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puritybrown:
As my family puts it, that passed off civil. We were 12 at Christmas; we were going to be six, and then my uncle and his girlfriend and his girlfriend's two sons
and her parents were added to the guest list, so we had to scrap all plans of having duck or beef or something else with an actual flavour and roast a turkey instead. (I have eaten more turkey in the past three days than in the previous three years, which is more a sign of how little turkey I normally eat than anything else.) I had suggested we play board games after dinner to break the ice (well, the only board game we have, which is Kill Dr Lucky, and a very fine game it is too), but it turned out not to be necessary; the guests all chatted away for hours, and there was no ice to break.
I got a pretty good haul of presents, most of them from my Amazon wishlist, which led to a peculiar and not very satisfactory situation where I was very happy to receive the presents, but the people who'd got them for me had no idea why I wanted them and wouldn't have understood if I'd explained myself -- like, my brother got me a Hyouta Fujiyama manga, which I could squee about for hours (she's my favourite BL mangaka, and this particular manga is a fantasy story, which she doesn't normally do, and I'm excited to see what she does with it), but he doesn't really care. (I did try explaining
Yotsuba&! to my mother, but I'm beginning to think that
Yotsuba&! needs to be experienced to be understood.) So, there was no real surprise and also no real sharing of enthusiasm, which bothered me a bit. Still, it didn't cast a shadow over the day.
Yesterday I slobbed around in pyjamas, ate leftover turkey, and played
Civilisation III a lot, which worked fine for me. Today I did 20 minutes on the stationary bike, then returned
The Muppet Christmas Carol to the DVD place and went for a walk to the local park. The pond was frozen -- not completely solid; the edges were still liquid, and there was a biggish section near the ducks' island that was mostly liquid, but the main body of the pond had a layer of ice several inches thick on top of it. The park's two resident swans were sitting on it, apparently content to stay completely still until it thawed; meanwhile, a flock of pigeons had descended on the ice, and were pecking at bits of bread that had been thrown for the swans. They looked so comical as they meandered to and fro, mostly just walking along but occasionally skidding and sliding and needing to use their wings to get their balance back.
I also went to see
Sherlock Holmes, which I liked very much despite being able to hear the rumblings from Arthur Conan Doyle turning in his grave. As I was walking home from the cinema (for lo! a new cinema has opened which is only 15 minutes' walk from my house! and lo!
they're participating in the Met Live opera broadcasts programme!), I thought up some more accurate titles for it, like:
Kung Fu Sherlock Holmes vs Satanists Who Are Technically Not Freemasons, But Come On, Who Do We Think We're KiddingSherlock Holmes: Making Batman Look Like A Wuss Since 1887Do Not Fuck With Sherlock Holmes. No, Seriously, Don't, It Will Not End Well For YouWhy, Yes, We Are Aware Of The Existence Of Holmes/Watson Slash. Get Typing, Ladies!Sort Of Like A Dan Brown Movie If Dan Brown Had A Sense Of Humour And Was Less Easily FooledI have a busy few days ahead, and then comes the New Year, and I have some resolutions in mind, though I'm still working them out. All in all, 2009 was a difficult year, but not a bad one; I'm hoping that 2010 will be less difficult, and positively good.
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theonionfeed: