The Arrival

The holidays more or less started on the 17th with the arrival of Mum, Dad and Evan all on the same Friday afternoon (and Sonnie came back from New Zealand, but as she'd only been away for a week and was not staying with us, she now exits our narrative for a time). Immediately the house went from being kind of busy to a state of constant buzziness, with people – usually bleary-eyed – flitting about doing things – or not – everywhere. To make things more interesting, we had a couple of separate going-away celebrations over the weekend so that everyone could say goodbye to Meagan before she headed back to Tasmania.

As an aside, sometime during that week we'd made the first of what turned into a series of holiday commitments, agreeing to spend next Christmas having a motorbiking tour of Tasmania. Which should be cool, and at least won't involve several days of washing up afterwards.

Andrew also engineered a flying visit on the Sunday. Hearing about it, Fiona instructed him to bring the footage of our wedding reception (specifically the best man's speech and song) which we've never seen. He was also to bring a guitar and his video camera, because if the sound quality was not good enough, they could then re-record their piece. Fortunately, it turned out to be fine, if a little dark. I loved watching it again – their double act was one of the real highlights of what had been a pretty much perfect day, right down to the song they obviously cobbled together in an hour or so.

For some reason, Andrew subjected us to a “not Doctor Who nosireebob” fan film - with which he was tangentially involved through Job Blum (who was also tangentially involved, lest I go on to ruinously smear his good name as a film editor) – of which I have happily forgotten the exact name, which was about the least successful, most excruciatingly inept, most inadvertantly psychologically revealing fan film I have ever seen. The sound was bad, the effects were gratuitous and bad, the story made no sense, the acting was of a distinct we-don't-rehease-or-read-the-script-because-it-would-ruin-the-spontaneity-and-might-ensure-that-we-don't-suck quality, and worst of all it was quite obvious that the auteur-as-not-the-Doctor really wanted to get together with his female lead, who was equally obviously not remotely interested.

Fortunately, I've not seen too many of these, but Andrew assures me that this one is of lower than standard quality. His explanations of the gala premiere in Sydney, complete with expensive cinema hire, hapless guests and the complete failure on the part of the auteur to recognise his shortcomings behind and before the camera were utterly cringworthy.

We also recorded (in about five takes) a video of me and Ev singing a particular Spit song, which I believe was a request from Chris. I won't mention its name in case it was supposed to be a surprise which he hasn't gotten around to finishing yet. It was one of the ones that is harder to sing than your think it should be, though. Especially after four beers.

Day by day, it crept closer...

Okay, so project at work was due to be finished on the 15th, but that deadline was missed, so I had to delay my holidays and go back in on the Monday for the wrapup meeting. That was a busrt, because that deadline was missed as well. D'oh! But by that time it had become obvious that nobody except the development team was going to be able to play any part in actually meeting any of the new extended deadlines, so my supervisor decided not to ask me to come back again for another demoralising meeting. On holiday at last!

Pretty much the rest of that week leading up to Christmas is now a blur, consisting of the following events:

• Renovations - Fiona was insistent that certain things be done by Christmas, such as making the dining room fit for human occupation. This was a little trickier than it sounds. The new timber doors needed to be stained, sanded, lacquered, sanded again, lacquered again and then, in the case of a couple of them, replaced (necessitating the repetition of steps 1 through 5). The plasterer spent most of Wednesday morning putting up the cornice. Watching him slickly applying, smoothing and manipulating cornice cement, with the calm deftness of decades of experience, convinced us that we should not attempt it ourselves, so we'll be getting him back for the other bits that still need doing. Staining the doors took five of us more or less all day (and got walnut-coloured stains under my fingernails that are still there more than a week later). There were about two tonnes of garbage left over from the door installations that needed dumping. Dad ripped out two trees and about six miles of ivy. We made the Christmas deadline – barely – but it just about broke us. We haven't touched the renovations since then.
  
