Homeplace, Here We Come!

Hey everybody,
Hope your studying for exams is going great, and you are feeling ready to show your professors how much you've learned this semester.

Hey, don't miss our last official event of the semester which will be our semiannual outing to The Homeplace restaurant this Saturday. This delicious tradition started five years ago and we've been going to The Homeplace restaurant at the end of each semester ever since. We're doing it again this Saturday, and we hope you will join us. 

If you don't know about The Homeplace restaurant, you are missing out. Most people I know would say it's the best restaurant within an hour's drive of Blacksburg. It's out in the country in a very small town called Catawba, about a half hour from here, near Roanoke. They make the most delicious southern style food like country ham, fried chicken, and roast beef, with green beans, coleslaw, pinto beans, mashed potatoes and gravy, and other fruits or vegetables of the day, and apple butter for your buttermilk biscuits, and really good sweet tea or lemonade, and fruit cobbler for dessert. All of this is served "family style" where you all sit around a huge table and pass the food around and put however much you want on your plate and pass it on to the next person. And the servers just keep bringing the food out until everybody has had as much as they want to eat.

All of this only costs about 15 dollars -- all you can eat, remember -- and it even includes your drink, dessert, and tax. The only thing you need to add is the tip.

So take a much needed study break and come on out to join us. And feel free to bring a friend with you. Just meet at the campus house at 4:30pm and we'll carpool from there. We'll probably get back to campus around 8:30 or 9pm.

If you are so blessed as to have a ticket to the Georgia Southern vs. VT basketball game Saturday, that game starts at 2pm, so you should be getting out at just the perfect time to walk on over to the campus house from Cassell Coliseum to carpool with us to The Homeplace to celebrate another Hokie victory, and the end of another great semester at VT.

Key facts: 4:30pm Saturday, at the campus house. 15 dollars plus tip.

Hope you can join us.
Steve

Christmas Party!

The big night is this Friday night for our Christmas party. We have some great games planned, and we also have an optional bonus feature for you, that we just found out about a few days ago!

Blacksburg's annual Christmas parade happens to be this Friday night beginning at 7pm. I talked to some of you about it and I know some of you have some great memories of going to parades and are excited about going this Friday. So this is the optional bonus feature. If you love a parade and want to join us, meet at the campus house at 6:45pm and we will walk down the street to watch the parade together and probably catch some free candy. (No diving in front of little kids to intercept theirs.)

If parades are not your thing, just meet us at the campus house about 8pm and we'll get the party started.

We'll enjoy some delicious hot chocolate, hot spiced cider, and various "Christmas snacks" while the sounds of some of your favorite Christmas music fill the air.

We have some sweet Christmas themed games planned. I don't want to give anything away and spoil the surprise, but one is going to be a very memorable team game, one is going to be sweetly nostalgic, and one is going to be exhilarating and hilarious. And that doesn't even include the White Elephant gift exchange which is kind of nostalgic, always memorable, and definitely hilarious.

What's a White Elephant Gift Exchange? Well, I have no idea where the name comes from, but it's a really fun, yet inexpensive, way to celebrate Christmas by exchanging gifts.

Here are your instructions: Bring a gift worth less than 5 dollars. This keeps things affordable. It doesn't even have to be brand new, as long as it is in good condition and is something that someone will enjoy and is worth about $4-5. You might be surprised how cool some gifts can be even while they are that inexpensive. It just takes a little creativity and imagination.

Students in past years have found some great gifts combing the isles of dollar stores, and thrift shops like Good Will, or the YMCA thrift shop on North Main Street. Sometimes the shopping part of this game turns out to be almost as much fun as the game itself. (Picture yourself in the toy department of the dollar store reliving your childhood. This time there's no parent telling you you can't buy it.)

Besides toys, some other popular ideas from years past are: cool Christmas ornaments, some nifty gadget, or yummy food, like maybe some homemade cookies, or just some candy, or something like that. Use your imagination. What would you enjoy getting?

Now that you have your gift, there is one more very important thing you need to do with it. You need to wrap it, and you need to wrap it well enough that nobody can tell what it is. This is part of what makes the game fun. We're all going to put our gifts in a big pile and take turns picking a present out of the pile. There is more to it than that, but this mystery is part of what makes the game fun, like when you were a kid and couldn't wait to open your presents under the Christmas tree and kept shaking them and tapping them trying to figure out what they might be. So wrap it well enough that it's not obvious what it is.

If you don't have wrapping paper, use newspaper or paper grocery bags or something. It doesn't have to be pretty, just a mystery. Besides, I've seen gifts wrapped in these that ended up looking surprisingly good.

We'll explain the rest of the rules at the party. Suffice it to say, we always have a lot of laughs with this game.

So bring a friend or two and come on over. It's gonna be a lot of fun.

Remember:
6:45pm if you want to catch the parade
8pm otherwise
Bring a wrapped gift worth no more than $5

One more thing just to get it on your calendar ahead of time -- next Saturday evening during exam week we are going to go to The Homeplace together, so mark that on your calendar and make plans to join us.

Thanks, and look forward to seeing you soon.
Steve