We Wish You A Xeria Christmas

So the company for which I work has been naming sprints after bands starting with the letter A at the beginning of the year and then progressing every two weeks. When they asked for an A band, I said Amaranthe, of course, and the product manager running the video meeting played “82nd All The Way” up until the unclean vocals.

Which means my coworkers rock less than I do, but to be honest, they’re mostly not in QA.

I’ve suggested proper bands for every sprint since then, but have only had a few suggestions elected via poll to the sprint name.

When we came to the X sprint, I was at a bit of a loss. I didn’t have any bands in my library that start with X. So I did some research (visited the Encyclopaedia Metallum) and started working through some bands.

I found one, Xeria, from Spain, who sings metal in Spanish. Which is unlike many European metal bands who sing in English.

So I went to their Web site, in Spanish, and ordered their CD Tierra, paying the Value-Added Tax and everything.

It arrived today, cell-wrapped and unsigned, but it did include a couple of postcards. Which maybe are a thing still in Europe. Also unsigned.

Well. Also on my desk were a couple of Christmas cards. We have traditionally hung Christmas cards on our living room walls during Christmas, and I’ve made room and have put up the Christmas cards from the overachievers who mailed their cards in November, and, well….

We will see if anyone notices.

Just to update you on the Santa Claus I put on the mantel the first weekend of November to see how long it would take anyone to notice: Nobody did. No one really spends much time in the living room except me, and I did the Christmas decorating this year as it was limited to unbreakable things since the Three Negritos would look upon all Christmas lights and decorations as cat toys.

We’re not even putting lights on the trees this year. Probably just wrapping them a bit with garland. And planning to spend December cleaning up shiny hairballs from the rug.

And now if anyone sees the Santa Claus, they might think we’ve had him all along.

The Xeria post card, though–that will likely be noticed. Maybe.

UPDATE: Actually, my beautiful wife noticed it almost immediately. Perhaps because the Christmas cards are hung basically at the top of the steps from the lower level.