the birds have less to say for themselves

location: bed

mood: sleepy

music: 500 Days of Summer soundtrack

Well, it's been an interesting season this year... vast amounts of snow (but never a white Christmas, naturally), vast amounts of alcohol for one night only (the work xmas party, of which i remember scarily little. And then had to call in sick the next morning with, er, not a hangover. Honest. It was a cold!).  There was a surprisingly fun little 'office do' where we handed out the Secret Santa pressies, and our manager decided to bribe us with M&S party food, and now I don't have to be back at work for another... nine days, woohoo!  Not that it's particularly awful, but I am starting to feel a little like the Ghost of Christmas Past these days, drifting around with lots of things leftover to do but no real purpose.  It doesn't exactly encourage mustering much enthusiasm for the whole thing, hence it was kinda easy to give in to the hacking cough that's been plaguing me this week and not roll in until the afternoon on Monday, Tues and Wednesday... ho hum.

And then I did all my lastminute shopping yesterday with surprisingly little stress, wrapped everything in existence last night while downing a bottle of mulled wine fizz (surprisingly drinkable!) and watching rubbish tv.  As everyone managed to behave themselves today, the only real moment of stress was hacking open both turkey crowns to realise they still hadn't bloody cooked properly, despite not showing any signs of this when we took them out of the oven originally... (although, given the vast amounts of butter and maple syrup stuck in and on the things a la Nigella, there was no chance they were ever going to be dry..!)

But it was good... only one kinda dud present that I really really hope my parents didn't spend much money on ( in which i am ungrateful )

The guy who wrote Scroogenomics kinda has a point, which is why this year I had no qualms about buying stuff I wanted myself and handing it over to parents/grandparents for them to wrap up and give me.  Half the time I don't even get the money back, but I'm not really bothered about that - I really just can't see the point of buying meaningless crap that isn't wanted or likely to be used.  ( seasonal whining )

Oooh, btw, was somebody feeding Russell T Davies lots of sugar and/or caffeine before he wrote the Doctor Who finale? Because all I've read in interviews is him raving about how epic and heartrending it was to write, and what we got in the first part tonight was a couple of brief moments of epic/heartrending, but mostly it felt like the hyper ADD kicking off of someone on a severe sugar high.  ( DW spoilery rants )

Well, they certainly came up with the pretties this year...  The Next Doctor was absolutely gorgeous (the episode, not David Morrisey, who quite frankly wound me up so much in Sense & Sensibility that I pretty much couldn't stand him after that).  It had the usual RTD complete lack of regard for anything like logic or plot, but somebody had seriously been at the steampunk before they wrote this...

There was every steampunk convention you could think of chucked in, dripping in Victoriana and clockwork gears (although not quite as much as The Girl in the Fireplace) and Dervla Kirwan's villainess - Fabulousness.

Doing the usual RTD thing though, it was a case of rushing through all the boring plot building bits to get to the good stuff.  And the good stuff was seriously meaty - the visuals were amazing, and the grand plot reveals were pretty damn good - but I couldn't shake the feeling that it was slightly.. I don't know  - all style and no substance, maybe.

Certainly the most beautiful and visually impressive Christmas episode they've ever done - not up there with The Christmas Invasion in terms of script, or character or plotting (this script was never really going to come up with anything on the level of the Lion King one-liner from Invasion)  and maybe not quite as satisfying as last year's - but with just enough pathos to ground it.  But a plot this convoluted needed a two-parter to really play it out properly, and this ran by with blink-and-you-missed-it haste (in the hope that you don't see the cracks, and a cute shout-out to Blink. And Human Nature!). 

But, did I mention the gorgeous already? And even though slashfic does absolutely nothing for me, this was playing up to the doctor/'doctor' pairing to the point where even I noticed it...  Gawd, it was like watching that last  ep of Merlin again.

On to Strictly's xmas ep now, complete with predictably ridiculous scoring and Brucie's introduction of, er, Rachel and Vincent's theoretical raunchy Hoky-Coky, complete with demonstration.  Eek!

And, yay, today has been better than expected... wonders wil never cease.  For which I'm grateful.

mood: cold

music: wham - last christmas

Heh. Christmas is coming, Twilight  is nearly here and I kinda forgot to book any iceskating this year...

Of course, Ticketmaster is on the long list of sites on the naughty list according to the insane firewall at work (which changes on a daily basis according to, er, what the weather, is by the look of it.  Capricious doesn't even begin to descibe that thing) as is the whole of LJ as of last week, and that made me seriously consider quitting.  And I'm not even over-reacting.. Honestly, now I have managers who actually treat us like grown-ups and, like, trust us to behave and get the work done, I'm quite capable of spending 10 mins here and there during the day switching off and LJ entries happen to be the perfect size for that.  Otherwise, I'm the one that only takes half my lunchbreak and stays late when stuff goes wrong, so we're all in agreement that it's kinda fine.  Except, of course, the IT Fuhrers never seem to agree... Bastards.

In other, completely unrelated news... I'm loving Robin McKinley's Chalice.  It's just... gorgeous.  Beautifully written and the literary equivalent of... slightly spicy hot chocolate, maybe.  Comforting and still a little bit dark.

Also loving Prison Break.. how can you not love the adorable cheek of trying to re-enact both Eternal Sunshine and The Matrix in one scene, while Michael's having a major brain op?!
I half kept expecting Sarah to start quoting Trinity (well, hell, we already knew Mike was The One, surely) and bring him back from the dead with a kiss... Ah well, she just stuck to pleading and it worked just as well!

Not loving Starbucks today.. not that you ever expect to be served by a native English speaker in.. well, any retail anything in London at all really, but today was ridiculous.  As I bought the same thing from the same branch every day this week, and hadn't had a problem before, it was a bit much that I had to repeat my order five times.Very slowly.  And how she then managed to interpret 'steamed milk with vanilla', then 'ok, hot milk. With Vanilla syrup.'  (when i realised we were having communication problems) into the black coffee that I ended up walking out with initially... lord knows, i have no idea.  I really don't.  Cos then I had to go back, queue up again and try explaining it again, and started getting snippy after the sixteenth attempt. 

Gawd knows, it's pretty much part of the basic job requirements, you'd think... Also slightly worrying that it's a problem we run into at work a lot, and that has slightly more at stake than a cappucino unfortunately.