Bean just woke up screaming the house down. His butt is bright red. One of his back molars is coming in and he’s pooing for Britain. He always does that when he’s teething but it seems particularly bad this time. He’ll survive, but it just means lots of nappy changes and a ton of cream. Might also mean sleeping on his tummy for a while, but he does that anyway. Still, never nice to hear him cry like that :(
Making a list, checking it twice.
We’re slowly getting ready for the big day tomorrow. We’ve been cooking sausages wrapped in bacon, curried chicken skewers, yorkie puds, roast spuds and have done most of Tue veggie prep. That leaves only the roast to do tomorrow and reheating/parboiling stuff that’s already jade a once over so we’re hoping to keep stress at a minimum.
We took bean to see Santa today and were in a better position to take a picture. He looked suitably frightened, so our work here is done for the season. I made our family xmas card and mass emailed it out, so that too is done.
We’re going to open most of the xmas prezzies tonight because it would be a zoo trying to do that tomorrow with bean running around like a whirling dervish. We’ll keep one or two presents each so that we all have something under the tree to show that Santa’s been round though.
Other than that, we have a game plan and it allows for massive amounts of food and drink so rock on!
Hope that any of you who might be reading this have a good holiday season.
Happy birfday Katy
Today was Katy’s 30th birthday. We gave her her prezzies this morning, then headed in to town for a nice meal at San Carlo’s, then cocktails then movies. We saw the Chronicles of Narnia and then Harry Potter. For once in a very long time, Katy isn’t ill on her b’day nor is she having her period, and she got spoiled rotten and a bit pissed, so you can’t really ask for more :)
I love Katy’s mom
P: Katy’s birthday presents are upstairs, but I’m not sure where M has put her balloon.
K: I’m not sure I was meant to know about the balloon
P: Oh, at least I didn’t mention the cake in the box outside.
K: I’m not sure I was meant to know about that either.
I love her, but the woman can’t keep a secret to save her life :) Even M says that if you don’t want her to spill the beans on a secret, don’t tell her at all and if you really want something to be known, start it with “don’t tell anybody, but…”
You’d think that people would know better by now.
I heard the best quote today: “the UK is driving on 20th century roads and riding on 19th century rail lines”. This might explain why the whole country goes batshit when a few inches of snow fall from the sky.
I have very little patience today. The little I had, after not sleeping last night and being up since 4:30am, was used up by the idiot driving at 5mph, on two blown tires, from Saffron Walden to Great Chesterford. I do not understand the British when it comes to winter. Houses are not insulated for shit. People break out their wellies instead of donning more sensible – and grippy – footwear. Snow plows drive on show-covered roads without bothering to actually removing the accumulated show. WTF?
I really miss Canadian common sense when it comes to winter. Even in the worst snow storms, the main roads get plowed on a daily basis, and most secondary roads will be cleared within a day or so. Yesterday, Katy was adamant that Bean would go see Santa so we chanced the roads to get to Scottsdales. It was nasty and took twice the time it should have normally taken. This morning, two days after it stopped snowing, the road was still as bad (with said idiot driving at a snail’s pace). And don’t get me started about the sidewalks. It’s safer to walk in the middle of oncoming traffic than to risk those ice death traps.
Bombardier sidewalk plows, how I miss you.
Kittens and boobs FTW!
This is so full of win!
So very, very true
Tis the season to get bad porn
Merry Festivus, everybody!
What bunch of poncy idiots thought up this one??
I’m sorry. I’m going to rant a bit now (even moreso than usual). Xmas is supposed to be all pap and tack. It’s all about gaudy. It’s not supposed to be tasteful, and clinical, with everything in its place and no speck of glitter in sight. People who buy two trees are in the same league as the idiot woman who bought £50 rolls of ribbon for her presents.
The rise of the 2 Christmas tree household
Children’s badly-made decorations and gaudy flashing lights are, for many, the true essence of Christmas. But it would seem an increasing number of parents are banning garish decorations from the family tree. Instead, children are being bought a tree for their bedroom to decorate themselves, while the adults ensure the main Christmas tree is kept more tasteful.
Leading retailers have reported that they have seen customers buying more than one tree, with their research suggesting that the second, smaller one is being bought for children’s bedrooms, in another sign that the recession has failed to dent parents splashing out on their offspring at Christmas.
The phenomenon of the two-tree household is also the culmination of a long-running trend that the family Christmas tree has become a status symbol and a design feature, rather than merely the main traditional decoration during the festive period, according to one expert.
B&Q, which said it will have sold more than 250,000 real trees by the end of this weekend, calculated that a quarter of all of its customers buying a tree were also buying a second one – invariably a sparkly, fake tree. Annette Hill, assistant buyer in horticulture at B&Q said: “There appears to be a growing trend for households displaying more than one tree, giving parents and kids a chance to stamp their mark.”
Tesco, too, said that 25 per cent of small fake trees that were being sold were being bought alongside larger more tasteful versions, with the supermarket pointing out that the small versions were ending up in people’s hallways or children’s bedrooms. A spokesman for Tesco said: “It’s part of the trend to splash out on your children, regardless of the economic conditions.”
Part of the problem with allowing children to make their own baubles, angels and stars is that they while they may have charm they can ruin an otherwise tastefully-decorated sitting room, said Laurence Llewelyn Bowen, the interior designer and television presenter. The lack of sophistication of preschool glue-and-glitter efforts are compounded by being clustered on just the bottom two branches of the tree, with young children unable to reach the higher branches, leaving the top half naked, and the bottom covered in bright lights and tinsel. Mr Llewelyn Bowen said: “I think the whole two-tree phenomenon is about controlling your environment. Things have changed enormously from when I was growing up and you put up the tree and got out the box of old decorations you used every year. Now we are very keen to show off our lavish side at Christmas and have a tree that you can impress the Joneses with. You are never going to do that with it covered in Barbie glitter. As far as I am concerned buying your children a tree for their bedroom is a case of the parents indulging themselves.”
That’s rather… violating
I woke up with rather unwanted news this morning. I tried to check my email from my phone and got a message saying that my password was invalid. After a few tries, I simply reset it and was then informed that there had been unusual activity with my gmail account.
Well, fuck. This is the email account from which my whole online presence is registered. This is the one that gets all the password update emails and shit of the sort. The good news is that it seems that the chinese fuckers only hijacked my account to spam all of my contacts. The bad news is that I have to assume that every email I have sent and received from my gmail since 2004 has been compromised and copied. How… violating. Most of that is useless and trivial. But still. It means that I have to change every password that I have, just in case. So far, I’ve changed over a dozen, including my gmail, amazon, ebay, paypal, linkedin, facebook, skype, creditexpert, sourceforge, domain registrar and web host. I’m still debating if I need to change all of my secondary stuff, like Tesco and Dabs.
The really, really annoying thing is that I don’t know how they got my password. I’m generally on the lookout for scams or phishing, and my password isn’t susceptible to a dictionary attack. It’s a giant faff that I did not need today.