Thanksgiving came and went without incident. Rather than the standard (lesser alternative) of turkey, my family celebrated with a great lasagna and some shrimp ravioli in scampi sauce. Two thumbs up from me - both were excellent, and I ate until I nearly burst. I didn’t even have room for dessert! Great stuff.

After eating, we played some games. We have a Survivor board game that we hadn’t played before and busted out. It was actually pretty fun, but it takes a long time to play, and the longer you play, the more people you have sitting around, bored, having been voted out of the game. I can see where it may not be a holiday game, too, because you sort of have to choose favorites and vote people out. It was fun, though. Also, Dad mustered up a Clue card game that played similar to the board game but went a little faster. I liked that one a lot. Apparently, it’s sort of hard to find, though, so if you see it and you like Clue, grab it up.

That, in a nutshell, was Thanksgiving.

Friday I worked, and I had hoped it would be a slow day, me being the only person in the department, but that was the day our WOS (wireless office services) system went berzerk and stopped letting phone calls go through to anyone who has a cell phone. This, of course, included me and the rest of the tech guys, and loads of other folks, too. The real catch is that I was the only one here, and I couldn’t call the phone guy for help because his phone was one of the ones affected! I eventually figured out that if I left the immediate campus, I could call my boss because he had gone on vacation and separated his phone from the system. He came in and we did a very technical procedure to restore service - we turned the system off and back on again.

I dunno. It worked, so all was well.

Saturday morning was spent in Kingdom Hearts. The more I play it, the more I like it. There’s really only two things I’d fix on it to make it better: First, in some places the camera bugs out and it’s hard to figure out where you’re going. Second, there’s a piece of the game that involves you building and configuring a space ship to fly around in; that’s unnecessarily difficult to figure out and really doesn’t have anything to do with the game proper. Take it out. Other than that, it rocks.

Saturday night our friends Jason and Tracy came over for some teriyaki chicken sandwiches and some games. We played Catch Phrase and Zobmondo, both of which were quite fun. I hadn’t played Zobmondo before (though I’d had it for a while and meant to), so it was good to finally bust it out. You definitely need a few people for that, though.

Sunday Jenn and I decided that we needed the strategy guide for Kingdom Hearts, so we picked that up at Best Buy (a store I loathe for their shitty return policy, but where you can find some stuff that it’s difficult to find elsewhere). While I was there, I saw that the Kelly Osbourne album (Shut Up) was out, so I bought it.

I’m actually very pleasantly surprised with Kelly’s album. It’s sort of punky and hip. I don’t know what I was expecting, but either way, it came out ahead for me. I can’t say she’s got the most awesome voice in the world or anything, but her songs are catchy, if maybe a tiny bit repetitive. I found myself toe-tapping all the way to work this morning.

The best songs on there are “Shut Up” (the title track) and “Too Much of You.” There is, of course, the requisite ballad at the end of the album, which wasn’t all that great. Then again, I listened through the entire album waiting for it, since doesn’t every rock album have one?

The album itself is short - I was able to listen to the entire album on my commute to work this morning, about 45 minutes. I don’t think that’s a problem, but it is what it is.

In all, I think it’s a pretty good album, and I’m not sorry I picked it up.

Sunday night we went to the hockey game and watched the Winter Hawks finally win one. They’ve really been sucking lately, so it was nice to see a win come out of ‘em for a change.

This morning brought some interesting news: The Amazon.com people have finally received their own taste of my irritation. While shopping there on Friday, I found that I had like $100 worth of gift certificates on my account. Hey, no problem for me! I did my shopping and it all came out of the gift certificates. Well, they finally got around to looking at my account in the depth I wanted them to, and they realize that they owe me $11 and that they miscredited me $120 on my account. They further asked for me to authorize them to charge my card for the amount of my order. Interesting how they want immediate action when the shoe’s on the other foot, isn’t it?

So I mailed them back and said, basically, that I’m not a thief and I understand that accidents happen, but if they wanted me to authorize them to charge my card, they’d have to call me the way I told them to do in the first place.

Not an hour later, I got an email with the customer service phone number for Amazon.com so I could get in touch with them. Yay, me!

For the record, and for anyone who wants it, the customer service phone number for Amazon.com is 1-800-201-7575. (For the non-US folks, it’s 1-206-266-2992.) I challenge you to find that on their site anywhere.

I called them, talked to a guy named Brad, and got everything straightened out. I authorized ‘em to charge my card (see? I’m not a bad guy) for the stuff I bought, and everything will be sorted out shortly.

I’m gonna rip ‘em a new one if it’s not. I got your number now, baby!