, Catbiker makes his move. He seizes the largest package yet and swiftly yet surely removes the wrappings to reveal…a giant stuffed Curious George.
7–Cat calmly selects an oddly scented bag from the dwindling pile and opens it, revealing a set of Feng Shui elemental candles. The gifts are growing odd, as befits such a gathering.
Half way through, and everyone has thus far chosen to trust to luck rather than steal another’s present. This is courage, my friends.
8–Zyada selects a small box that proves to contain an Adult Trivia game. The true nature of our group is beginning to show through.
9–Aglarond flinches as his gift falls open to reveal fuzzy turquoise slippers with enormous pink daisylike growths. The horror…the horror…
10–Shadowmaster finds a fleece throw in his gift. Er…how nice. He seems nonplussed and offers to trade it for Chef Jr’s puppet, but is rebuffed.
11–Mrs. Chef, evidently deciding that small embarassing gifts are easier to hide, chooses a small gift that proves to contain a Best Buy gift card. Troy suggests that it would be useful in shopping for his Christmas gift.
12–psiekier, using the smokescreen left by Mrs. Chef’s glare as cover, steals Zyada’s Adult Trivia game! Zyada dares the winds of fate once more, extracting an electronic dart board from the swiftly shrinking pile.
13–Headline: Palmyra Gets Ag’s Goat!
Chef Troy sneaks across the room and steals Palmyra’s dominoes. Well, actually, she sort of throws them at him as soon as he gets close, and dives back into the pile to retrieve a toy goat instead. Aglarond says grimly, “That goat was meant for me!” <whap-ouch!> OK, so he didn’t say that–he should have. He knew perfectly well that he was going to be the butt of jokes all night, anyway.
14–Aglarond gets his chance as Lynn steals his slippers; he darts across the room to steal Palmyra’s gift! Ag always gets his goat in the end, no buts about it. Palmyra (whose gifts have now been stolen twice) gets a bottle of Dave’s Insanity Sauce and a Bob James CD, of which she says “What and who?” She later trades both for a dolphin ring-toss game. Zyada trades her dartboard to Shadow for his fleece throw.
And that concludes this year’s Presents Open. Thank you all for joining us this evening.
</Tennis commentator>
9:15 Lynn and the Feline Contingent (band name alert!) depart. Grace sets a noble example by sharing her Godiva chocolates.
Chef Jr is following Palmyra around (the kid may be young, but he’s got taste 
). All he really wants is her little dolphin game, but she gets teased about her “new boyfriend” anyway.
Palmyra: “I have a boyfriend!”
The ever-oblivious Chef Sr, looking at the game, says “I had one of those when I was young.”
The Evil Chorus (hereafter appreviated “TEC” in these memoirs): “A boyfriend?”
Meanwhile, psiekier is reading the (rather silly) rules for Adult Trivia. Grace suggests dividing into teams, but the proposal dies in committee. Eventually, we decide that everyone will play alone, except Chef Jr (who is sent off to bed under protest) and myself (to maintain my journalistic objectivity and, fortuitously, to avoid looking any more foolish than usual).
9:30–Goat Jokes. It’s Ag’s own fault; he’s sitting on the couch with the damned goat perched on his shoulder, as if to whisper the secrets of Adult Trivia in his ear. The Adult Trivia game begins.
9:35–Return of the Son of Goat Jokes (we’re really milking them). What lame trivia questions! I won’t dignify them by including any, but we discuss throwing away at least one book of questions. Amazingly enough, there are some questions that no one in the group answers correctly. Obviously, they’re not about sex…
9:45–Mrs. Chef (who is currently tasked with asking the questions) tries to find the answer page.
Balance: “Don’t tell me the pages are already stuck together!” <gives psiekier disgusted look, which goes unnoticed>
Palmyra is bored and playing a video game on a cell phone.
9:55–We interrupt this broadcast to bring you “Quotes Out of Context”, a special report!
Palmyra: “It’s dripping all over.”
Ag: “Well, put the whole thing in your mouth.”
Palmyra: <choking noise>
Ag: “Swallow. Swallow!”
Balance: <mutter>“Great. My notes are all sticky now.”</mutter>
This has been “Quotes Out of Context”. We now return you to your regularly scheduled drivel.
It’s amazing how much entertainment came out of sharing my chocolates. A little butterscotch produced all of the preceding quotes.
10:05–Ag: “I should have paid more attention when they covered porpoise sex in school.”
psiekier nearly chokes on a raspberry chocolate. Maybe Grace and I shouldn’t have shared with everybody.
10:15–Fighting breaks out as Palmyra steals my notes; she had just read the 9:55 edition. Ag and I retrieve them, but they’re stuck together with that &@#% butterscotch again. Chef realizes that Sci-Fi is repeating the first part of Dune, so the VCR is free at last. He starts “A Christmas Story”. Only one of us, psiekier, has never seen it–surprising, given what a movie-freak he is. Nevertheless, we all sit back happily enough to watch it.
10:30–The flagpole incident brings up Chef Troy and the licking of poles (another of those ill-phrased comments of his–some day, they’ll get him in trouble ). He once got his tongue stuck to a ski pole while trying to lick some snow off of it.
10:45–Palmyra, clearly flying high under the influence of too much theobromine, is looking at one of the Godiva maps, trying to select another chocolate. (For those unfamiliar with Godiva chocolates: first, I pity you; second, the boxes have maps showing what different candies look like, so you can avoid the ones you don’t like.)
Palmyra: “If you ate enough chocolates that you didn’t need the map anymore, would that be a bad thing?”
11:00–Palmyra steals my notes again and hides them in her boot, resulting in another altercation as Ag and I try (unsuccessfully) to retrieve them. I had to promise to be nice (But I am being nice!) to get them back. She almost couldn’t get them out of her boot herself. Ag proffered this as his lame excuse for failure. 
11:15–Grace kisses the goat and vanishes into the night with Meephead. (Bet you wish now that I’d stuck to “Grace arrives”, don’t you? 
)
11:30–Ralphie’s trials lead to reminiscing over weapons we got for Christmas. (Unattributed paraphrase: “Nothing embodies the spirit of Christmas like a weapon!”) Ag got a BB gun at a much younger age than poor Ralphie. Palmyra got an archery set with which she shot a hole in the wall, from inside (she patched the wallpaper so that no one would notice). I received a brace of throwing knives and the materials to make some explosives (I have a very…interesting… family). The age at which each of us quit believing in Santa (if we ever did) came up. The consensus was that most people quit believing well before admitting it to their parents. Ah, the greed of childhood, which has led so many into the noble art of lying…
11:45–The movie draws to a close, and with it the party. We say our goodbyes, agreeing that, in the interests of not driving the Chefs out of their minds, we should meet elsewhere for a time. Soon, we shove off into the night leaving (as is our wont) only wreckage and empty dishes behind to mark our passage…
A Happy Yule to All!
