The Spirit Of Christmas

Since she was born, we’ve taken Ada to visit the same Santa every year, and gotten our annual Santa photo with him. This has sometimes required some travelling, but it’s important to us. When my brother Stephen was visiting for a year, Santa made sure to not only include him in the photos, but also get one of just us two brothers with the man in red.

Ada and I visited the mall the year Connor was born to say hi to Santa in late November, but told him we’d be back in a few weeks to get our photo, once our newest family member arrived. When we came back in mid December with a two week old Connor, Santa welcomed Ada with open arms, giving her a big hug and telling her what a wonderful big sister she had become. He held a tiny Connor and took extra time to get some extra special photos. 

Now, obviously, last year, we couldn’t visit Santa due to pandemic travel restrictions between Canada and the North Pole. Instead, Santa sent us a beautiful photo of him and his wonderful wife, Mrs. Claus, holding our annual family portrait. It also turned out that Santa needed a rest, and while it’s hard to say that the pandemic was ”good timing” in any context, it did mean he could take a break to rest and allow his new heart time to heal without feeling guilty that he might be disappointing anyone[1]. 

This year, with Santa, Mrs. Claus and all the wonderful elves vaccinated and rested and healthy, we got to visit in person again. He was as jolly and joyous as ever. Mrs. Claus was delighted to see us back, and it was wonderful to talk to them both. Santa made sure we all felt special, both kids and parents. And grandparents, with Claire’s parents here too! They were included in a set of group photos, as well as getting ones with just the kids and them together. 

A true Spirit of Christmas.

See you next year, Santa. 

[1]- Which is obviously ridiculous. If Santa needed a year off to recover, we’d all send him love and best wishes, and look forward to seeing him the following year. No disappointment, only respect for our Santa. 

The Perfect Crime

Claire gets emails for every transaction on our credit card, which is great for security, but terrible for surprises. In the age of Covid, most of my gift shopping is done online. It’s kinda frustrating to order the perfect gift, only to have my darling wife ask if I know anything about a transaction from “Gifts For Claire dot com”.  The best I can hope for is explaining away a purchase from Amazon. 

But, I have recently discovered the perfect solution! Related, I also recently discovered that my darling Claire doesn’t read my blog. 

And so, dear Reader, I am free to explain my cunning plan. 

You see, I got a reloadable Visa card from Safeway and loaded enough to cover Claire’s gift on it. Genius! She’ll never suspect a thing. It’s not like I’ve posted it publicly online for anyone to read…

Okay. Not that cunning, but I’m pretty proud. 

I’ve now ordered the bulk of Claire’s Christmas gifts online. Next, I just need to make sure I get to the post first when they arrive. Apparently, opening mail addressed to another person doesn’t count as a federal crime if you’re married to the other person.

Light It Up!

We chose to put up or Christmas decorations over the weekend. Normally, we wait until December 1st. But it's 2020. Every extra moment of joy is worth milking. 

It seems as though a lot of our neighbours agree. Our housing cooperative is looking bright and colourful on these cold, dark winter nights. 

My kids were very excited about the idea of decorating the tree, so they helped with that task. We didn't have a tree topper, so I took Ada in to a local store to pick one out. She didn't pick the one I did have liked, but I bought the one she picked. She was right, it looks great on the tree.

I also grabbed two extra strings of fairy lights, one more for around our living area and a new one for outside our front door. 

Our most recent upgrade to our Christmas assortment is a blow up, lighted unicorn that sits on our balcony and has elicited a lot of laughter in just two days. Either from the moment I plugged it in, and both my kids started taking to it like it was a friend that was patiently listening, or the number of neighbours that have looked up and just started laughing. 

I love Christmas, usually from December 1st. But it's 2020. Do the thing that brings you joy now and do it for as long as you can. 

Christmas Catchup: Board Gaming

Over the holiday season we had ample time off to enjoy relaxing and hanging out with friends. Claire and I decided to make use of this opportunity to host a few gaming nights, and all were massively successful.

