Happy Christmas

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Christmas Lights FTW

Christmas lights, originally uploaded by Jane Goth.

I got a comment on this photo today it says
Hi, this is lovely why not enter our competition www.big-c.co.uk

Photography Competition
Big C' s Local Christmas Card Competition is now open for entries and it's free to take part!

We are looking for photographs that can be used on our local Christmas card for 2008 to help raise funds for complete cancer care in Norfolk & Waveney. We need 'wintery' scenes of recognisable landmarks in Norwich such as The Cathedral or Pulls Ferry, photographs do not have to have been taken this year.

The winning photograph will then be used on our Local Christmas Card which will be for sale in our Big C Shops, from Cards for Good Causes in the Forum or by mail order.

The winner will be acknowledged on the rear of the card as well as on our website and will receive a complimentary pack of 10 cards and envelopes to mail out to friends and family!

The Big C is a great charity and their shops are lovely too I got my tiara in their bridal shop but really, would you want a picture of a Norwich City Wheelie Bin adorning your mantelpiece Christmas 2008?

Cos if you don't enter some decent photos to their competition I might just take them up on the offer!

Boxing Day

I hope everyone had a lovely day yesterday and it wasn't too stressful, grim or tiring. We went to my in laws yesterday for a huge lump of beef and we went again today for lunch. Chicken with all the trimmings except crackers.

I don't know about you, but except for Dr Who and Shrek the Halls I've not been overly impressed with the Christmas offerings on telly this year. Yep there are some good films on but nowadays what with DVDs and the Sky Premiere Channel (which we don't subscribe to btw) the big Xmas film isn't anything special. I know that there is more to Christmas than the telly but there is only so long that you can read the "lav" books that you got as presents.

Too Busy to post...

...much. I've got so many blogs to read, posts to prepare, Christmas and life to enjoy never mind, it is Christmas it doesn't have to be perfect just relax and let it all flow over you.

I'm going to go back to having fun, just let me leave you with the faintly unsettling sight of NORAD being whimsical. Santa Tracking.

The Endless Slog For Christmas Cheer

We are scarcedly organised, we've done the Christmas present shopping, we spent a fair chunk of Sunday wrapping presents, the cards have all been posted. Tree decorated and twinkling, a lot of you will have seen the wreath already. Tonight we tackled the lump of the food shopping with nothing but a sketchy idea of what we wanted and some sturdy bags. An hour later we drove out of Tesco's car park with a car that was sitting very low on its wheels, so I guess we can say that we broke the back of that too.

But what is it about the preparations for the holiday that makes them so joyless? Well I know what it is about that Tescos, harsh lighting, tired customers who look ill under the fluorescent lights - it's enough to make the Easter Bunny want to become a suicide bunny. It's knackering and has given me a dreadful headache. We did pick up the holiday booze though, I've never had Jack Daniels before, it's rather nice, smooth, tasty and although it hasn't relieved my headache it hasn't made it worse.

We Put Up The Tree Today

Christmas Meals

Top tips

1. don't hold them in bars that fancy themselves as a cross between a Harvester restaurant and Studio 54

2. Or anywhere that serves their drinks in plastic cups, all the time.

3. Where the other customers would require beer goggles of incredible thickness if you were inclined to go on the pull afterwards.

4. Where they can't recover from getting half the table's food order wrong.

Otherwise we had quite an enjoyable evening in a perverse sort of way.

Happy Christmas

Happy Christmas Everyone,

I hope that you have had a peaceful and enjoyable day. For those of you who celebrate Christmas with presents I hope that you liked what you got and what you gave has given pleasure.

I have a rule about presents for Christmas and birthdays, it's simple, easy to understand, of long standing and I like to think grounded in sense. - Don't give me anything for the kitchen - no fancy microwaves, baking dishes, kettles, toasters or bins. I know lots of people love receiving stuff like that, but not me, it feels more like a present for the kitchen than for me, and as far I as know the kitchen has never celebrated Christmas and it doesn't have a birthday.

This rule shouldn't be broken but there are a couple of exception clauses; mugs, cookery books and small silly things don't really count, nor do things that I've pointed to and lusted after.

Like posh espresso coffee makers.

Which is a good thing as that is what Simon got me for my present. I'd been quietly lusting after one for months, it's great I can pretend that I work at Costa (alotta) Coffee, froth milk to my heart's content and make enough espresso coffee to keep the Italian fleet sailing. Si has spent most of the last two hours experimenting with different coffee types, which he has also drunk. As he doesn't normally drink coffee in the evening he is now sat on the sofa lightly vibrating with caffeine, he would have been shimmying a great deal more but for the dampening effects of the Irish coffees he made us not so long ago.

That's all I wanted to say really so night night y'all.

