jack

After a lot of back-and-forth I decided to take the full two weeks off for Christmas even though I needed to borrow some holiday allowance from the next calendar year. I really needed it, I'd been running myself almost empty recently, even without any particular crises.

This was the first Christmas without any grandparents alive. My parents and I decided not to go to my extended family. Instead, Liv came to stay with me in Cambridge for two weeks. Mum came to Cambridge the weekend before Christmas, and spent time with me and Liv, and all of us with Liv's family on Sunday.

Liv and I went to visit Liv's family on boxing day.

And we spent Christmas Eve and Christmas Day in Cambridge, just the two of us, cooking the bits of christmas dinner we like best, and opening presents, and playing board games, and catching up on all the things we haven't had time to spend together for. It was really lovely.

On Liv's birthday, we caught up on some shopping, getting both of us some respectable nice-looking clothes rather than slightly scruffy old things, and some other things, and went to Liv's parents in the evening.

Saturday was Liv's birthday party.

Sunday we went to London to see friends from Australia, and friends in London.

Crossposts: http://cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com/869321.html

Got about half of christmas presents ✓

(Which is only for immediate family. We're not especially good at presents, even that much taxes our imagination to the limit.)

Crossposts: http://cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com/808623.html

I got my fibre-optic christmas tree out on the 1st of december.

Several years I've not decorated for Christmas at all -- it's true that when you don't have children getting presents, and everyone is sick of Christmas themed-stuff being pushed on everyone since Halloween, Christmas ends up mattering a lot less. And when I'm busy and away for Christmas I've never got round to it.

But I miss celebrating the season a little because I have fond memories of doing so when I was young, so I got the tree out, even if I didn't bother with anything else.

Crossposts: http://cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com/802532.html

I've had a great few days recently. I'll try to catch up on blogging everything, back to my christmas party, but a few highlights.

* I had a lovely time visiting my parents and extended family. Christmas dinner may have become more of a habit, but it is nice, and I feel content afterward. And we had a very nice visit everywhere else, talking to mum about maths, and grandfather about science fiction, and dad about cards.

* I went to Livredor's party at the Pembury tavern (Thanks timeplease!) which was very fun: a lot of people I know and it was nice to see (pseudomonas, mole, thursday), a lot of people I'd met once or twice but was very glad to run into again (hairyears, deborah, livredor) and a lot of people I'd met at most once between them, but was glad to see (hold on, I remember real names but I won't post those on livejournal just in case, I'll check aliases on livredor's post)

* I had some time relaxing here, making innovations in house-stuff-organisation, and so on.

* I went to the Relativity new year party. I'd considered party hopping, but felt much more like relaxing somewhere comfortable for eight hours... It was very fun, packed to the gills with nice and cuddly people and insane conversations. Unfortunately, most of it was untranscribable. Probably the best comment was Mark, 00:04, "So far, so good."

I learnt the words to Auld Lang Syne (well, the first verse and chorus) which makes new year much more satisfying. Last year someone brought print outs, but I never actually knew the words. It is a very rousing song. Especially when you're in a topologically circular house and can form a ring all the way round it.

Naath, Sphyg, and Clare all had fabulous outfits. I failed to kiss a statistically meaningful sample of people with respect to beard, but noticed a very disturbing trend amongst people's opinions, the correlation seems almost 100% women in favour, men against, and metrosexuals making some kind of comment-moderation joke. There will not be any livejournal poll, I don't think I want that much more fuss.

I got home about 4. I also have comments on Dinnerladies, I Am Legend, The Prestige, and the cineworld centre's gigantic snowman, but they can be in a separate post.

I wasn't going to buy the new Pratchett. The Discworld books are still good, but I felt for once I could wait for the paperback. But on the trip I cracked, deciding I did want it, and if Terry was going to be ill a bit of solidarity now could only be nice, but there weren't any in the services.

And then I found someone had anticipated *both* these developments, and mum and grandfather had got it for me for christmas. Meaning I did have a christmas present I was excited to have, I thought this might be the first year when I was old enough not to be excited about getting up at christmas, but I still am. I guess I will be again when I have a wife/family.

Mum also got me some new clothes, which are very nice. I've talked before about my philosophy of presents. They're nice to have, but what I really appreciate is that she took the time to go shopping, the drag of which is what I'm very grateful she saved me.

A brief update. I left cambridge for worcester after a week of being increasingly busy as I think "I can make up for it later" on the thursday before χmas, and en route had a very nice coffee with Angel, being the first time I sat down for a week. I went to the pub with family both nights, then we went up to Grandfather's in Lancashire for christmas day, stayed until yesterday, and I'm going back to cambridge tomorrow or sunday.

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