Christmas! We hates it, it burns us.
Dec. 23rd, 2012 10:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
st_aurafinaIt's too busy, it's too hot, I'm too cranky and brain fried. It happens every year and it sucks. Bleh. It was a stay inside in the dark kind of day, too hot to move, too hot to think.
Christmas in my family is something to be endured, so I should be glad I'm having it at home this year with onlylilacsigil and the cats, but for some reason, I am really feeling sad when I see people meeting up with their families and being genuinely excited about the holidays. And it's busy at work, there are a million scripts - so many that I kind of go into Tetris mode and keep processing them in my dreams. Someone saw a giant spider on a shelf (we have really ginormous ones, Huntsman spiders) and it vanished before lilacsigil, our spider wrangler, could catch it and I know it's going to pop out at the most inopportune time.
Oh, and there's been a massive recall of Ventolin inhalers - there's a pdf from Glaxo Smith Kline here with the batch numbers if you want to check yours, the fault is that some inhalers may only deliver a third of the dose per inhalation which could be dangerous. And that's cut our stocks down to a quarter, during Christmas week when we won't get another order until Thursday. So that's actually really fucking shitty timing, if you'll pardon my French.
Things that are awesome:
- It's cooling down pretty damn fast. Which is good.
- We ate a pea off the pea vine! It was delicious! The beans are making beanstalks and it's all very like a fairy tale at that end of the garden.
- I'm looking forward to Yuletide. It is Christmas for me -lilacsigil and I do a round up of comics fandom stories for ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
comicstore_news, we have a cheese platter and some nice crackers and we put stupid stuff on the telly and we work at it all afternoon, and it's the most fun thing about December 25th for me. (I've written one story this year. I don't normally say that my fics are obviously written by me, but there's something about this one that makes it pretty clearly mine. Standard Yuletide thing: guess the fic I wrote! I will write you a ficlet.)
- It's going to be cool enough to do a roast on Christmas day. I will read Yuletide fics, and I will enjoy and I will drink wine and eat weird biscuits from a Christmas hamper I was randomly given this year. We're slow cooking a leg of lamb, and having it roast beet salad with walnuts and goats cheese, and couscous with currants and slivered almonds. And potatoes and pumpkin because that's what you do with a roast.
-ignipes linked to this awesome, awesome thing: Snapshot Serengeti, which puts up the images taken by the motion sensing camera in the wildlife parks, and teaches you to identify things. For science! It's mostly wildebeasts, zebras and Thompson's or Grant's gazelles, but there's all sorts of other things. Lions seem to want to loll in front of the cameras a lot. I have seen spectacular buffalo testicles. I mean, really spectacularly large. Baboons, hyenas, jackals, warthogs, ostriches. It is so much fun. For science!
These are my two favourites under the cut.
I really thought this was just trees, until I realised that trees don't have spots!
Feel the power of this fully operational hippo!
I will survive this Christmas. I will find some merry spirit, either within or within the liquor cabinet.
Christmas in my family is something to be endured, so I should be glad I'm having it at home this year with only
lilacsigil and the cats, but for some reason, I am really feeling sad when I see people meeting up with their families and being genuinely excited about the holidays. And it's busy at work, there are a million scripts - so many that I kind of go into Tetris mode and keep processing them in my dreams. Someone saw a giant spider on a shelf (we have really ginormous ones, Huntsman spiders) and it vanished before lilacsigil, our spider wrangler, could catch it and I know it's going to pop out at the most inopportune time. Oh, and there's been a massive recall of Ventolin inhalers - there's a pdf from Glaxo Smith Kline here with the batch numbers if you want to check yours, the fault is that some inhalers may only deliver a third of the dose per inhalation which could be dangerous. And that's cut our stocks down to a quarter, during Christmas week when we won't get another order until Thursday. So that's actually really fucking shitty timing, if you'll pardon my French.
Things that are awesome:
- It's cooling down pretty damn fast. Which is good.
- We ate a pea off the pea vine! It was delicious! The beans are making beanstalks and it's all very like a fairy tale at that end of the garden.
- I'm looking forward to Yuletide. It is Christmas for me -
lilacsigil and I do a round up of comics fandom stories for comicstore_news, we have a cheese platter and some nice crackers and we put stupid stuff on the telly and we work at it all afternoon, and it's the most fun thing about December 25th for me. (I've written one story this year. I don't normally say that my fics are obviously written by me, but there's something about this one that makes it pretty clearly mine. Standard Yuletide thing: guess the fic I wrote! I will write you a ficlet.)- It's going to be cool enough to do a roast on Christmas day. I will read Yuletide fics, and I will enjoy and I will drink wine and eat weird biscuits from a Christmas hamper I was randomly given this year. We're slow cooking a leg of lamb, and having it roast beet salad with walnuts and goats cheese, and couscous with currants and slivered almonds. And potatoes and pumpkin because that's what you do with a roast.