Temptation

I've been having a very leisurely day, the shopping has been done, the last Christmas party is going to happen this evening, the presents have been wrapped, the bats have been fed, there is nothing left to do really. So I'm sat here, at Simon's watching back to back Quantum Leap, (bliss) I've been surfing the 'net on his laptop and desperately trying to ignore the huge box in front of me. It's wrapped up with pretty paper and with a small tag with my name on it, this is cruel, I'm an incorrigible present prodder and shaker, massive temptation is being put my way and I'm supposed to ignore it?

As I am not the only one in my family who hasn't a scruple when it comes to the shaking, fondling and sniffing of presents I have over the years developed the habit of not putting names on presents if I'm going to be there to hand them out as there is no point in shaking a present if you don't know if it is going to be yours.

Sprouts

Well that's it, I've done all the Christmas shopping now, presents and food, it is all over bar the shouting and maybe some hummus if I feel the call of Waitrose on Saturday afternoon. An unlikely event I know but it could happen.

Simon and I braved the local Tescos this evening to do the "big shop" it was surprising less grim that I had first expected although the car park was full the shop wasn't rammed we could manoeuvre around the glassy eyed shoppers who clutched bags of sprouts to their bosoms as the trolley they had been pushing started to buckle under the hundred weight of dry roasted peanuts and cheeses piled within it.

We were able to resist the worst of the temptations and have got our Christmas tree, real, in soil and about a foot high, food and drink for when we are here, a litre of Baileys for medicinal purposes but no sprouts.

Christmas Timewasters

Some excellent timewasters on the Advent Calendar and all with a Christmas Theme. Once you get bored with those there is always drunk Santa to steer about.

So Here It Is Merry erm... Winterval, Holidays erm Yule

Of course it's the holiday season, there is Christmas, Hanukkah, New Year, Bohdi Day, Kwanzaa which is a cultural festival rather than religious, Winter Solstice and Eid Al Adha for starters all in December. So while the UK may be majority "Oh I suppose I'm a" Christian it isn't exclusively and really it isn't polite to wish someone a happy Christmas when you know full well that they actually celebrate Bohdi Day, so if you are not sure what if anything someone celebrates saying "Happy Holidays" although an awkward construction is a safe way of acknowledging there is a holiday in the offing.

But on the flip side we are a multicultural society but to assume that non Christians would take complete offence at being wished Happy Christmas is daft. Most people don't I'm an atheist to my knowledge I've never thrown a strop at being wished happy Christmas. I've never met someone who complains about a free day off. When I lived in the states Yom Kippur was a day off from school, I wasn't offended.

Often, rather than actually talk to someone who is different from ourselves we make assumptions about what will or will not offend them, because it's easier than actually engaging with people who might actually be a bit different from ourselves. That is the truly daft thing.

Just Stuff

Let me delight you with

A joke that I saw and put on the other blog Rabbits

Saturnian Noises from the University of Iowa via Bad Astronomy Blog

The place where I work has always had a flaky power supply, the mains electricity seems to go with remarkable frequency considering that it shouldn't happen at all, and the emergency generators aren't beefy enough to take the strain. They've been upgraded, supplemented and the site's works services manager is rumoured to have sacrificed voles to the great gods of diesel power generators so that they will work when called upon.

I think he may be graduating up to rabbits.

Something blew on Tuesday evening, the building that houses most of the sites servers has been on/off/on/off/on emergency power ever since. We had to do a "power down" for this evening so that more work could be done over the weekend. The power was going off at 4pm the servers were going to be taken off line from 3.20pm, so our IT people were switching off our computers from 2pm and forbidding them being turned back on.

Stupid.

I took the afternoon off, I did my deep cleanse of my in tray and desk draws last time the network went down 6 months ago.

So I got to see the Christmas lights in daylight for the first time. When I say for the first time I mean this year, the same strings of lights have been hung up ever since I moved here.



It's not impressive.

Dr Who Annual

I-pod

Happy Christmas

with kind permission from Dave

It's Almost Christmas

I can tell it's almost Christmas now, the schools have broken up for the holiday, so the buses are no longer quite so late as they were before, they are also almost empty as people start their Christmas leave. The weather looks like it will again fail to produce a white Christmas but then it almost always does in the UK. The office is quiet too, as we don't have so many contractors ringing us up, which is nice.

I got a Christmas card from one of my contractors yesterday, it looked for all the world like the sort of card you get gift vouchers in. I said this to my boss, then I spotted the two slots for holding a gift voucher or cheque in. Wow, how cheap - spare Christmas bonus cards. My boss got a calender from them, I didn't, such are the privilages of rank.

Tomorrow is my last day in work until the 3rd, tomorrow afternoon I have to get myself, with clothes and presents up to Kings Lynn by the joys of public transport, it's not that bad a journey but I am not looking forward to doing it this time because I will be laden down as will probably everyone else travelling tomorrow.

I'm staying with Simon for the holiday we are having Christmas dinner at his parents and then just bimbling we are going to meet up with a friend and his wife in Wells, seeing my Mum at some point and then up to Derby for a new years party. It should all be exceptionally nice.