We went to B&B's house tonight for our annual Christmas Dinner. Unfortunately, Debbie is still slaving-away at Field's at Water Tower and just couldn't get away to join us. She was missed.

The drive to their house was probably the worst drive yet - an hour and a half. There was a ton of traffic - had to be Christmas shoppers. There were accidents, too. Idiots.

We had some hors d'oeuvre's and talked a while. Barry had made is own cocktail sauce for the shrimp which was the deadliest thing that I think I ever had. I just wasn't ready for the severity of the horseradish - it was strong.

Barry had picked-up a beef tenderloin at the Paulina Market for dinner. It was wonderful - a bit rarer than I would like (I'm a medium rare guy, while this was right up Carol's Rare alley...).

We watched pieces of Love, Actually before dinner and watched a Travel Channel special on a Royal Caribbean Cruise's 12-day Mediterranean tour (something that we're interested in doing in 2006).

All in all - as always - it was another great night just talking and enjoying friends.

The weather changed while we were at their house - the temperature dropped and we were getting battered with lake effect snow, which meant the trip out of the city was a bit dicey, but it was better when we got closer to home (well, except for the roads icing-up).