I picked up my sericel about 90 minutes ago now, and must say they did a pretty good job of framing it. The celluloid and background picture were quite difficult to align properly, but it looks perfect to me — even one particular part I knew I would be pedantic about being done right.

View the full-sized image

The complete thing is quite large and takes up a substantial part of our mantle, but I like it. Finally, I received my Christmas present!

Finally! About 20 minutes before I’d planned to call and abuse them for not having it done, I receive a call telling me my Simpsons sericel (which I’ve talked about a couple of times) is finally ready!

It has taken an extremely long time, and I’m not even sure where I’m going to put it, but hopefully I will be able to admire it later today!

With Christmas gone for another year, I can safely say this was one of the easiest and most relaxed I’ve had for ages.

Christmas Day started off not at the crack of dawn, but at 9:30ish — i.e. when we finally decided to roll out of bed — which is when the presents began. Shortly after, I received a call from mum — who is now doing quite well after her extremely serious operation — in the middle of the early-morning present delivery. A few hours later, when we could be bothered, we went off to Diane’s (Justine’s mum) place for lunch. Lunch was fine — no traditional turkey though I couldn’t care less — and Justine was the lightning-fast distributer of Christmas cheer/gifts. The kids enjoyed playing with the sticky wall clingy things that Justine gave them; they got other presents, sure, but they didn’t care since they were sticky wall clingy things.

Around dinner time we got off our arses and went to Dad’s place. The mountains of uneaten food largely stayed that way though we did manage to have a few small bits and pieces. Much talking and watching of television ensued — not too Christmassy, watching TV, but we can be thankful we weren’t forced to play charades or some such.

Lunchtime on Boxing Day was spent at Justine’s “little nana’s” (the one mentioned here house and dinner was spent back at our house with a traditional Christmas fea… no, wait, it was a barbecue. Probably nicer anyway since it was me cooking.

Presents of note for me:

• The aforementioned Simpsons sericel, which I won’t see until February
• Evan Williams Single Barrel Bourbon 1994 vintage, put into barrel on the 23rd of July, 1994 — in barrel 211
• A piece of paper with a monetary value attached (commonly called a “gift voucher”); redeemable at JB Hi-Fi stores
• About 4-5kg of lollies/chocolate from various members of Justine’s family; for some reason she told them I wanted lollies for Christmas

Note: This post was back-dated.

Today, one of the Christmas presents Justine bought for me arrived. I wouldn’t have known what it was, except that there was a bank stuff up with her being charged more than she should have. Because of the mucking around to resolve the issue, I found out what it was.

Nevermind. It’s fallen on my shoulders to get it framed, since it’s quite costly to get done right and Justine wanted to get it done on the cheap (if you’re getting something so nice, why skimp right at the end? It’s like eating at a fine restaurant and then getting cheap McDonalds ice cream for dessert).

Anyway, here it is (this is my one, not a stock photo). It’s a limited-edition sericel so it’s quite a fancy, big deal:

Can’t wait to see it framed!

I’ve talked about it before, but this time it’s bordering on the preposterous. Cable TV channel FOX8 is airing their Simpsons Fanfest for the latter half of August (obviously at the same time as the Greek Olympics) as well as the regular schedule.

The Fanfest alone (which airs for six hours a day, seven days a week from August 14 to August 29) will be showing around 224 episodes over 16 days. In addition to this, there are another 84 or so episodes shown on weekend days in this 16 day period.

Last time, I included Channel 10’s episodes as well; I may as well do the same thing this time around. Channel 10 are showing around 30 episodes in the same 16 day period.

This is a total of 338 episodes over 16 days. This makes for 21 episodes (or 10.5 hours worth [including ads]) per day!! The worst thing about it is even though I’ve seen every one of the episodes multiple times, I’m still watching a large amount of it. Stuff the Olympics; this is a much better sport.

Update: I’m not so sure those figures add up, but I’m not going to bother changing them.

It’s (quite) a few days after Christmas now. I meant to do a write-up of my Christmas but have been too lazy to do it until now.

