Happy New Year!
Not much time for blogging what with holiday, internet down and Typepad down for part of it as well.
And this seems to be mostly about technology this holiday as well.
Tried to use Plaxo (address software) to send e-cards but started so late only managed a few, including two sets to one group, by mistake!
We got a new Freeview box, so far so good. And a DVD/video recorder to turn all our video cassettes into DVDs. I'm surprised this is allowed since presumably you have to keep the videos to prove they are not illegal copies. Anyway, it really is easy, but not quite one touch as the box claimed. With our all in one scanner/colour printer/copier it is easy to make proper copies of the label as well. So an assembly line has been set up to turn the Christmas videos and some others into DVDs.
A happy Christmas, not spoilt by the fact that we couldn't find the stockings, and Santa delivered in plastic bags dumped unceremoniously outside the bedroom door.
My best present was an iPod. Bought by Sloph, out of her student income bless her heart. She and Bee knew I wanted something but couldn't decide, so now the decision is made for me. I spent most of the holiday tidying up my music collection to play on it. I realised it was even more of a lifestyle accessory than I expected. Never having had a walkman (what jog? me?) I haven't learnt to manage life with ear phones in my ear and a double set of noises to attend to, plus equipment in my pocket/handbag. It was rather disturbing at first. Takes me an extra long time to dress up for the cold, getting my headphones tied up in my scarf and vice versa. Still, it is a wonderful present and I'm loving getting glimpses of my music collection which haven't seen the light of day for years and now the shuffle is finding them. Generally broke after the Christmas bills come in, so being good and not buying any more music from iTunes.
More holiday time spent shopping and buying furniture for the eventual lodger. House is almost empty of boxes now.
No time to do anything much special in Oxford, though Sloph and I managed midnight mass in St Mary's. It was great to be living in a city where you can walk everywhere. Ther service itself seemed strange, though its my fault for not having been to church for so long. I'm unused to woman priests, a shared officiation, hymns I don't know, plus having to turn to neighbours with "a gesture of peace". We should have gone to the Festival of Nine Lessons earlier in the month, I think, since I prefer the singing to the rest of it.
Also managed to walk down by the river on New Year's Day, testing my new boots by walking through the mud on the bank. Nice to feel we are just a stone's throw from the river and to feel almost in the countryside.
Now facing up to all the remaining letters I have to write before I go, and knitting a new front for Teddy. He's much loved but a sorry picture of his former state even when given a full "capitalny remont" some years ago with a new jumper to hold his stuffing in. The repair was prompted by an emotional scene in IKEA when Bee "had to have" a new brown bear with a tiny companion. I was outraged at "old" Ted being supplanted without even a proper goodbye. Somehow I ended up promising to restore him to his former glory so he didn't feel supplanted.
Other "domestic" activities included building a gingerbread house, bought in the German market in Birmingham. Kept the whole family happy for an afternoon making "mortar" out of icing sugar, and decorating with a "pick and mix" selection of sweets from the stockings.
Hansel was lost in the wood (never even came out of the box) and we weren't sure whether the biscuits on the roof were actually meant to be flowers or mushrooms, though perhaps they were just the inspiration for the buttons on the outside of Selfridges in Birmingham.
Off to Kosovo on Wed.