-
ignipes linked to this awesome, awesome thing: Snapshot Serengeti, which puts up the images taken by the motion sensing camera in the wildlife parks, and teaches you to identify things. For science! It's mostly wildebeasts, zebras and Thompson's or Grant's gazelles, but there's all sorts of other things. Lions seem to want to loll in front of the cameras a lot. I have seen spectacular buffalo testicles. I mean, really spectacularly large. Baboons, hyenas, jackals, warthogs, ostriches. It is so much fun. For science!These are my two favourites under the cut.
I really thought this was just trees, until I realised that trees don't have spots!
Feel the power of this fully operational hippo!
I will survive this Christmas. I will find some merry spirit, either within or within the liquor cabinet.
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Date: 2012-12-23 01:07 pm (UTC)(And oh, we will gladly take that sun back from you, because holy wow is it dark up here at this season! I've lived in the northern US for 20 years, so in theory I should be accustomed to this by now, but it still always shocks me a little, how early the darkness falls. I grew up some 2000 miles away from here in a place with a more temperate climate and less dramatic shifts in light...)
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Date: 2012-12-24 05:12 am (UTC)It's always greener/colder in some other latitude. *sighs*
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Date: 2012-12-23 01:24 pm (UTC)Yuletide is my Christmas too, in this Holy Land devoid of tinsel and sparkly things. Huzzah for Yuletide! *scurries back to pinch hit*
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Date: 2012-12-24 05:16 am (UTC)Good luck with your pinch hit!
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Date: 2012-12-24 07:15 am (UTC)All done now! Barring the 1,000,000 tiny edits I'll be doing on Christmas Eve.
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Date: 2012-12-23 01:46 pm (UTC)Hooray for Yuletide! I like a lot of things about Christmas, but the idea of being able to spend the day reading through Yuletide and eating tasty things is a bit envy-inducing. I hope you have a lovely day.
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Date: 2012-12-24 03:50 am (UTC)Yuletide will be awesome! It is every year for me, I've enjoyed every single one. *clings to that* I hope you have a lovely day too, and get a chance to read quietly some time.
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Date: 2012-12-23 04:20 pm (UTC)Happy to hear its cooling down for you. Heat is a monster. Almost as scary as that spider.
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Date: 2012-12-24 03:47 am (UTC)I don't hate the spiders, but man, there's nothing as horrible as picking up a notepad and suddenly giant legs and scurrying. I always scream like a baby.
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Date: 2012-12-23 04:28 pm (UTC)YULETIIIIIIDE. I think at least one of mine is Pretty Obviously Me, but that's all right.
The laser hippos is WONDERFUL. XD
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Date: 2012-12-24 05:24 am (UTC)I never think that mine are guessable, but this year is definitely a possibility. I will look out for yours! *side-eyes Warehouse 13*
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Date: 2012-12-24 03:21 pm (UTC)I can neither confirm nor deny that information. XD But I have churned out FOUR stories this year, so hopefully they'll all go over well!
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Date: 2012-12-23 06:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-12-24 05:25 am (UTC)I hope you get some relaxing time at Christmas!
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Date: 2012-12-23 08:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-12-24 05:41 am (UTC)I hope you have a good day, too!
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Date: 2012-12-23 08:27 pm (UTC)+sends Christmas Rum to you+
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Date: 2012-12-24 06:06 am (UTC)*drinks that rum down*
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Date: 2012-12-23 08:53 pm (UTC)Aw, glad to hear your garden is going well! I can't wait until I get to plant things again. The closest I get to gardening right now is shovelling show and putting things in the compost.
Oy, that inhaler recall sounds epic. Another reason to be glad I switched to Xopanex, even if it is more expensive.
Yuletide! \0/
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Date: 2012-12-24 06:11 am (UTC)Ventolin is the only reliever you can buy over the counter here, so it's kind of a big deal. And the pollen count is really high, too.
Yuletide! Yaaay!
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Date: 2012-12-24 03:13 am (UTC)I'm sort of imaginging a cross between Tetris and space invaders...
Super script processing power!
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Date: 2012-12-26 10:29 am (UTC)That would be more fun! But I can't actually read text in my dreams, so mostly it involves checking and checking things that don't make sense. Dull and anxiety-generating.
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Date: 2012-12-24 05:30 am (UTC)I've passed on info about the Ventolin recall on my facebook wall.
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Date: 2012-12-26 11:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-12-24 06:33 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-12-26 11:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-12-26 06:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-12-24 03:14 pm (UTC)YUUULETIDE! So looking forward to it! Here's to lots of great stories!
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Date: 2012-12-27 01:50 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-12-25 01:38 am (UTC)*hugs you hard* You will survive Christmas.
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Date: 2012-12-27 12:28 am (UTC)It's been lovely and cool for a few days now - welcome relief. I just wish the pool didn't close over the Christmas week! I would love a swim.
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Date: 2012-12-26 07:53 am (UTC)All that food you're making sounds delicious though, and I hope you had a delightful, stress free Christmas.
Yay for laser hippo!
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Date: 2012-12-27 02:13 am (UTC)Laser hippo means serious business.