Christmas Get-together with Christina and Rich

Christina and Rich provided a great excuse for an informal DOGS get-together. Following a typical DOGS pot-luck dinner, we proceeded to the evening's entertainment, a White Elephant Gift Exchange. We had all been instructed to bring something, wrapped, of course, from home that we had laying around that we couldn't bear to discard but that we didn't have the slightest interest in keeping.

And here's how it works:

1. All the, umm, presents are assembled in one place.
2. Everyone chooses a number from a hat.
3. Starting with 1, each number holder gets to pick a gift.
4. The holder can either pick one of the unopened gifts, or "steal" one of the gifts that someone else already picked.
5. A gift can only be "stolen" twice.

Let the games begin! The book Weird NJ proved to be very popular: it quickly got stolen twice after Larry first picked it, eventually resting with ... Brenda! A jar of pennies also got stolen, from Debby, by George. Linda stole a nice little Lenox vase from Cheryl. Mark stole Al's "bike vault", a plastic bicycle case.

Among the other noteworthy gifts were:

• An inflatable Santa (Dave Snope)
• Fergey, the dancing golfer (Dave Kristol)
• An unmatched set of four used bike water bottles (Susan)

Two infamous gifts from last year's white elephant exchange reappeared this year. Christina picked what would be the envy of every 10-year-old boy, a set of plastic vomit and dog turd; and Walt got the famous Rotato. I guess these are the gifts that keep on giving, or at least the gifts that keep being given. Needless to say, no one stole these gems from them.

Socializing

Food

Let the games begin!

And the winners are...