Boxing Day Party

Maybe it was the absence of a real Christmas, but the Boxing Day party yesterday evening at our house was the most fun I've had in ages.

We originally planned it as a slightly informal get-together to watch the new Doctor Who on the CBC. Before the telecast, hubby-Eric also decided to show another 2005 episode of Doctor Who, The Unquiet Dead, which is set on Christmas Eve.

My sisters arrived early and while my little sister snoozed, my older sister requested a viewing of the Narnia cartoon, which hubby-Eric had found thanks to our comic shop owner. So we started the evening with the cartoon, which was truly awful in some ways and pretty cool in other ways. I did have some fun MST3King it.

After the video, we made dinner, and wondered if anyone else intended to show up. As we were digging into the pizza, people started to arrive bearing mostly leftover Christmas candy. And one friend, Denise, brought gifts.

For Eric, she had a board game based on Oz - Off to See the Wizard. Eric was delighted, as it was in excellent shape. Chalk one up to Denise!

Then she gave me my present. I opened it with a little trepidation... and it was a Battling Bush Bop Bag. I just about died on the spot laughing, but we couldn't wait to get the thing up so we could bop it around. My little sister Lisa and I blew it up, with many jokes about "blowing" revolving around us, to the point where we had difficulty breathing because we were laughing so hard. The rest of the evening was punctuated by frequent bopping noises as people walked past the thing and took a shot. While many jokes were made, we managed to keep them confined to the bop bag itself and avoided the deadly political discussions that might have arisen.

After blowing up the bop bag, Eric entertained the crowd with Paul Dini's Christmas Video in the hopes of making everyone start saying "Tank! (and also Flamethrower)" It went over well enough, especially the last bit where Rashy goes nuts.

We then watched "The Unquiet Dead"... well, most of the crowd. I went up to my room to hide and Denise and Lisa followed me. We got into a discussion of vintage soda pop, and decided to go together on the purchase of some cases of pop that you generally can't get in the stores. We put together a preliminary order right then and there, and worked out how we intended to divide it, too.

After "The Unquiet Dead", we had a few minutes so Eric showed the Children in Need special again, then we watched "The Christmas Invasion" on two TVs in two rooms. While it was going, people asked me to burn them DVDs of the show so they could watch it at home.

After the show was over, everybody cheered, then Christmas Creature Comforts came on and we watched. I was ok until I noticed that the slugs were blinking. Slugs don't blink. It didn't help that people pointed out that slugs also don't have teeth and don't talk. The blinking really bothered me. I went a little nuts and I sorta forget what happened after that.

Oh, right! We showed the BBC red button special (without the interactive bits). I think it's called Attack of the Graske. We managed to get a cap of somebody going through the game, which isn't nearly as fun as playing it, but is fun nonetheless.

The party broke up after that, with everyone grabbing some Christmas candy before they left. Eric and I did a quick tidy-up and that was the evening. And I had an absolute BLAST. Best Boxing Day Ever.