Elder Sign is a perfect game for a short evening gathering, playable in a reasonably short length of time, and easily explained to new players. The rules are fairly straightforward, and most complications can be left to be explained as they arise, such as locked dice. We find it best to explain a standard turn order and actions, victory and loss conditions, and any player character special actions at the start of the game, and then just jump right on in. It got played a lot over the holidays, and every game was enjoyably tense. We won some, we lost some, though one issue I do have with the game is that, in my experience, it does seem to be a bit easy to win. I've won significantly more than I've lost, even when we played with randomly assigned player characters, so we couldn't optimize our strategy. Perhaps because of its ease to teach, and ease to claim victory over, Elder Sign makes a wonderful introduction game to the bigger, more complex level of board games, such as the associated Arkham Horror series.

Getting even simpler, but by no means less fun, No Thanks, Guillotine, and Fluxx all got a workout over the Christmas. I picked up Space Fluxx, which is one of the few sets that I feel builds strongly on the basic game. It adds new elements that enhance play, and avoids the outright silliness present in Monty Python Fluxx. That said, we did also get in a game of Monty Python Fluxx, and had a blast doing so, even if some of use proved ourselves better at remembering the lyrics to the various songs than others.

We also got to play some new games that friends brought along. Bau Sack is a block balancing game from Zum Spielen that was wonderful, if stressful, fun, and reminded me that I really want to play the Dread RPG at some point and experience its Jenga mechanic for myself. Bau Sack was made all the more difficult playing it on our slightly wobbly table, and my defeat was brought about when I bumped the leg of said table and knocked my impressive tower to its foundations!

We're looking forward to playing lots more board games in 2013, both new and old favourites. We picked up a few over the sales that we have yet to try, including Forbidden Island and the beautiful Gears of War[1] tabletop game from Fantasy Flight Games. I'll try to write up some reviews of those when I get to enjoy them.

[1] - This post was actually written about a week ago when I had my iPad and some free time, but I only got around to publishing it now. I have since played and loved the Gears of War boardgame. I'll post more on that and other new games soon.

Post Christmas Post

Last Christmas was our first one away from our families and friends back home ever, and it was a little tough, a little lonely, and a lot more peaceful. We had minimal decorations and no tree or lights in the apartment, and spent Christmas day together on the couch watching Die Hard. Not the worst way to pass the holiday season, but very different from previous years.

2012 was certainly an odd year for us. We couldn't work for five months due to shenanigans with our work permits, and we lived off potatoes and cheap sausages, or pasta and cheap pork mince. Without work, we were heavily restricted in what we could do during that time, so at the time it felt like forever, yet looking back on it now, it was a good period in general, during which I got to spend a huge amount of time with my wife right at my side.

We got back to work in July and I haven't had a day off since. I love my job, and it was so nice to get back to meeting all the kids and families, not to mention the wonderful co-workers. While Claire's freelance work was going from strength to strength, a setback in October to our plans pressed her into starting a new job that month for a small web development company. This annoyed me greatly at the time, as I had always wanted to be able to support her 100% in her building of her own online business and identity, as well as her writing. I felt that having her start this new job was a failure on my behalf, and it took me some time to come to terms with our new situation. Mostly, it just took me a little time to see that she really was loving her new job and the challenges it threw at her.

All this meant that, as well as a nice bit of savings tucked away, we had some extra cash to spend on each other this Christmas. Because of the break in employment, as well as the move to Canada before that, the effort to save as much as possible before the move, the fact that my job in Ireland didn't pay me enough to save substantially, and a whole list of other reasons going back several years, this was one of the first times we both agreed that we could treat ourselves a little this holiday season.

So we bought some decorations and fairy lights. I made a tree and wrapped some empty boxes to go under it. Slowly, over the early half of December, those were joined by actual gifts and everything felt more like a Christmas I remembered. We wrote Christmas cards and posted them to friends far away. We had friends over to play boardgames and Rock Band in the run up to the final week, and we went out with more friends to play pool, or watch movies, or generally have a good time.

It was feeling a bit more like the festive time of year.

And then it snowed!

Admittedly, it only snowed for a day, but it was magical to wake up to, thrilling to walk in, and resulted in one rather unusual Christmas event that will be forever burnt into my memory, side-by-side with walking on the frozen lake back home in Tipperary in 2010, and the Christmas we lost power at home minutes after the dinner was cooked, resulting in dinner by candlelight and easily the most peaceful, video-game-free Christmas in memory!

