Black Dog Blog

It went fine. Not even any arguments. I'm as dazed as normal. The tremor has been a serious problem, but thankfully nobody poked fun at it so I wasn't too distressed about it all.

When all my presents arrive, I expect I'll have a great few-days-after-Xmas. ;) Haul so far: jigsaw, film I haven't heard of that looks good, and a George W Bushisms calendar, all from Paul. (Thanks, bro, but I may have to give that last to mum. I'm scared of his face. x) Also arrived in time: the shiny new 250GB WD Passport drive I asked for from mum. Say "hurrah" with me, children. They're very nice beasts. Small and trendy and all — but more importantly, reliable (in my experience), virtually silent, pretty good rpm and powered by the USB bus. We have a couple of 120GB ones at work, which I use for taking backups three times a week.

I also have the DVD of the BBC's Jekyll series from this year, which I missed completely when it was on tv but heard was quite good. And Stephen Fry's book The Ode Less Travelled. If anyone can inspire me to write more doggerel it's Stephen, so you know whom to blame if I overcome my latest wave of self-revulsion (which *looks it up* started around May this year, good grief) and start spamming you all with "There was a young Schnauzer from Leeds…".

I gave: Where the Wild Things Are and other Sendak stories on DVD (for mum, who has an appropriately awe-stricken opinion of that 1963 children's book), red metal bird feeder with butterflies on it (for mum, who liked it. Shut up, I give what I think people will like, not what I like), tiny Chinese-style jewellery box (mum obviously, ditto), various katt food and treats (Piper, but he labelled them to mum when he very skilfully wrapped them), a share in the stuff Mum bought from Amazon for Slen ('cause she bought up his entire wishlist so I didn't have anything to get him). He had no surprises, because I'm just not that with it this year, but it was exactly what he wanted, and we're all grownups so I'm happy with that even if it's not 'magical'. He's already listened to Aurora Consurgens (Angra) and the new Sum 41. I wanted the Sum 41 too, so it will be spirited away and ripped very shortly. Slen says he gets the feeling they don't like Dubya very much. I also can't wait to kidnap and read The Escapement, the third in the Engineer series by K.J. Parker, because Parker = mastercraftsmanship of sadistic+intricate+geeky = luv.

For Paul, I bought the Happy Tree Friends complete DVD (oh yes — I went there) and some film called Premonition that looked like exactly the sort of plot Paul likes, and, so Slen tells me, has the guy who played Cole in it. Also some hammy treats for the gerbils (actually the fruit ones were labelled for rabbits, but the ingredients looked fine). I gave Paul another present that's for his birthday in late January, because I don't know if he'll be back over in Ireland then. That one's a very good one. Oh yes, he'll like that one. Some chance Wikipedia-browsing earlier in the year paid dividends. And I have some gifts for the dad, which I won't post about here because he hasn't opened them yet.

Planning to buy myself: behemoth computer, probably going by Ars Technica's list of recommended bits. (Randomly, things that make me qualifiedly happy today: one two.) Also considering an Empire Builder messenger bag, or its smaller sibling, because my backpack's wearing out and a fellow geek praised Tom Bihn bags to the skies in a related discussion earlier this year. I'm also still eyeing the XO laptops that keep turning up on eBay. Glorified gaudy e-book reader do want.

Nobody got me a tortoise. Which is probably just as well.