Each year the magic of Christmas shrinks a little further, but I still get excited in the morning and had a little trouble sleeping Christmas Eve.
Mum was up at 6am as she was having trouble sleeping. The rest of us were up by about 7:45 apart from dad who always misses the stockings presents part. We all had a few cups of tea and coffee and managed to lag out present opening for several hours! I hate the idea of writing out “what I got for Christmas”, but I feel the geeky nature of some of the presents (quite a lot of them actually) warrants a mention.
I got the Debian GNU/Linux Bible, a t-shirt reading “there’s no place like 127.0.0.1”, a t-shirt reading “Code Poet” (the t-shirt that teddy wears in Antitrust), a *binary* (well BCD actually) clock which I can’t use yet because I need an adaptor to give it a 120V, 60Hz power supply for the transformer or 9V AC direct – and a luminous “eluminx” keyboard that lights up in the dark and is just generally cool! (despite the American layout) *breathe*. All but the book were shipped from thinkgeek.com in America – hence the problems with power and layout.
I got a wonderful three part present from lauperr, books, two DVDs… wait I’m listing presents aren’t I? I said I wouldn’t do that. Let’s just say thanks to everyone, I loved them all. I guess the DVDs and the gyroscopic toy count as a little geeky…
Each of us spent some time on the phone to Grandparents, Cousins and Aunty Karen but we had no visitors all day which meant relaxing 😀 Generally a very relaxed, loving atmosphere with the family with messages from friends, food, drink and chocolate. I was feeling pretty lucky.
There wasn’t a complete rest from geeking as I struggled to get alsa to stay working for reubs’ sound card (yes I was asking technical questions on IRC on Christmas Day) and setting up dad’s new freeview set top box with the TV and VCR.
I watched one of the DVDs, Shawshank Redemption which made me cry like the first time I watched it at Kes’ house. The other one is The Green Mile which is set to make me cry even more! A casual chat on IRC with the iMen clan and the Only Fools and Horses christmas special used up most of the rest of the day.
Now I’m settling down to my third pint of Guinness before bed. Life doesn’t get much better than this. I suppose I could be snuggled up with Laura instead of typing this like a sad muppet 😛
Now we got all that happiness out the way I have a load of schoolwork to worry about for the rest of the holiday. Same old routine.
I still maintain that Christmas is just an excuse for people to get all their being nice out of the way and indulge themselves, so they can be generally horrid for the rest of the year. I don’t “Wish it could be Christmas every da-ay”, but I do think people should have good will all year round, not just on Jesus’ alleged birthday. Now bed before I get any more bitter and ruin a perfect day.
🙂