Christmas Day 2012 was spent in good company. We were invited to join a friend that Claire had made through writing for Christmas dinner. It was just the two of us, her son and his girlfriend, and herself. It felt very Irish, as they are all from Dublin, and dinner was chicken (turkeys over here are big enough to feed an army, far too big for just five of us) and the most delicious ham I have enjoyed since leaving Ireland. We sat around afterwords playing word puzzles and relaxing, and everyone had such a great time that we've agreed to do it again next year, should the fates allow.

Finally, the last few days have been spent playing yet more Rock Band and boardgames! In particular, yesterday, December 30th, saw us hosting a mammoth 12 hour boardgame day, starting around 1pm and finishing in the wee hours of this morning! We had a Geeky Gift Giving with six other friends. Basically, it was like Secret Santa, only there were no names drawn. Everyone arrived with a geeky gift and we played a bunch of games. Winners picked the gift they wanted. If you had already won, we simply went down the order until we hit the first person who had not yet picked and let them pick one. By the end of the evening, all eight of us had a great time, and everyone went home with a new boardgame, graphic novels, or, in Claire's case, a Nerf Vortex (I fear for my appendages). It was a fantastic night with zero organisational requirements, stress-levels zero, and smiles all around![1]

2012 was a roller-coaster of emotions and events, ranging from the life-affirming to the life-altering and much in between, but it ended on a high. I'm looking forward to seeing what 2013 has to bring, and I'm ready to take whatever it throws at me, safe in the knowledge that, no matter what trials I may face, I face them with Claire at my side.

So roll on 2013, you beautiful bastard!

[1]- I always enjoyed the Secret Santa back home, and Sinead always did an amazing job of organizing it and poking people to get involved, but if people couldn't make it at the last moment, it threw a spanner in the final gift swapping. Our G3 party required no organisation apart from an email inviting people to join in, and only those who showed up on the day were involved. The downside, of course, is that the gifts couldn't be tailored for any one person, because you didn't know who would get yours.

Merry Christmas!

Our first Christmas in Vancouver, and our first Christmas ever away from home. I posted about the build-up to it last month, admitting that I wasn't sure how I'd actually feel on the morning of the 25th. But now that we're here, I feel great.

Of course it's not the same, but it's not depressingly lonely or anything. I rang home at 2am in the morning Vancouver time to say hi on the morning of their day. Then I staggered off to bed before rising seven hours later.

I found a store that sells Irish and UK goods yesterday, so I picked up some lovely apple and pork sausages, rashers, chocolate hob-nobs, custard and Christmas pudding, as well as a few other bits and pieces. I surprised Claire this morning with the breakfast and a genuine Irish Cadbury's selection box! She devoured the fudge bar immediately.

Claire and I just want to wish everyone that reads this a very Merry Christmas, and a safe and happy New Year. We hope 2012 is as special for you as 2011 was for us.

Missing you all, and holding you in our thoughts at this festive season.

Love,

Denis and Claire.

I'm Dreaming Of A Christmas, White Or Otherwise

Recently I've started having some very odd dreams. I wouldn't call them nightmares or anything, but they're still the kind of thing that upsets me enough that my first thought on waking is "Thank God that wasn't real." I'm not one to spend much time on analyzing dreams and assigning them significant meaning, but I still feel that these are some for of anxiety dream.

There isn't much for me to be anxious about right now in my life. I love my job, Vancouver, my place in life right now. Of course, above and beyond all of that, I love Claire, and having her near me when I awake brings me right back to a calm state.

But I do think that there is some underlying, bubbling anxiety that has been causing this. Most of my dreams place me firmly back in Ireland. I recently had a dream where I was supposed to be at work for 9am, but it was approaching 10:15, and I was still in Killea, my home home as I still call it, trying to get to work any way possible. The fact that I needed to travel halfway across the world didn't seem to be an issue, I just needed to get a lift. Or the dream where I was back in Cork, about to board a flight to Vancouver, reliving all those upsetting emotions I had to go through almost a year ago,but in the wrong airport and with more than just my mum there. I'm pretty sure I woke up crying from that one, or at the very least, upset enough that all I wanted to do was curl up in a ball for a bit.

Not to mention all the dreams I still have where I'm hanging out with Bob, Jp and Noel, just messing about, doing nothing. Well, not always nothing. There was one dream recently where I vaguely recall being with a bunch of Irish friends and Noel getting up to something that was hilarious at the time, but which, as happens all too often with reams, I've completely forgotten about now. I woke from that one chucking to myself, before I realised where I really was again. Those ones are far from upsetting, but they do illustrate my point.