• Shopping - We did a lot of it, as you do. Managed to buy gifts for everyone except ourselves - we were going to get the boxed set of The Lord of the Rings trilogy extended versions, but they were completely sold out in Canberra. I was also going to buy World of Warcraft, but it was sold out as well. And can you believe that it doesn't seem to be possible to find copies of either Notting Hill or Four Weddings and a Funeral anywhere in this town? Ridiculous. I also spent the better part of a week on eBay shopping for Jimbo's present, which arrived just in the nick of time.
  
• Drinking - What can I say? Jimbo was here a lot. Much beer was consumed.
  
• Entertaining - I've completely lost track of how many people were here for Christmas, or Boxing Day, or Meags' farewell, or just dropping in for drinks or dinner, but it was a lot. Colour me frazzled.
  
• Touring - We also made a day trip to Bowral with Mum and Dad and Evan so that Fiona could test ride a motorbike that she'd heard might be suitable for her. It turned out to be too high in the seat (a problem se was with a lot of bikes, being on the shortish side) so that was kind of a waste of a two-hour drive, but fortunately the southern highlands are very pretty, and there were many touristy places to visit. Unfortunately, it rained all day and at one point a pea-soup fog descended on us and stopped us from doing the (twisty, turny) drive to Kangaroo Valley. On the plus side, we had a very nice lunch in Mossvale and cleared up the remainder of our Christmas gift list.
  
• Dining - We had Christmas Eve dinner with Ian, Sonia, Flynn and Son's mother, sister and niece at a restaurant improbably named the Green Herring at Gold Creek. Tania had broken up with her partner Geoff a few days before, so she was probably not having her best week ever, but it was a lovely evening nonetheless. Jimbo was declared the winner for selecting the beef (most of us had fish on the grounds that we never eat it otherwise, and it was very good, but we all cast jealous sideways glances at Jimbo's meal).
  
• Presents! - Before repairing to the restaurant we did the opening of presents at Ian's place. Nephew Flynn's haul was spectacular (as you'd expect – we all dote on him, probably to the point of spoiling him rotten). I was particularly proud of his reaction to the air-propelled nerf rocket we got him – the highest accolade you can get from Flynn is the constant refrain of “Again!”. Luckily, he's a bright kid, and soon worked out how to attach the rockets himself, so we didn't have to keep doing it for him. He can keep himself entertained for hours with that thing...
  

Then, Christmas attacked!

The day itself was madness, of course. Lots of people, including half a dozen Urquharts, lots of food (homemade sushi by Master Chef Linda! prawns in a dill-lime mayo dip! apricot-stuffed chicken a la Jimbo! summer fruits marinated in expensive wine! more incredibly rich food than was good for us!), lots of drink (Fiona's uncle Geoff supplying a vast quantity of high quality booze, which I must say we made a very poor show of consuming), lots of presents (the highlight being Chris's T-shirt for Simon which reads “I bring nothing to the table”.) Lots of wearying fun. Most dubiously, Simon bought a Playstation karaoke attachment which proved to be a surprising hit (thanks in no small part to the aforementioned quality booze). Turns out that Spandau Ballet's Gold is really hard to sing, and even harder when the screen is showing a graphic displaying noting precisely how badly you're missing the notes, and giving you a line by line rating suggesting that you are Bad! or Awful!. Which we were, for the most part, although most of us got a bit better throughout the day. Or at least we thought we did.

Since then

We've been lazing. Ev's gone home, Mum and Dad have spent a few days at Ian and Sonnie's, the shambles has been slowly cleaned up and gradually we've started to crawl out of the post-Christmas torpor. Our Boxing Day movie this year was going to be The Incredibles, but Ev wanted to see that with Sarah-Jane, so instead we decided to see I -Heart- Huckabees, but then the newspaper got the times wrong, so we ended up seeing The Incredibles after all. And it was great, but now I really want to see I -Heart- Huckabees.

And to get just a little bit more sleep before I have to go back to work on Monday. No, wait, Tuesday. Oh thank goodness for that. But before that, today I'm joining a large expedition to the botanical gardens (it will be nice to get out of the house and get some exercise) and after that Jimbo and Linda are bringing their computers over for some LAN gaming all night. And then tomorrow night is New Year's Eve, which i understand will be held at our place as well. Yikes! It looks like this is just the lull between storms...

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