So, without further ado, here’s the lowdown on my Christmas Day and Boxing Day hijinks…

Christmas Day, I was woken up by Justine at 08:15. Not too bad, I’d expected to be woken at 07:00 so I did manage a little sleep in. First things first though, presents!! Unfortunately, none of the DVDs I’d ordered as Christmas presents had arrived, so there will be a mini-Christmas in the early New Year (hopefully!). I nabbed some clothes, an eyebrow ring (mmm… anodised), SSX3 for Gamecube, the DVD which hasn’t arrived and a gigantic Simpsons mug from Justine. Sweet. I got her a DVD which hasn’t arrived, two sets of pyjamas (as if she doesn’t already have enough!), a picture frame, two little wooden cat… things, and some clothes.

Right, now that’s out of the way, time to get this show on the road. 09:30 and we take the chooks out of the fridge… they’re still frozen. Oh great. We panic for a little bit (this is the first time we’ve held a Christmas) and then chuck the chooks in the microwave. Phew, they aren’t stuck together any more. We were only going to cook three of them (cause, you know, three chickens is nothing) but as we had put them in the microwave, we decided to cook all four. Four chickens should be enough for eight people, right?

So it’s 11:00 and the chooks have been in the oven for half an hour. Justine calls; “There are another seven people coming.” Seven? Oh, great, we’ll just set another place at the table. Seven?! Luckily, a few people pitched in and grabbed random food from their cupboards, as well as some chairs.

People start arriving, and we’re on track. By 13:30, there are seventeen people in our house. Of those, i had never even met four of five of them before. Two I had met once. Who the hell were all these freeloaders at our place? Were people just walking in off the street? It’s not like my cooking is even particularly good.

Justine and I have had nothing to eat so far today. I’ve been madly cooking and Justine’s been preparing a big salad. Justine has also had three UDL Fusion thinagmies and is looking rather red in the face.

Well, the vegies aren’t all done and the chickens aren’t brown, so why not give out presents? I get a few bits of assorted crap (one doesn’t seem to like me, but more on that later) which get shoved aside but nothing of any interest. Strangely enough, all these people I’ve met zero to one times gave me nothing, but are all going to eat my food. How generous of them.

Well, the chickens spent five hours in the oven. Much too long but Justine didn’t start the vegies until 12:50; and with all the stuff in the oven (four chickens and two huge trays of vegies), everything cooked slower. They were a bit overdone but the freeloaders didn’t seem to mind a free feed a bit.

Time passes…

It’s 17:00 and the freeloaders are long gone (they left just after dessert) and there’s a mountain of cleaning up to do. Somehow, I manage to evade that task completely (though I must thank Justine’s family, and especially her nana for doing this all for me ;).

Day’s over, right? Wrong. I’ve already written a crapload, and if you’re still here, you’re probably tired, so I’ll speed things up a little.

We get to Dad’s place, and force-feed more food into our swollen stomachs. Play a little Pictionary (we had a massive lead, but Justine got tired; and subsequently got pissed off whenever I didn’t guess her crappy drawings. We got a gigantic Ferrero Rocher thing (there was 30 in there, I’ve had one; I think about 10 are missing), a calender for me, candle thing for Justine and I also go the Alien Quadrilogy. Sweet.

12:45 - Bedtime.

Boxing Day started without much sleep. We got up at… I forget actually, but it was probably too early for me. We meet up with Justine’s Dad and her half-brother and sister (and their mum) and head off to Justine’s (other) nana’s house. We eat lunch, I let James (Justine’s half-brother) beat me at chess and we come back home. We have dinner at home again. While preparing a salad, I manage to slice the top off my middle finger with a vegie slicer. It didn’t look bad at first, but the top is definitely straight or bevelled, where my other fingers are rounded… Oops.

Two long days. But they aren’t over.

23:00 - we arrive at Southland for the first time in four months. I’m sitting three rows from the front, four seats from the side, and grinning like an idiot. Yes, I’m watching Return of the King. This film is awesome. Twenty minutes in, I didn’t care that I had a crappy seat; hell, I didn’t even care about my popcorn for about the first hour. This film caps off the trilogy perfectly. Here is an accurate review of the film.

03:45 - In bed, finally. Two long days over. Thank God there’s only another 365 days left (it’s a leap-year next year!).