Christmas swiftly approaches. I got my work schedule for December on Thursday. More and more stores are putting up their decorations, and more and more homes are starting to have colourful displays of light in their windows. Not having and television or a radio has saved me from the inevitable advertisements and music of the season, but I'm sure they're in full swing too by now.

This will be my first Christmas ever away from home. Every year for the past 31 years, I have been home with my family on or before December 24th, and for more than the last decade I've been with my friends for New Years. This year will be dramatically different.

We don't have plans for Christmas yet. Claire and I haven't really talked about what to do. We have a few options, the obvious being staying here in Vancouver and doing something, and a nice offer from Cian also means we could spend it in Seattle. We could of course travel to other places, but budget concerns at a time when we need to renew our visas mean that money is far from no object, even with the tidy savings we currently have.

So I'm not sure how to feel. There is really no need for me to be lonely at Christmas. Regardless of what happens I'll be spending Christmas with family, as I'm going nowhere without Claire! I have the option to spend it with friends if I choose. I can always ring home, made even easier now that we have credit on Skype to make calls to Ireland for ridiculously cheap. I know I'll miss being home, but I'll be happy that my brother will be home from Australia by then, so hopefully mum won't spend too much time thinking about me on the day, or at least not being upset about it. I'm not currently feeling homesick, nor do I consciously think that I'll be too upset come the big day.

But I think my dreams do highlight that at least some part of me is willing to admit that I'll miss it more than I think I will. I know I've said on several occasions here that I miss my friends and family in Ireland, and I do. We never left because of the people, or even really because of the economy (though we are both happy to not be dealing with it right now). We left because we just wanted to see a bit more of the world, and experience a bit of what life is like outside of our tiny island.

Christmas away from home will just be another experience to add to that. I waited 31 years, and would have happily waited another 31, but never let it be said that I was afraid to try new things.

Not afraid. Just a little anxious.

It's Begining To Look A Lot Like November 4th

Halloween is behind us. The little ones are still in a diabetic coma from all the sugar they managed to loot from their neighbours three days ago, and so it's a perfect time to begin looking to Christmas.

Yes, it's that time of the year again, November. This can only mean that shops have removed all their skeletons and cobwebs and replaced them with elves and fairy lights. I still there is money to be made in reversible decorations for these two holiday seasons. Think about it, on one side is a terrifying skull, rotting and empty eyed; then on November 1st you flip it over to reveal the rosy cheeked face of a man whose life goal is to sneak into the bedrooms of children across the world and leave them gifts. The perfect dichotomy.

Admittedly, certain stores need to start the push this early. If your sole purpose for existing it to sell Christmas decorations, or novelty Santa lawn gnomes, then your window of opportunity is pretty tight. You need to have your product out there for people to use as soon as they're ready to decorate their dwellings in the festive cheer.

But if you're a normal, everyday store, then do you really need to have the fir tree adorned with colourful lights and a star in your window before December 1st, or the last week in November at the earliest? Toy stores sell the same stuff at Christmas as they do the rest of the year, they just stock more around now. We don't need to have Let It Snow or some sickly rendition of Jingle Bells blaring into our ears at this stage.

Yesterday morning when I went to get a banana from Starbucks I was shocked to find their Christmas gift displays up already. In hindsight of course I shouldn't have been surprised at all, but it just reminded me that the most wonderful time of the year is fast approaching. Don't get me wrong, I do love Christmas. I can't wait to buy all the lights, a tree, random, brightly coloured decorations and put them everywhere in our apartment. I just want to enjoy Christmas at, you know, Christmas.

And I feel that Christmas starts on December 1st.

On The First Day Of Gearsmas Epic Gave To Me

All together now!

