And So That Was Xmas...

Flippin' 'eck. It's all go here. Well, it seems like that. So much has happened and it's only just over a week since I last updated, even if all I did in my last update was to gush over Return of the King.

Allow me to attempt to cover everything we did over Christmas.

Finished work at midday on the 23rd. Well, it was more like 11.20am, since I ran out of things to do, so it was more a case of being home at midday. After a quick lunch we set off to the first stop on our Grand Tour - my parents house.

It was a complicated Christmas this year. Because Bro wasn't working on Christmas Day for the first time in about five years, I wanted to see him for Christmas. The complicated thing about this was that it was Alison's family's turn to see us.

So, anyway. Bro arrived late afternoon having just been to see Return of the King (having felt pressurised into seeing it before Christmas by the prospect of being with his parents, his brother, and his brother's girlfriend over Christmas when all four of them had already seen it. Anyway, one of the first things we did when he arrived was enthuse massively about the film. He appraised me of his progress in Metal Gear Solid 2 and I demonstrated Brute Force to him.

Oh, and for the record we were both impressed that Dad had finally given in to pressure from Mum (and the two of us) to replace the TV and DVD, both of which were fucked (or, from my Dad's perspective, bearable). My parents have a widescreen TV, woo, wonders will never cease, etc. Now I just have to persuade them to use the auto screen-size thing properly. Duh.

On Christmas Eve Bro and I properly asserted our presence on the 'rents' living room, by festooning it with console cables, controllers, and game boxes. By the time Dad arrived back from fetching Nan it looked much more like the living room we'd grown up with, apart from the fact that it wasn't, because it wasn't the house we'd grown up in.

I made an effort to complete chapter 15 of Night of the Despots, having finally taken the plunge and decided to rename the novel from Past Participants. I didn't quite get that far, but I did get as far as deciding how the damn chapter was gonna end, instead of being stuck at the Choose Your Own Adventure stage. "If you think the main character should viciously stab the villian in the leg, turn to page 96. If you think the main character should teach the villian how to use the internet, turn to page 83."

Due to the arrangements that had been agreed for Christmas Day (ie, that myself and Bro and partners were leaving straight after breakfast), we had decided that the majority of Christmas Presents would be opened on Christmas Eve. A few were opened before dinner - a Christmas Dinner, natch - and then the rest of our presents to each other (other than presents for partners) were opened afterwards.

This meant that me and Bro both had new games to try out, and for a while the possibility of watching Alison's copy of Pirates of the Caribbean was debated. Mostly, however, people just threw Christmas Cheer around the room and marvelled at what they had gained.

The next morning, there was the whole Stocking thing to do, and also Alison and I started exchanging presents. I gave Alison the necklace I'd got her (white gold set with diamonds), and she was suitably taken aback (although some of the surprise was apparently spoiled by me leaving the Ernest Jones bag lying around while I was wrapping presents.

We left my parents at just after 10am, which was what we had been aiming for.

Next stop was Alison's Uncle and Aunt's, on the border of Yorkshire and Lancashire (the Yorkshire side, natch). This is quite a drive from South Wales, and the roads were a bit busier than we expected. They still weren't busy, as such, but we expected them to be almost empty.

We arrived in time for our second Christmas dinner in as many days, and found a house full of digital cameras (three out of the four males already present had received digital cameras for either Christmas or December birthday, making it a bit stupid when you add my camera and phone to that). After the dinner we got the rest of our presents and then most of the people present decamped to the living room to watch films they'd already seen a million times over.

So, I'm not about to list everything I got for Christmas because that's too much like showing off, but items of note (and by of note I mean things that may actually interest some other people) were:

• Wallace and Gromit: Project Zoo and BtVS: Chaos Bleeds for the XBox.
• Terminator 3 and Eddie Izzard: Sexie on DVD.
• The Brick Testament, a book depicting the stories of the Book of Genesis using Lego.
• A tshirt saying "Destined for Greatness But Pacing Myself"
• The Matrix Revolutions soundtrack CD.

The shock of Christmas Day was that everyone, Alison's Mum especially, liked watching me play the Wallace and Gromit game. Alison's Mum! She normally can't be doing with all that computer rubbish. Heh.

