a life more awesome: Christmas at the Nerd Compound

When I lived in a sketchy duplex house in Campton, NH like 8 years ago, I went to my first Fatsquad Christmas party. Back then, it was like 8-10 people, we got a few things for everyone there, and after presents, we played Halo all night. We had like 4 or 5 TVs in Dan's Grandmother's basement, and we played until 5 in the morning, at which point I packed up and drove an hour and a half home to the horror of his Grandmother. It was awesome. Traditions started (Josh's punch, Josh's hot chocolate which thankfully took a year off this year, my brownies) and it became another Christmas party I got to go to every year.

Over time, with Jesse and newer roommate Matt bringing a lot of other people into the fold, that Christmas party grew to a much bigger beast. It's now held every year at the Nerd Compound (where Yamstein is), and is more of a straightforward Christmas party, but always fun. We do a real Yankee Swap, there's LOTS of food (including Jesse bringing 20 McDonald's double cheeseburgers and Andrea continuing Hilton's tradition of 100 Wendy's chicken nuggets with various dipping sauces (we still missed you though, Hilt), and there's always some hilarious moments. Nothing incredibly momentous happened this year, but I took pictures. Here you go.

Irwin was PSYCHED to have 30 people pay attention to him all night.

Matt dolling out the presents, Max is excited.

is that for meeeee?

As is Al.

World famous wrestler Brian Fury even showed up!

Jesse got absurdly hot hot sauce and his own ghost pepper seeds! He's gonna die!

Here's Jesse with a picture Josh drew of him beating up Zangief!

And here's Jesse with what I gave him, a picture of himself! I don't think it's perfect, but I love that I stole his thing- he draws himself a lot and used to draw books in every piece, so I had all the books be about how much he loved me or inside jokes, etc. It was way more work than I thought it would be, but he always gives me art, so he was due.

Shawn always talks (obsessively) about Tim Tebow, and I couldn't for the life of me remember if he loved or hated the guy, but this shirt was a no brainer for a gift. It turned out that he's "coming around" on Tebow, so he loved it.

Happy times. Here's Rich with the Mission Impossible bluray set, which was his first Yankee Swap present. He later got it stolen but ended up with a huge bottle of Maker's Mark whiskey, which he then had stolen and got the Jackass boxed set and peanut butter cups, which he then got stolen and ended up with a BLANKET. I've never seen anyone get so much taken away, get so many different things that were good, and then end up with such crap (I'm sure it's a nice blanket, but still). It was amazing to watch.

Here's Max being absurdly cute, after Sarah said "show him your toy's butt:"

I have no idea what's happening here, but it rules:

40? 4-8-0?

This is also a very odd picture:

Jon Waugh made Irwin freak out really hard. It ruled.

weez, mid freak out

Towards the end of the night, I remembered that Rick said he would do a shot of the moonshine bbq sauce Jesse gave Rich if someone else did. Ray, Shawn, and Josh stepped up. Rich later had some, and I had what was left in one shot glass. It was HORRIBLE. It wasn't super hot, just very strong flavored and a painful gross sting. Rich and Josh got instant headaches from it.

It was a good time. I was planning on trading whatever I got at the Yankee Swap for both seasons of Spartacus, but I opened up what I expected to be crap and saw all 3 seasons of Sons of Anarchy looking back at me. I've seen season 1 and loved it, so this was an incredible score, and somehow, I kept it, so I was psyched about that. Other than that, I got a bunch of nips of booze from Jesse, along with this amazing piece of art he did for me this year:

I love farts (apparently).

The best present to come from that night may have been the best thing I got for Christmas this year. Two weeks or so ago, Heidi, who, like me, loves finding and collecting animal bones and skulls, posted this picture on her facebook:

Since she's gotten very into exploring, hiking and caving recently, she has been absurdly lucky- finding full skeletons of deer in water, skulls inside caves, etc. I was already a "ARE YOU KIDDING ME!?" guy at how much luck she was having, when she posted that picture. This was in a field by a farm, where apparently 5 cows were under a tree that was struck by lightning, killing them all. So, to reiterate, there were 5 fairly complete cow skeletons just sitting there for the taking. I posted something to the effect of "I go searching for hours and find 1 bone a year, and you just stumble on 5 SKELETONS!? WHAT THE FUCK!?"

Instead of laughing at my jealousy, she hooked a brotha up, and I got one of the coolest presents ever- a cleaned and bleached cow skull. It's enormous, and it rules.