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!).