post-christmas roundup 2009

oh christmas treeThe joys of technology… I typed most of this up at Ma’s yesterday once lunch was done and we were sitting down relaxing… I was surrounded by technology actually… laptop, iPhone (on charge via the laptop), and my digital camera (still on it's tripod). Oh and I kept a track of what we did throughout the day on my iPhone calendar (now if only I could get it to sync properly with either Google Calendar or some other program).

Hehehe… I’m such a technoweenie…

It was something of an odd day really… I can’t say that it really started to feel like Christmas into midway through the morning.

I was up at my usual time (5:15am) and was out for my walk shortly after that. I thought I was going to manage a Christmas Day walk without seeing anybody else around the banks of the Torrens, but just before I finished looping around the river I passed another exerciser. I only saw about five people, tops, though… and most of them were on my way home.

I got home within the hour as usual and was leaving for Ma’s just over half an hour after that… freshly showered, shaved, attired in my new jeans, shiny rainbow teeshirt and Bonds undies.

And for once I didn’t forget a single thing… granted that was probably because I laid everything out on the couch on Christmas Eve night. You have to love the giant Ikea paper bag though… never travel anywhere at Christmas without one! Two of them, and I had all of Ma’s presents packed up (and I also packed all my stuff up in them to bring it home again at the end of the day). So it only took two trips to fill the car up… one to move it around to the front of the apartment block, and another to load up the presents.

I got down to Ma’s in less than half an hour… and it was still only 7:40... Scary. But there’s no rest for the wicked, and I was only there for about ten minutes before we were off to La Cousina’s…

She and her brood were heading off early somewhere so we had to be in and out by 9... which is fine, I like to get it over and done with early. And as usual, I got a movie voucher… which is also fine, except it was for Reading Cinemas, which I think Ma and I have been to a grand total of once. But there’s one at West Lakes, so maybe we’ll have to make use of it there. Oh, and La Cousina quite liked the framed Chinese outfits.

Thankfully their place is only about five minutes away from Ma’s house… so it wasn’t long before we were back and having breakfast… mmmm croissants.

I also sent out a bunch of Christmas text messages (woohoo for free texts and MMS’s on my new plan) complete with a somewhat dodgy photo I took of myself yesterday at work when I was wearing the reindeer antlers… hehehe… people seemed to appreciate it, or at least the ones who send messages back did... and it was possibly around then that it started to feel appropriately Christmasy.

Then it was Present Time! As usual, Ma and I took it in turns with presents… one for her, one for me, repeat until presents are gone… and while there seems to be less stuff than in previous years, I’ve also been working... so when I want things I’ve just bought them.

But there was some stuff I’d kinda forgotten about, so that’s always good.

my presentsWhat I did find odd was that there aren’t a lot of actual movies in my DVDs this year… tons of teevee series, but only four movies… well, four movies and a music DVD…
As for the serieses… seri… oh, bollocks, whatever the word for multiples series is…
Okay, so it doesn’t sound so much… but it’s a lot of amaray cases.

I also took the Jibibuts and the Munnyworld Trikky that I bought before Christmas down to Ma's with me because other than opening the boxes and looking at them briefly, I hadn’t really unpacked them or anything (they're not strictly a Christmas present though).

So I did that… and the Jibibuts are GORGEOUS… bigger than I was expecting, but beautifully made in wood. And all the Munnyworld figures come with an accessory which is “blind boxed” (sealed in foil so you don’t know what you’ve gotten)… turns out my Tricky comes with a tiny wee bowler hat. So damn cute!

It was also something of a Tinkerbell Christmas… a Heartwood Creek figure, a Hallmark decoration and a cute little pen.

Then there was the very nice surprise of a Buffy comic miniseries… starring Oz (complete with photos of Seth Green on the covers). I haven’t gotten around to taking a look at them yet, but even if they’re a bit crap, it’s the thought that counts.

And as if I wasn’t already wearing enough jewellery on Christmas Day (what with my Bico lion, my jade buddah and my Scrabble tile initial), there was also the re:vision necklace we got from the Bowerbird Bazaar back in October… so I had to put that on along with everything else.

There was also the little painting I got from there too… from the nice lady at IMOK… very cute.

Where The Wild Things Are also got a look-in, with four badges (and at least one of them is going to end up on my Crumpler bag very soon) and the CD soundtrack… I had it playing later on in the day actually, and it was very cruisy. Good chill out music.

And Ma was obviously thinking similar thought to me in the lead-up to Christmas… I’d been looking at a little soldier in the Lego Pirates range which was pretty close to being a toy soldier… but I wasn’t sure about him, so I hadn’t bothered… but obviously I wasn’t supposed to, because there was one in my Christmas presents… actually all the toy soldiers that Ma has given to me over December were part of my present… which is eight new toy soldiers in all.

Add in an Autobot symbol belt buckle, a Futurama calendar and a little wooden robot, and that about covers it.

Once we were done with the Orgy of Presents (with a brief stop in the middle, as usual, to put the turkey in the Weber), I tidied up the lounge room while Ma got other things ready in the kitchen… of course most of the tidying up was so that I could arrange all the presents just so and take the requisite photos (stupid me though… after I took the photos of Ma’s stuff on Wednesday night I didn’t check the camera for battery power, so it was running low on juice all day… thankfully it didn’t fall over)… by which point it was around noon… it’s amazing how a Christmas Day can just run away from you.

Then it was time to make up the table… which just seems to get more elaborate every year… and took about 45 minutes… well, not totally, but if you spread it out with spaces and faffing about it takes longer. Plus I had to break out the laptop to charge the iPhone and proceeded to flatted the laptop battery in order to fill the iPhone one, which I think is amusing… but I haven’t actually used the battery at all since I bought the laptop, so it was good that it got a workout.

Anyway, I think we had lunch on the table somewhat earlier than usual (which is what happens when you get the La Cousina stuff out of the way early)… just after 1pm in fact.

the chistmas tableWoohoo Christmas Lunch…

Somehow we didn’t overstuff ourselves as much like in previous years… a little turkey, a little sausage meat (mmmm), some sweet potato, some beans… although next year we definitely have to have some proper gravy.

We didn’t bother with any dessert (which helped with the overstuffedness), but did the whole clean-up thing and then sat down for a bit… which is when I fired up the laptop properly and got to a-typin…

But then I had to stop at a certain point because Ma wanted me to attach the screen protectors to her DS (which I did somewhat inexpertly I have to say... I tried and I tried, but there were still bubbles)… then we fired up her MySims Kingdom game and I helped her through the initial bits and pieces (and the character she came up with is so cute… she’s essentially Storm from the X-Men with pink headphones and a camo top)… but eventually she more or less got the hang of it and wandered off to continue playing… so I got back to doing the typing thing while we finished off watching A Knight‘s Tale and then A Very Specky Christmas.

We had some dinner around 6... nothing much, just random leftovers like always, and then tidied up (again) and settled in to have some Christmas pudding and custard while watching The Girl Who Leapt Through Time (kinda cool, weird ending). Once that was done I packed up all my stuff ready to go and with roughly the same mount of stuff in the car, I toddled off home at about 9:30... and I was home just before 10, and in bed by quarter past...

Thus endeth Christmas for another year... no different really from a lot of other Christmases of recent past, but enjoyable all the same.

Thank god I don't have to bother about Second Christmas today!

Current Mood: