So, this weekend was filled with holiday parties and moving. Friday we ventured to my party which was held at my bosses house. It was calm and quiet but allowed Michael to meet some of the folks I talk about on a regular basis. We ended the evening at one of the local pubs by OUR house, playing touch screen and continuing to carry on the FTOOL tradition.

Saturday was his holiday party which was AWESOME! It is a casino night and upon entry each employee is provided with 20K worth of poker chips. From 7-10 is gambling: craps, poker, roulette and blackjack. We started at craps for a tutorial and things quickly went downhill despite Matt, our dealer, egging us on to bet more. We rotated around to black jack and hit roulette for a second. Michael stopped at poker and did well until an unruly guest became too annoying at which time we headed back to craps. The 15 minute warning was given so we figured we'd take our remaining 6K and bet it all. Well, it paid off because we ended up with over 26K within those 15 final minutes and with the help of Michael's boss (who slipped us his chips) our total was 43K.

Why is this important? Because there is an auction of items that you bid on with your earnings. Some of the top prizes were:

• $375 Visa Card


• $150 Visa Card and $250 gift certificate for a limo (5 hours)


• $200 Best Buy Card


• $150 target Card

We knew we fell about 4th in the rankings so the top two prizes were out. We did win a $150 Target gift card though...remaining Christmas presents, here I come!!

This weekend we also began combining Michael's things into our space. I cleaned through clothes and provided him with a drawer or two along with some closet space. We set up the televisions (I LOVE Direct TV!) and the Internet. We also combined our refrigerators and I laughed out loud by the multiples we have between the two of us. We will not need condiments for months. Here's the short list of the current contents of our fridge: (feel free to read it while humming the tune "The 12 days of Christmas")

• 8 sticks of butter


• 5 vanilla extracts


• 4 Parmesan cheeses


• 4 sour creams (seriously?)


• 3 crescent rolls


• 3 cream cheeses


• 2 bottles of mayonnaise


• 2 mustard containers


• 2 ketchup bottles


• 2 blue cheese dressings and


• 1 bottle of fish sauce (we went through a Thai phase)

Our next adventure will be to figure out which furniture stays, and what goes....stay tuned!