Gracie’s Life Experiment

It’s the end of yet another year.   Time to look back and see what I did…

Main events of this year for me (at least those I can remember from the fuzziness I call “my brain”):
- applying and getting a permanent residency visa for emigrating to Oz
- cousin Steve’s wedding
- having lots of building work done
- not going on holiday at all (first year we’ve not gone anywhere as tourists)
- big conference trip to San Diego
- finding out about facebook
- starting my blog (of course!!)
- buying my first laptop (all the previous ones were work owned)

Roll on 2008!

Summary of the day: Didn’t do much at all, Went to Aldi to pick up some laundry liquid (came back with £50 worth of crap), Relaxed, Thought about doing some work (didn’t!)

OMG can’t believe what happened in the finale to Robin Hood.  I haven’t really watched that much of series 2 on the beeb but caught some of the episodes and the finale tonight.  It was all pretty ridiculous.  I mean how is it that it only takes a day to get from Nottingham to Portsmouth circa 12th Century in a horse and carriage?  Even more they seemed to get from Portsmouth to the Holy Lands in a blink of an eye.   Then Richard gets and arrow in the back, and later is well again but with what appears to be a broken arm - wtf?  It was like this episode was dreamt up by a group of primary school kids, I’m sure we used to do this kind of role play and come up with similar things in our imaginations.  Ah well, it’s Robin Hood for kids and on TV and not meant to be realistic (hey was it all just legend though, how many different Robin Hood’s were there anyway?).  It was fun, but silly at times.  Nevertheless I found myself oddly enjoying it (even though I was throwing my arms up in disbelief in places - at least I was watching). (more…)

Drove back from London today.  Bloody awful weather.  Rain, rain and more rain.  It took us 4 hrs to get back cross country.  Of course it wasn’t helped by the fact I dozed off after about an hour and when I woke up we appeared to be heading TOWARDS London again!!  30 mins of chastising driving hubby and we were back on track (didn’t go back to sleep again after that).

Summary of the day: Packed car and tidied room, Had early lunch, Sat in car (and sat and sat), Got home and put heating on (brr), Unpacked car and made fish with mash for dinner.

This week’s 10 things are, predictably, a selection of 10 Christmas presents we got.

1. Wii games (Mario & Sonic from Mocha dog, The Simpsons from my sis and Phil)
2. A vast supply of wines from various members of the family
3. A piggie bank from my parents
4. Chocs and sweeties from my nephews
5. Jewellery from gran and auntie
6. A lamp from my bruvver
7. Shrek 3 DVD from Johnlet
8. Handpicked dark chocs from Thorntons
9. Some smellies
10. Rummikub from my dad (now every subset of the family has a set to practice, oh dear)

Summary of the day: Treated family to Dim Sum lunch, Went to 5 Crops Chinese supermarket to stock up on supplies to bring back up North for CNY, Did the bumper puzzle pages of the Times (about 20 killer sudokus yay), Had cheese on toast for dinner

Woke up with painful arms after playing Mario and Sonic at the Olympics on the Wii (all that rigorous alternating of the wiimote and nunchuck).

We went to see Avenue Q in the West End (Noel Coward Theatre) with my sis and her hubby.  Was really good fun.  We sat right in the very front row (AA) which was el cheapo (£20 each) and I found that it was fine as I didn’t need to crick my neck looking up and you could see all the people’s expressions.  Also when the Trekkie monster came on the main stage bits of trekkie-fluff flew off and I kept extricating bits of fluff out of my mouth!!!  All the performers were really good.  Daniel Boys (one of the Josephs from Any Dream Will Do) played Princeton/Rod.  The lady playing Christmas Eve was a bit screetchy at the beginning, which hurt my ears, but I think that maybe that’s how that character is meant to be done.   Definitely NOT one to take the kids to as there’s puppet porn involved!  It’s a bit confusing at first with the puppets and the people on at the same time but you find yourself weirdly drawn to the puppet mouths (also somehow their eyes always seem to be looking straight at you).  Was very strange at the end when they had everyone on stage as some performers had two parts.  I’m sure that I will be humming all the songs for the rest of the year. 

Summary of the day: Helped tidy a bit more, Fixed parents’ laptop, Ate leftovers, Went to sister’s for dinner, Went to see Avenue Q

It’s Christmas Day!  It was the usual mayhem of my parent’s Christmas Day.  Woke up and helped to get the turkey in the oven (why turkey again!!).  Washed and got ready to go out.  Went to the local church.  It had an interesting talk (well it was brief as the kids were all there too) about the amount of rubbish that gets thrown away at Christmas and how Jesus shouldn’t get swept into the bin with all the wrapping paper after Christmas itself.  Smattering of the usual carols and a beautiful duet the Angels Carol by Rutter.