1. "On the first day of Gearsmas Epic gave to me, a concussion from a smoke grenade." Bringing the concuss back for day - Dec 22
2. 2 Flaming Bloodmounts (2 Bloodmounts with Flamethrowers every wave) - Dec 23
3. 3 Extra Clips (3 extra clips of ammo in every weapon) - Dec 24
4. 4 Frag grenades (Frag grenade pickups have 4) - Dec 25
5. 5 Torque Bow Tags (Many rifle creatures carry Torque Bows in Horde) - Dec 26
6. 6 Melee Monsters (All melee creatures Horde) - Dec 27
7. 7 Sires a storming - Dec 28
8. 8 Old School Gears Heads (4 v 4 MP) - Dec 29
9. 9 Boomers Booming (Boomer squads on every wave) - Dec 30
10. 10 Waves of Tickers (all Ticker Horde) - Dec 31
11. 11 Wretches Wretching (Wretches with Shotguns) - Jan 1
12. Some of the above (1, 3, 4, 8, 10) - Jan

That's 12 days of epic epicness from Epic starting tomorrow! This list was posted on the official forums, so it's not some random guesswork. On top of all this, everyone gets Golden Lancers and Hammerbursts for the duration of the event, which would matter to Claire and I if we didn't already have Gold Lancers thanks to the awesome Stacey (@iFlak) on Twitter. What does interest me is the XP bonus. Starting at 12x and going up one every day to 23x on day 12. Sweet. The last two Achievements I have left to bag in Gears of War 2 are Seriously 2.0 which requires me to kill 100,000 enemies and Veteran Gear, which requires me to hit Level 100. Seriously can be boosted in single player, so I'll get it eventually regardless. But Levels only count in Multiplayer, so XP events are a big thing to me at the moment.

I'm on somewhere around the 30,000 kill mark, but only at Level 77. Hopefully the coming days will boost that a bit closer to the magical 100, and I can earn my wings!

I'm going to be clocking in a lot of time online over the holiday season. Surely the best way to spent the cold winter nights.

Of Childhood Dreams And Rocketmen

Christmas was a nice quiet time for me. Food, family and no internet all combined for a most excellent time. Christmas day was especially memorable as well lost electricity for a few hours, thankfully just as dinner was all cooked. So turkey and ham was enjoyed in candlelight, and the following few hours were spend chatting, relaxing, napping and generally having a lovely day, uninterrupted by TV or computer games.

Best yet, Christmas kinda lasted several weeks for me. Claire had informed me that my present wouldn't arrive until some time in January. But when it did... Oh boy!

This story all starts when I was 11 years old and Disney released a movie that would go on to influence much of who I am today. While not making me into a hero, daring adventurer or hood ornament, it did start my love of all things pulp and 1920's. The style, clothing and retro technology sung to my core, and it quickly became my favourite movie of my childhood. But as time passed, I discovered that it remained a favourite, and when I managed to get my hands on a copy of the DVD, I was delighted to find that the movie held up under repeated viewings.

The Rocketeer, based on a comic by the late, great Dave Stevens, is easily my favourite movie of all time. I can watch and rewatch it, and have. I happily watched it twice over two consecutive days on two separate occasions. I love all that action, adventure, heroism, effects and, of course, that costume. The helmet and rocket pack are iconic, stylish, clean and simple. But it's the jacket I love the most.

Ever since I was eleven years old, I have wanted that jacket. Ever since I was 27 years old, I've stared longingly at the UK website that makes a beautiful, high quality leather replica of the jacket. Stared. Dreamed. Wished. But ultimately, I never could really afford it. There was always something more important to spent my money on. Like food. And rent. And Claire.

But in early January, my wife arrived home from work and for the third time that week, the 17th time that month, the millionth time in a year, she proved yet again that she was the best, most beautiful, most amazing wife in the world. She handed me a big package and I opened it to find this:

I now have the coolest leather jacket in all of Cork city, possibly Ireland. Based on the fact that, as previously mentioned, Wested Leather is a UK based company, I don't think I can honestly claim "Coolest Jacket Owner in Ireland, the UK and Europe". Someone in the UK must also own this too. I'm not the only Rocketeer fan.

The first time I got to really show the jacket off to a lot of people was at WarpCon at the end of January. The response was phenomenal. I've never had so many people stop me and compliment me on what I was wearing. Everyone wanted to know where I had gotten it from, and I was only too happy to point them to the website. I even got to wear it to a steampunk LARP! I played the character of the captain of the city guard, and although it wasn't mentioned on my character sheet, I managed to get a Rocketeer Squadron added to my forces! Sweet. I 'd have to say that the jacket really helped me play the role, and went some way to getting me awarded the prize for that LARP! According to the people at the awards ceremony, when they announced I had won that, it got one of the biggest cheers of the evening. Unfortunately, I was getting food with friends, as I hadn't played to win anything, just to have fun and make sure others enjoyed the game as well. I must have done something right.