Somewhere in amongst everything else going on I managed to finish the chapter, finally. Now I'm back to Pepper Rats editing for a wee bit, then I'll be onto finishing this one.

Boxing Day brought with it the traditional (for Alison's family) Boxing Day walk. This year's walk was quite a small effort compared to prior years, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. Some of the previous walks have been... well, extensive.

The next day didn't see us returning home yet. Instead we travelled most of the way back and stopped at Alison's Parents for the night. As well as watching Galaxy Quest on whichever channel, we tried Alison's Sister's new game, Perudo. It's a dice game, something along the lines of the card game Cheat!. When you call another player's bluff, you have to say "Dudo!", and naturally there were a number of different variations on this, mostly originated by Alison's Dad. You can work them out for yourselves.

Finally returned home on Sunday afternoon, whereupon we flaked and then watched Pirates of the Caribbean.

Monday was where we both proved we needed to be sectioned. We went to Merry Hill, to hit the shops and the sales.

Argh.

Argh.

Argh.

Horrendous traffic. Parking was just crazy.

Inside the shopping centre it was pretty manic too. Given my prevalent attitude towards overcrowded shops and stuff it was probably an utterly stupid thing to do.

That's as maybe.

We spent several hours walking around the shops. When we left, we had bought: two drinks and two cakes from Starbucks; and X-Men 1.5 on DVD (a snip! at �9.99). That's all.

Now, those familiar with the geography around Birmingham (along with possibly those who have been reading this thing for far longer than is advisible) will know that not far from Merry Hill there is an IKEA. It seemed rude to travel up that way without heading IKEA-wards too.

Next to IKEA is a small retail park with a PC World in. There's a PC World next to Merry Hill too, but I'm not entirely sure where that one is, so go figure. Anyway, went to PC World. I was in need of a new keyboard, and quite liked the idea of getting an optical mouse. It turned out that the cheapest I could get a keyboard for was 20 quid. Now, obviously that's not the absolute cheapest keyboard, just the cheapest keyboard that doesn't make you think you could make a better one yourself out of Lego. In the optical mouse department, the cheapest one that met my requirements (I find MS mice the comfiest to use) was 30 quid. I was just pondering this when we spotted the Microsoft "Basic Wireless Optical Desktop". For 60 quid, you get a wireless half-decent keyboard and a wireless optical mouse. So, 10 quid more loses me the wires and means I get to be a flash sod. Naturally, given this fantastic opportunity to take a further step along the lifelong path to gadget nirvana, I was unable to walk away. Slightly dubious was the fact that it said it was only for Windows 2000 and Windows XP, but as I more or less guessed this only applied to the software. So here I am now, typing this on a wireless keyboard from a quite funkily clear-of-cables desk. The novelty hasn't quite worn off yet, but I'm sure it will in time.

Then IKEA. We started our time in IKEA with further snackage, and I also had a 'discussion' by text with my brother about whether I'd been a flashy big spender by getting the keyboard and mouse (since it was wireless) or if it was actually a halfway justifiable expense. As I remember, the issue wasn't resolved and the discussion degenerated into a game of insult tennis.

We bought something we had been meaning to get for some time - the pelmet for our kitchen units. The main reason for having this was to allow lights to be concealed behind it, so we also got some lights to conceal behind it. This involves me doing some more wiring somewhere along the line, but that's not really a chore. I was going to be doing it tonight after watching T3 but I decided I couldn't be arsed.

After all that, it was nearly 8pm when we arrived home. Tsk.

Today has seen us visit a string of DIY stores in search of matching glazed interior and exterior doors. Fat chance. Surely people have a requirement for that occasionally? We can't be the only people who want to get doors that match. We also purchased a number of sheets of MDF and slabs of Jablite (polystyrene blocks for insulation) in order to insulate and board up the walls inside the porch. This is now half done, and I intend to complete that tomorrow.

We also finally have a clock for the kitchen. Cheap and cheerful from Sainsbury's, but it does the job, and that's what counts. Yay.

Tomorrow I imagine I'll do some kind of 'Review of the Year' type entry.