Rushed home to do rest of the lunch (I was in charge of the 2 ovens).  Sister in everyone’s face with the video camera - told her she was going into an oven if she didn’t stop!!  Total preparation time (4 pairs of hands) and about 6 hrs.  Total demolishing time about 1 hr.  But everything turned out good and there weren’t too many leftovers (although I’m afraid that everyone ate to excess which is a bit disgusting).

Opened presents once we could move again.  Nice selection of goodies again this year (including about 20 bottles of wine).  Hubby was very happy!  Got Mario and Sonic at the Olympics and The Simpsons games for Wii.  Had all the relatives young and old all playing Olympics.  Most of the oldies were in the dining room playing Rummikub - seems to be a bit of a resurgence in popularity.  18 relatives altogether.

Helped my mum to dry up while she washed.  Hubby loaded dishwasher.  Went to bed, knackered.

Summary of the day:  Church, Eating, Playing!

It’s Christmas Eve already.  Went out to meet an old friend for lunch to catch up on gossip which was really cool and great to just chill and see what we’ve been up to all year (I know I’m extremely rubbish at keeping in touch).   Most of today was spent primarily helping my mum prepare for tomorrow’s Christmas dinner (and also cooking tonight’s dinner).  So made about 50 meatballs, some wontons (yes we have a strange hybrid traditional English Christmas meal but with some Chinese twists), glutinous rice, 30 stuffing balls, a trifle (loads of sherry), a jelly, and some other stuff I’ve probably forgotten about.  Tomorrow the turkey, and vegetables!!  Everyone is totally stuffed silly already and I’m actually dreading all that eating - it’s so bad even Mocha dog has stopped bothering to beg for food.  Oh dear, I think we’ve forgotten to get cookies and sherry for Santa (hope he still comes and Mocha doesn’t scare the reindeer away).

Summary of the day: Went out for lunch, The great search for a broccoli for my mum to cook ensued, Bought one last Christmas present, Made wontons, Prepared lots of stuff for tomorrow.

Much of today was spent on the road.  We’re spending Christmas with my parents this year and then heading North to visit his parents.  Wish that our parents didn’t live in Kent and Lancashire as we end up spending so much time travelling.  We would have Christmas at ours, but none of our relatives can ever be bothered to come visit us (funny how they expect us to drive miles for them numerous times a year).  When people ask what we’ll feel like when we move to Oz and none of the family is nearby I always say it’ll make no difference as it doesn’t matter if we live 3 hrs or 3 days away they still won’t come visit!  With all the fog it was hellish driving home and there were accidents all over the place, it ended up taking 1.5hrs longer than usual.  Bah humbug

Summary of the day: Packed up the place (no presents or anything worth stealing left behind if you happen to be a burglar thinking about casing our joint!!!), Sat in a car, Went over to an uncle’s house for Laksa (sort of curry soup noodles)

Our bath has been on the p**s since we moved into the house almost 5 years ago and also wasn’t seated properly (everytime u fill it with water it sinks an inch and tears the silicon sealant away).  The bath has a rim at one end which is sort of a headrest, originally when we moved in it was at the end with the shower and all the water collected behind it, since then we turned it round the right way.  Also we couldn’t really afford to retile the whole bathroom so used white tile paint to cover all the tiles (all the walls are tiled from top to bottom).  The tiles were a bit grim before, sort of marbled pink and blue print.  Luckily they were a modern size and a few had some simple raised relief work of shells on.  Over the years some of the tile paint had got chipped or torn and peeled off so we buffed it all off and repainted (well hubby did as paint fumes no good for me).  Now the bathroom looks like new again (although a few of the tiles look a bit whiter than the others).  Just need to change the shower pull switch box to a deeper one and give the ceiling a repaint and the bathrooms good.

Summary of the day: Went for a long walk in Outwoods with Mocha, Mocha got a bath (she’s like a massive puffball now), Had an afternoon nap, Hubby fixed bathroom.

Well, we finally finished buying all the Christmas pressies today.  After all that planning I ended up trawling round town for a couple of hrs picking up stuff.  Some bits are rather random, other are absolutely spot on.  Spent the afternoon wrapping the presents and now our tree looks most bountiful.  We got 2 different patterns this year, a nice plain gold and cream one and a green one with Winnie the Pooh et.al. on.  Our family don’t go for really expensive presents (because there’s so many of us it’s more of a token/thought than anything else). 

There’s still the in-laws side of the family to buy presents for, but as we’re not going up till after New Year we’ll get the presents between Christmas and New Year (get more for the money too). I always remember one year my sister bought me a plasma ball from what was the Gadget shop (now Gizoo I believe).  Well I already had exactly the same one my sis gave me the receipt and I exchanged it - seeing as everything was then 1/2 price I managed to get 2 other things instead (so 2x the value).

Summary of the day: Went into town (madness trying to park), Got presents, Wrapped presents, Arranged under tree, Visited by someone bestowing Christmas gifts (yay), Tea with Ginger and Pear Pies, Made a lasagne.