Since then, I've been wearing this jacket a lot around Cork. Any opportunity I can get, really. It's super comfy, warm, stylish, and gets a lot of approving looks. Any time anyone asks me were I got it, I tell them I have a very special, and understanding wife, and then point them to Wested.com.

Next I need the helmet to complete the hood ornament look! The jet pack will come some time later.

New Year, New Stuff

Anyone who knows me, or even just reads this blog, knows I'm a die hard Nintendo fan, and nothing will ever steal my heart away. However, I'm not a console-monogamous fascist who thinks the competition are better used as paperweights by comparison (after all, if the PS3 was used as a paper weight, what would hold the door open?), and have had a second gaming console since the N64. My beloved DreamCast kept my Nintendo console company during both of their dying months. Together, they reminisced about better times. The N64 offered a comforting shoulder when Sega announced the dream was cast aside for their console department, instead shifting focus solely onto making games for their former competition. The DreamCast returned the support as Nintendo began to sink further and further behind the thundering power of Sony's newest offering, the seemingly invincible PS2. In fact, my DreamCast is still on my consoles table, ready to be plugged in and turned on at a moments notice. Unfortunately, it's been a while since I've enjoyed its cat and mouse delights now.

During the GameCube/PS2/Xbox era, my secondary console of choice was the Sony brand. By the time I picked one up it had a huge range of games available to it, as well as the added bonus of a DVD player. Lots of people had one, so swapping games was easy. At the same time, the Xbox was new to the game. It was huge, ugly (in my opinion), and had unwieldy controllers. Plus, it didn't enjoy nearly as large a market share as the PS2.

Back when the new generation of machines were still just rumours and here-say, my opinions on both companies offerings were unchanged. I had planned on the superior back catalogue of PlayStation games to be a deciding factor in my choice of console, and the Xbox 360 didn't sound all that great. I would continue my almost single-handed support of Nintendo and their wacky new ideas for a motion sensitive controller, even if I had few games to actually play on it, as I was sure no-one was seriously going to spend millions creating games that only worked for one console, exclusivity contracts or not.

But things change. The PS3 is beyond a joke, starting out with an ugly case design, and then removing one of it's biggest advantages by dropping backwards compatibility altogether! It is huge and expensive, and forces the added costs of Blu-Ray on the buyer, which, considering I'm not moving to any form of HD for the foreseeable future, only serves to annoy me more. Visually, the Xbox 360 is a beautifully designed machine, more so when you see the black Elite edition. It plays nice with my PC, allowing me to stream music directly, as well as playing movies from Claire's external hard-drive or the many, many burned DVDs I own. But the biggest shock of all (as much to the company itself as to the general public) is that the little console that could did! Nintendo's wonderful Wii is still selling faster than Nintendo can produce them some thirteen months after launch! What other console can claim the same fact? And the games that are available, while not able to display in high definition like it's competitors, are fun, entertaining and compulsive playing. Mario Galaxy is by far the best game I played in 2007, and Rayman Raving Rabbits 2 caused my house to miss New Years by two minutes because we just had to finish that last minigame!

So I'm happy with my Wii. It's awesome, fun, small, sexy, quiet and glows blue when turned on (just like I like my women!!...). The motion controls are clever, effective and, in the better games, they can be used to stunning effect. The possibilities are almost limitless, and not even Nintendo could have guessed some of the functions people are putting their unique console technology to (more on that in the next post). So if I only had the Wii, would I be happy? Yes. Definitely. Realistically, anything else I get to sit along-side it is just to play when I'm by myself. The Wii is the perfect party game, with some great single-player titles as well, but it's really at it's strongest with a group.

I was planning on getting an Xbox 360 in the sometime in 2008. Rainbow 6: Vegas is amazing fun (again, in multiplayer!), and Mass Effect was a draw from the first time I laid eyes on it. It's beautiful and an achievement in gaming. Despite saying that I had no interest in Assassins Creed some months ago, the closer it got to release, the better it looked. Three reasons to pick up a 360, one of which is exclusive. Add to that the downloadable content through Xbox Live, including demos, the play-nice factor with my PC and that at least four people I know really well got one as well, and the 360 became the console of choice for the newest generation of "Nintendo Support Machines".

