Ye Olde Xmas Haul Post
Dec. 26th, 2010 10:06 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
newnumber6So, we did the X-mas thing. Friday went over to my aunt's where they had a variety of finger foods and just hanging out and chatting with the relatives. Then on Xmas day itself we went over to my Dad's place for a relatively small (in terms of number of people, not amount of food) Xmas dinner.
Foodwise I dined on chips, roasted chickpeas and raisins, a variety of cheeses (including havarti and feta), a variety of things with cheese in them that I'm not sure I can name, mini-quiches (of a couple different types), meatballs, meatballs with rice and veggies in the meatball, sort of tzatziki-rollups, sausage pieces (the previous ones were all at my aunt's, the rest will be at my Dad's), chips, chocolates, nuts, turnips, scalloped potatoes, roast beef and turkey with gravy for each, brocolli, corn, cheesecake with blueberry sauce on top, and plenty of leftovers and sweets to take home.
Presentwise this year I got a fair amount of money from different people, a gift card to zellers and affiliated stores, socks, a body-wash/anti-persparent/shower-scrub-thingie pack, a hat (from someone at work), a huge collection of assorted mixed party nuts (mostly different styles of peanut).
Overall it was pleasant, no big family arguments this year. Only minor complaint/annoyance was that, while going to my aunt's was fun, I was a bit tired (since I had to work that morning and get up super early, and the party was fairly latish), and the kids of my cousins seemed to have gotten a lot louder in the last year, and there were a few more of them. Barely worth mentioning, and yet I do.
There is a slight chance I may get a new computer in the next week. This one (still running Win98) is in reasonably fine repair but I'd like to migrate all the data over to a system that actually has a way of directly transporting data other than a disk drive, so future backups are easy as a USB key (I have a USB-HD enclosure, so once I get the new computer I can liberate the HD of the old one and copy everything over relative quickly). And of course, fewer and fewer sites run well on this system (even though I mostly use it for just a couple mainly text ones), and, well, sometimes it does feel a little slow. There's also the fact that I believe this computer, because the tower is larger than many modern computers and the case isn't totally sealed, it throws up interference that borks my TV reception a little bit (I get through antenna)... when I turn it off, the reception gets better, and that doesn't happen with my newer computer. Anyway, I've been wanting one for a while and the stars might align for Boxing Week sales and having a lift to go pick it up/bring it home.
I also want to pick up a printer so I can finally have one. Then I can start sending off stories to markets that don't accept solely e-mail submissions.
TV, most things have been dead, but of course there has been the Doctor Who Christmas special. Mostly I enjoyed it, maybe a bit iffy at points, but still good. And it inspired Doctor Who dreams (one where I watched a version that had extra footage, including a robot in the TARDIS that seemed very much like Danger from Astonishing X-Men), and another one where I accidentally bought the novelization of the episode (accidentally in that I bought it and then immediately realized, 'why the hell did I buy this? I don't even read the Doctor Who novels that AREN'T based on an episode!'), then figured that since I already bought it I might as well read it to see if they explainedd any of the finer points of time manipulation, and while I read it, in the ways that dreams do, I became part of the story which went in a completely different direction than the episode (I believe we all time travelled back to the 1920s/1930s and some kind of workplace that was trying to unionize. There was also one scene where Rory was instructed to activate the TARDIS time-space-induction-thingie by activating the 'cockmost switch' on a certain panel, which the Doctor meant the one that was most off-angle from the other switches, but Rory thought "the lever that looks most like a penis" and spent far too long looking over all the switches trying to make a decision about which one that was).
Foodwise I dined on chips, roasted chickpeas and raisins, a variety of cheeses (including havarti and feta), a variety of things with cheese in them that I'm not sure I can name, mini-quiches (of a couple different types), meatballs, meatballs with rice and veggies in the meatball, sort of tzatziki-rollups, sausage pieces (the previous ones were all at my aunt's, the rest will be at my Dad's), chips, chocolates, nuts, turnips, scalloped potatoes, roast beef and turkey with gravy for each, brocolli, corn, cheesecake with blueberry sauce on top, and plenty of leftovers and sweets to take home.
Presentwise this year I got a fair amount of money from different people, a gift card to zellers and affiliated stores, socks, a body-wash/anti-persparent/shower-scrub-thingie pack, a hat (from someone at work), a huge collection of assorted mixed party nuts (mostly different styles of peanut).
Overall it was pleasant, no big family arguments this year. Only minor complaint/annoyance was that, while going to my aunt's was fun, I was a bit tired (since I had to work that morning and get up super early, and the party was fairly latish), and the kids of my cousins seemed to have gotten a lot louder in the last year, and there were a few more of them. Barely worth mentioning, and yet I do.
There is a slight chance I may get a new computer in the next week. This one (still running Win98) is in reasonably fine repair but I'd like to migrate all the data over to a system that actually has a way of directly transporting data other than a disk drive, so future backups are easy as a USB key (I have a USB-HD enclosure, so once I get the new computer I can liberate the HD of the old one and copy everything over relative quickly). And of course, fewer and fewer sites run well on this system (even though I mostly use it for just a couple mainly text ones), and, well, sometimes it does feel a little slow. There's also the fact that I believe this computer, because the tower is larger than many modern computers and the case isn't totally sealed, it throws up interference that borks my TV reception a little bit (I get through antenna)... when I turn it off, the reception gets better, and that doesn't happen with my newer computer. Anyway, I've been wanting one for a while and the stars might align for Boxing Week sales and having a lift to go pick it up/bring it home.
I also want to pick up a printer so I can finally have one. Then I can start sending off stories to markets that don't accept solely e-mail submissions.
TV, most things have been dead, but of course there has been the Doctor Who Christmas special. Mostly I enjoyed it, maybe a bit iffy at points, but still good. And it inspired Doctor Who dreams (one where I watched a version that had extra footage, including a robot in the TARDIS that seemed very much like Danger from Astonishing X-Men), and another one where I accidentally bought the novelization of the episode (accidentally in that I bought it and then immediately realized, 'why the hell did I buy this? I don't even read the Doctor Who novels that AREN'T based on an episode!'), then figured that since I already bought it I might as well read it to see if they explainedd any of the finer points of time manipulation, and while I read it, in the ways that dreams do, I became part of the story which went in a completely different direction than the episode (I believe we all time travelled back to the 1920s/1930s and some kind of workplace that was trying to unionize. There was also one scene where Rory was instructed to activate the TARDIS time-space-induction-thingie by activating the 'cockmost switch' on a certain panel, which the Doctor meant the one that was most off-angle from the other switches, but Rory thought "the lever that looks most like a penis" and spent far too long looking over all the switches trying to make a decision about which one that was).
