Christmas

[Zoot]

I'm off for 24 hours of Forced Family Fun.

Have a good one, all.

[lady cop]

Hey Zoot...have a good time...family may be annoying, but honey, enjoy them while you can...no-one knows you or loves you like them! merry holiday! :xmasday: ..just be a kid again for a while. we can argue later.

[Sweetie]

Merry Christmas everyone!

[wei yau]

I see a handful of people online. But am I the only one working today?

[seebs]

Whether or not I am "working" is a challenging theoretical question. I'm a freelance writer. I'm typing. I'm arguably working; if nothing else, I'm practicing my typing. On my... SHINY NEW KEYBOARD! It's exactly like my old keyboard, only probably a ROM revision newer or so, and I still love it to pieces. My old one needs to be seriously gutted and cleaned, and I'm not sure how; I'm thinking of trying to bathe it in 99% alcohol to get all the crap off of it.

[viscousmemories]

Merry Christmas Zoot and All. :)

:xmastree:

[maddog]

Today is our official holiday. Nonetheless, I polished off the last words of a draft today and am awaiting editorial feedback while I clean up my desk and do a couple of left-over revisions I've been putting off. So I'm workin'. Sorta.

#139

[Dingfod]

Seasons Greetings to all that have a season to be greeting.

I am working the night shift tonight so I'll be here, wide awake, all night long. My shiftmate and I both brought movies to watch tonight. Let's see what's in the big red bag...

/me shuffles through a stack of VHS tapes
OK, tonight we have for our viewing pleasure, King Arthur, DeLovely, Napolean Dynamite, Collateral, and Rundown. We'll not get to all of them tonight, but there's always tomorrow night. Inbetween, we can always watch A Christmas Story on TBS, The Miracle on 34th Street (the old one) on AMC, or the James Bond marathon on SpikeTV.

[Petra]

Harpy Kiss-Moose!

I'm at the farm. Got an internet connection that would make JoeP happy, but not me.

We been having champagne cocktails an' scallop[s an' chocolate an' strawbewrries an' all kindsa good stuff.


Hope you are, too.


:D


:sleigh: :waltz: :dancin: :xmasday: :cincin: :xmasday: :dancin: :waltz: :sleigh:

[JoeP]

Harpy Kiss-Moose!

I'm at the farm. Got an internet connection that would make JoeP happy, but not me.

We been having champagne cocktails an' scallop[s an' chocolate an' strawbewrries an' all kindsa good stuff.

What are you saying? That I don't know any better? I'm easily pleased? :glare:

12Kbps today, but here I am, online. We're in the process of cooking a fairly small christmas lunch (gammon, potatoes, sweetcorn, and some trimmings - there was going to be a chicken but it didn't smell perfect after defrosting). It will be my wife, my daughter and me. We ate out with the somewhat-extended family last night.

Daughter's busy with her fav present: The Sims 2. Occasionally she'll play with her puppy when it wakes up. (Thinks ... I need to upload some photos!) I got my repaired computer back yesterday and I'm busy recovering data and archiving stuff between four different computers.

Anyway, fun and happiness to all!
:bliss:

[Ex-zombie]

Happy Holidays to all! :xmas:

This is the first Xmas in five years that I haven't been working. It felt nice to sleep in this morning.

[livius drusus]

I didn't know you had a daughter, Joe. Speaking as a semi-professional daddy's girl, I bet you're a great daddy. :yup: (Edit: unless, of course, you deny her promised online time like a cruel, vicious brute. Sorry for forgetting about your little girl, Joe. Oh, and I was totally kidding about the cruel, vicious brute thing. Sorry about that too. :shy: )

Congrats on getting to sleep in, Ex-zombie. Not that it's exactly mid afternoon or anything. What time do you normally wake up?

[viscousmemories]

Of course Joe has a daughter. There's a thread around here somewhere about how he denies her online time for his own nefarious purposes... :D

I'm sure these gifts have made up for it though. I'd love to see puppy pictures. :yup:

[JoeP]

Actually I'm still a cruel, vicious brute. Jessy gets online time limited to checking her mail - I won't let her sit online playing games for 3 hours until we get broadband and a home router (so I can surf at the same time) and wireless at home (so she can do it in her room). And/or until she shows signs of being able to accept rules without fighting (like "you have to stop playing in 5 minutes" or "you have to go to school"). I'm expecting this latter to come about any time in the next 10 years.

This smilie is worryingly apt: :iamdad:

After only a day of solid game-playing (we've had to entertain the puppy), she is already showing signs of wanting us to spend time with her - human contact. Not bad.

:girltong:

[Farren]

Damn I just posted another thread exactly like this one then only saw this one.

I spent Christmas Eve with the mostly Italian family of a friend of mine. Real interesting people. They originally came from Egypt and are Italian with a little Greek and Egyptian (Arab) thrown in. Granny speaks English, Italian, French and German. Everyone in the family speaks English and Italian.

I ate five courses of food over about 4 hours. His granny, aunt and uncle all owned restaurants at one time or another and I was surprised by the range and deliciousness of food. Why in hell you can't get some of that stuff in Italian restaurants is beyond me, especially the slow-raised, slow-baked sweet fruity bread and the Molotof dessert.

I left after midnight and unfortunately was absolutely stuffed at my sister's place today. We had a small family Christmas, the nephews were less than wildly enthusiastic and one of the small ensemble was my idiot aunt (literally. She's certified mentally challenged and deeply fundamentalist, but sweet in small doses), so the company was less than scintillating. My sister cooked up a storm and it was delicious. Kudo's to her 'cos she has to cater to Vegan (dad), no red meat or poultry (me) and ordinary omnivores and managed to satisfy all of us, but after lunch I just passed out on my nephew's bed and slept till everyone was leaving, then left, so a very uneventful Christmas day.

[viscousmemories]

I just got this quote at the top of the index page. Seemed fitting. :)

"Christmas is a time when people of all religions come together to worship Jesus Christ." - Bart Simpson

[Ex-zombie]

Congrats on getting to sleep in, Ex-zombie. Not that it's exactly mid afternoon or anything. What time do you normally wake up?

I normally get up at 5:00. Waking up at 6:30 is sleeping in for me. :D

[seebs]

So, we had a special adventure, which is that our roommate pushed the button-lock for the back door, that locks the doorknob... For which we have no key. So we got locked out. So, when we came back from the family thing, my brother-in-law came with us. Only he left first, so when we got home, there was this big guy in a leather jacket drilling out the lock on our door. But, in the true spirit of Christmas, he helped us replace it. Lucky for me I screwed up a year or so back and couldn't figure out how to take the knob off the front door; I had a kit lying around.

Furthermore, this ended up fixing the problem where the deadbolt and the main latch were misaligned so the deadbolt could only be locked when the door was a little open - I mean, think, 1/8" wide, up the whole door, cold air POURING in. So we spent a companionable 45 minutes or so taking the old lock mechanism off, repairing things, finding wood screws (the old lock had obviously been in and out a few times, incompetently, so we had to get special long wood screws to hold things together), and finally ended up with a back door with two locks, both using the same key, WHICH WE ACTUALLY HAVE, and which closes all the way even when locked.

Which is an EXCELLENT present.