So shortly before Christmas, I got one. It now sits on top of my sweet-but-cheap-but-really-great-and-thus-even-sweeter sound system. Well done Microsoft. Ya done good.

Now... anyone want to trade Xbox Live usernames? I currently have no friends... online!! I have loads in real life. We play Wii all the time.

The Perfect Way To Spend St. Stephens Day

Merry Christmas!

Or however you celebrate the holidays! Hanuka, Kwanzaa, whatever! Have a safe, happy and wonderful time. Enjoy a few days rest, text or call people you haven't spoken to in a while, just generally do something nice for someone.

Oh, and do me a favour: Wish really hard for snow. Maybe if we all wish together, we can get some!! I had a Christmas jump on a frost covered trampoline at 8am this morning, which was fine, but snow would be great too!!

Finally, Some Me Time

It's been almost a full month since I last updated, and it's been a busy month! Preschool work kicked into overdrive in the run up to Christmas, and I've been putting in extra time at home on arts ideas for the class, as well as buying supplies in town. My other work has had me in for more hours, both in the health food store and the comic shop. This is great, because I really need the money! Rent this month is on the credit card!

And on top of all this, I got a new game for the Wii, and an Xbox 360! The Xbox was a Christmas present from Claire, and I bought the games for it myself through ebay. In fact, most of my Christmas shopping was done through ebay! Sweet!

Edit: Oops! Silly me. I almost talked about what I got people, before realising that some of them read this!! Heh. Anyway...

But tonight I have a little time to say hello to the world wide web again, and blog a little. Poor Flickr is still feeling cold. I haven't really taken any photos at all recently, even of action figures. I guess I'm allowed take a break now and then, but I really want to get back into it. Maybe in the New Year. I'm not going to make a resolution to photograph or blog more though. I feel I did a lot this year, certainly more than I expected to do, given my reputation for starting and ending things with reckless abandon! Still, hopefully I'll have time to blog a bit more before the end of 2007.

Him

I really dislike seeing Christmas advertising when it's still early November, and worse if we haven't even had Halloween yet, but sometimes someone comes out with an advert that is simply inspired! This year, everyone will be hard pressed to do better than the genius piece created for Marks & Spencers. An absolutely stunning ad that actually works! There are a tonne of great ads for which I can't recall the brand they were selling, but even a week after seeing this, I was still able to find it on a single search of YouTube.

Well done M&S. Simple, elegant and completely free of the usual Christmas schmaltz.

Straying From The Norm

Happy New Year!

Yes, ok, it's a day late, and also the first post since... lets see... November 13th!!

Anyhow, that's all just because I've been super busy. No, no! Really. Stop laughing. I've had a very busy time. Granted, recently "busy" has been defined as "playing Wii", but it still counts! Busy also includes all that awesome work experience I was doing. While it's over now, I 'm looking forward to going back one or two days to cover if one of the other two staff are out sick. I got some really nice Christmas cards from the kids too when I was leaving. Cards and deoderant! Lots of deoderant. Hmmmm...

Back to the Wii. My last post was about waiting for it, and I have since got one, having cued for a little outside Game in Cork on the release morning to be one of the first in the door. I grabbed Zelda (duh!) and Wii Play on the day, and with Wii Sport included and getting Marvel Ultimate Alliance just before Christmas, I already have four games. I really, really want Raving Rabbits. It just looks to be so much fun to play. But I'm not paying €60 for it. Their advertising campaign is by far the best I've seen for any game. I'm not the only person to go from "meh" to "It must be mine!!" based on ads like this alone!

In other news, I quit my job in the lesiure centre. I'm not going to go into why. That's not what this blog is for. For that, you should check out my other blog, One F*£%ed Up Sucky-A$$ed Day. Lets just say I'm happy I've done it, and feel a whole lot better now that I'm free. And jobless. And broke. But at least I can concentrate on my studies! Eh, eh?!? See? See what I did there? I looked for the silver lining. All I found was a slightly whiter area of the "No money" cloud. Well, crap.

Finally, my New Years resolution is to post more often. I really, really want to use this blog. I love writing, and even just writing this stuff is good practice. Feel free to pester me to update if I stop again.

I have more to say, but I have to go to lunch with some friends now. So...

Later!