what i've been up to, part 1

[phineasjones]

whoops. slept til 11. must break that habit pronto as it leads to unproductive days. perhaps should also reconsider the staying up til 3 part. now, for the titillating task of trying to recall the scintillating details of my week.



the day of christmas eve was a crazy rush. more wrapping and packing up. rach and i exchanged gifts - we prefer to do this alone so as not to lose ourselves in the fun madness that is my parents' house at christmas. the mysterious present she'd been working on forever turned out to be a table, the top of which she covered with a mosaic. it's amazing and beautiful and i can't believe she did it all herself. ::love:: there were a few other lovely gifts as well, including a cute blue tea kettle. yay for good presents.

and then we had to hurry to get ready and get out so i could be on time for church. which went well - the same christmas eve service as usual. lots of carols and candles. it's a nice service. and the choir sang the hallelujah chorus at the end. which is fun to stand in front of - i can really call it conducting since they barely look at me and just shout their way through. my mom, eileen and grandfather came to the first service and my dad, rachael and hominidj came to the second. in between, i joined the choir members in the organ loft where we munched snacks and drank enough wine to make the second service not as boring as it would otherwise be.

went home and had a lovely sushi dinner. monkey was there too. it was very happy and warm. really nice to be together. we watched a christmas story together. my favorite part of that movie is the whiny younger brother. he really is the best whiner i've ever heard. i aspire to his heights of crankdom. we all opened one gift before we headed off to sleep.

we had negotiated a wake up time of 8:30. i had been thinking more like 10, but eileen wouldn't have it. alas. coffee helped. we still have stockings at my house - yes, even though rach clocks in at the youngest guest at age 24. they were much fun, candy and little toys. and then we moved on to big presents. i feel it would be hard to explain my family's penchant for excess to those who have never witnessed it. i can't really imagine life without it at this point, but no doubt some would be shocked. they gave rach and i a dvd player and a new printer. 2 nights at a foofy hotel in noho. more polish stoneware than you could shake a stick at. a house cleaning by a cleaning service (eee!!!) and more. much more. my dad taped the french and saunders lotr spoof. yay. judy gave us a wine rack. hominidj gave me the two towers soundtrack, the making of the trilogy book, a.s. byatt's latest book and, with harrimad_sol, a gryffindor lego set with ron (this set includes a bed with drapery and all - which means i now have harry, draco, ron and a place for them all to play ::evil grin::).

much of the day was spent just hanging around - eating candy, playing with toys and such. harrimad_sol came over earlier than expected - to avoid the impending storm. she gave me the bumblebee flies anyway on dvd. wheeelij! we had a good time with the legos and an imagined lego!harry wearing a lego!invisibility cloak. later on we were joined by scottxwl too, and apparently, my grandfather made a pass at him.

the storm did make an appearance. heavy snow and wind and all that good stuff. which meant no going out to see the two towers. this made me unreasonably pissy for a little while. i hope i didn't spoil anyone else's fun. i recovered though, and we all sat around and talked and then watched spiderman and two episodes of buffy. i feel asleep before the second one ended. and this was the end of christmas.

looking at this, it's kind of funny to see recorded all the things people gave me and not what i gave them. but, i'm too lazy to chronicle all that, so i'll leave it as is for now. but i gave people presents too, you know, i didn't just taketaketake. *g*