Well, that's four hours of my life gone

I just suffered through four hours of excruciating boredom: a family dinner with my parents and an aunt and uncle. My parents are not usually boring, but my aunt and uncle brought out their most boring sides. (Mom, do you have to talk at length about the light fixtures that you ordered specially from Germany? Uncle, do you have to talk about the fancy garage with self-opening doors that you just got built? *stabs fork into brain*) I can usually amuse myself inside my own head when needed (such as during boring seminars) but here I could not, because I had to be polite and nod and smile and whatever. I would have been less bored alone in a cell.

And now I am FREE and can dive into Yuletide instead! Where did those four hours of my life go, I could've been reading Yuletide all that time.