It's been too long

[reynardo]

and busy.

Real updates are scheduled to resume.

Job-wise, I'm back on the phones, as current management underwent a major shift a couple of months ago. That, and the large number of people being re-located into other units, and the extremely large phone queues, has made work pretty miserable. I've been being nagged by husband, friends and others to get my finger out and apply properly for other jobs. Which I will. Alas, tiredness from the current one has been sapping my strength, and the usual downs with that haven't helped either.

Christmas was fun, though, with 16 people around the table (two trestles and a card table). I had all the family here. There were my parents George and Liz, my two brothers Ben and Jim, and their partners Pamela and Ayaka respectively, my older son quatranoctal and his parents Joy and Bob, my younger son da_norvegicus and his father Tony, my beloved lederhosen and his father Richard, and two friends (Luke and darkwing22) who needed feeding. Ok, everyone needed feeding. Anyone who has set foot into my place knows that people need feeding.

We had huge amounts of food, some of which had had been gathered from the fishmarkets at some ungodly hour the morning before. Alas, on the way back from said fishmarkets, there was a minor disagreement between my own vehicle and another over who should occupy a space in the road. The car was limpable back to home, but not truly driveable, and is currently sitting in the panel-beaters while I get some much-needed exercise and re-discover the joys of public transport during the holiday season. (Can we all say "Trackwork", kiddies?)

I had already picked up Luke (who was spending a couple of days with us over Christmas) and his help was invaluable. Not to mention his participation in several games of Settlers of Catan, (also known as "Pick on Gillian" and with the expansion of "Make Gillian Cry"). Ahem. Anyway, Christmas eve, sarin_girl and waitingman turned up with large quantities of yummy Chinese food from our favourite Smoked Duck place, and as I wasn't driving anywhere, I helped them devour it accompanied by large quantities of alcohol. Luke and sarin_girl knew each other 10 years ago, and we've often speculated on the co-incidences all the relationships have. Richard was making his way up from Canberra, and was nicely in time for all the food too, so Christmas eve was very merry. All the housecleaning had been done, I'd made up a roster of jobs for Christmas Day (and to their credit, everyone that I shanghaied into work did a wonderful job at it), the table setup was sorted, all food that could be prepared in advance was done, and enough fridge, freezer and cooler space had been made to fit everything. Just.

Christmas Day itself, Tony was in charge of the drinks and as always had over-catered. This was not a problem, except as far as I still have a laundry full of beer and soft drink. I, too, had overcatered a little. I hadn't been foolish enough to try and cook everything, and had delegated various guests into bringing items of salad, the ham, turkey, and the Christmas pudding. The cake was the end result of 2 months of fruit-soaking and 2 weeks of cake-in-brandy-soaking; the table was set by da_norvegicus in an elegant manner; the crustacens were segregated on the side-table and as far as I know, no-one mixed them with the main food area (several of the people present have bad reactions to crustaceans). And the amount of leftovers would have fed another 16. darkwing22 left shortly after dinner, (leaving behind a massive box of yummies), and the rest of us sludged for hours until the last guests left at sunset (8pm in Australia). My mother had extracted from Luke a promise to come back the next Saturday and play Settlers, my father's car (which had acted up on the way over) decided to work again, and I had to deal with about 2kg of enormous king prawns (Oh the suffering). Thanks to three sterling rounds of washing up, there wasn't too much to deal with by the end of the night, and breakages had been one wine-glass, which I could cope with easily.

Three guests stayed over, and the next day Richard headed off south, while the five of us (the immediate family plus Luke who was heading home by PT thanks to lack of our car) bussed off, the family to do their regular Boxing Day ritual of a good movie in the first-class seats (and as an early Birthday present for Tony). We saw "Happy Feet", which we enjoyed, but didn't match up to previous years' efforts (LOTR, The Invincibles, etc).

And then three days of getting to work via busses, then New Year. Luke had been over the previous night to play Settlers with Liz, lederhosen and myself, and was staying for the celebrations, as none of us really felt like raging away. lederhosen, however, had also decided that it was time to clean out the library, as it was somewhat full of junk. No, I lie. It was COMPLETELY full of stuff, books, boxes, my "temporary" wine shelf... We stacked books around the loungeroom. We stacked books up in the kitchen. We finally ended up with books piled up on both sides of the hallway, and finally got to the bottom of the library. Some excellent re-location of the bookshelves, and the wine fitted nicely in a space between two of them.

Just to give you an idea, we have 2 4-foot wide 6-foot high bookcases and 3 3-foot wide 6-foot high. lederhosen had me worried for a moment when he stated "We each get one shelf." "ONE????? Who's going to get the other 26?????" "One bookcase, I meant!" I currently have the vast majority of books, and have had to be very very strict in cutting down. It's easy enough to discard 3 of the 4 copies of Day of the Triffids, or all the Arthur Hailey and Sydney Sheldon I've owned, but I'm double-stacking now (using a system shown to me by the lovely deor), and I've filled 5 boxed of books and I haven't even touched the hallway yet. And I've rented three shelves from da__norvegicus at usurious rates. We'll let you good people know when the time comes for you to peruse our discards.

And New Year itself? Curled up on the couch with my beloved lederhosen, and my friend Luke, and a glass of something rather alcoholic, listening to all the fireworks going off around the area, and wishing for a better 2007.


And at that point, gentle readers, I'll leave you while I go back to the hallway. I have a copy of Beaches that keeps getting put in someone else's shelves, and currently it's in mine. I need to get rid of it before the boys throw it back at me.

Comments

[shadow-5tails.livejournal.com]

and discarded books you say eh?

I also pricked up my metaphorical ears at that point. What, exactly, are you plannig to do with all these duplicates and also-rans?

[mr-figgy.livejournal.com]

Ah, I remember Settlers. That's the one where the only way to win is not to be Rey or Art, and to let them slug it out while you quietly take over. ;P