'Twas the season to be jolly..

And it was a good christmas. My Mom, mother-in-law and I got busy making these really pretty decorations for the tree.


They come from a pattern (quite modified) that I found in my pattern file. When I checked the date I was quite shocked to discover that I have been personally clipping knitting patterns for 20 years!! This pattern is from Your Family 1988!

I'm not old enough to have been cutting (and storing) patterns for that long. Clearly, I'm a bit of a squirrel. I'll put these up on Ravelry shortly - but it's bedtime now :).

..and a Happy New Year

to all those recovering from Christmas and floating around until New Year. My Christmas was wonderful - my daughter had an absolute ball, and every now and again looks around the wrapping-strewn lounge (I'm not really an efficient tidyer), and says hopefully "I don't know where all those presents have gone!". She had so many presents that we were still opening them yesterday - so she can be forgiven for thinking that some may still be lurking.

The Giant Duck went down a treat and is now regularly snuggled. It is bigger than she is by quite a margin, and probably will be for a couple of year.

I miss Cape Town dreadfully - I miss the Great Boxing Day Braai, and I desparately want to be able to just hang out with friends. We don't know anyone up here with kids anywhere near Zeb's age, and pretty much have only hung out with family since we got here. Hopefully, now that we own a house and know that we are fairly settled in the area, we can start finding social things to do around here. Also, we might meet families next year when Zeb goes to nursery school. (In 11 days - 11 DAYS - my baby starts school in 11 Days - I don't think I'm ready. )

I got the 2-disc version of Pirates of the Carribean, Dead Man's Chest for christmas, and I must admit to some disappointment. Aside from being unmistakeable as an "inbetween" film (like the Two Towers was), I wasn't as taken with Jack Sparrow's character - I didn't get the feeling that he was as redeemable as he was in the first one, he was much more selfish and far less swashbuckling. I don't know... it just didn't grab me as much, which was sad. Maybe version 3 will be better again.

Yesterday I decided to switch on my laptop from work to finish updating the system - I had fetched all the sources and simply (ha-ha) had to emerge world to compile them all. Somehow, I have lost my windows manager completely. I could get to a terminal login, but no startx. Anyway, merrily I continued my emerge quest, and subsequently could not boot at all. So it looks like I have, yet again, screwed my gentoo disto horribly - and will once again have to face the disaproval of my boss, who will once again tell me how wonderful Ubuntu is and how I now have to switch - because he has absolutely no understanding of how long it actually takes me to set up everything I want to on a pc, and how long it takes to install everything. I reckon, if it takes me a week to sort out my gentoo, but then it works, then I have everything set up as I want it, but if I "just install Ubuntu" - then I have to first back up gigabytes of data, try to somehow store / export all my settings on all the apps I use (probably a day's work in and of itself) and then try to reproduce said settings in a new distribution that I don't know from a bar of soap. I'm a bit bummed by the whole thing.

Anyway, I think I will abandon the bastard for the rest of the year, and see if anyone is around to help me when I go back to work next week. I'll take a few good books in with me in case no-one's around. Now I need to try and get some sleep. A has put up new curtains in our bedroom that actually reach all the way to the bottom of the window, so sunrise might not wake me up tomorrow :).

Moved

We are all moved out of our old house, and gradually settling into our new house. My daughter has been quite unsettled - understandably, as we have just upped and shifted her away from the only home she probably consciously remembers. I have got the water switched on, but Eskom can't find the property on their computer system. Also, two of our electricity meters have identical serial numbers - deeply dodgy.

I think it's completely unfair that I am at work in the week leading up to Christmas. I have a kid. I reckon primary care givers should have compulsory leave during school holidays. I shouldn't be sneaking in blog time at the office! I should be taking Zeb to see "Faver Kismas" at the increasingly bun-fight emulating shopping centers. I should be making decorations with her and decorating the cake - and swimming, and playing, and running naked through the sprinklers.

It's just not Christmas if the Mommy is at work. It's just wrong. It would have been wrong when I was little, and it feels wrong now. I don't think I'm cut out for this working-away-from-home stuff.

I think I may try to get work as a nursery school teacher. No real extra-murals to deal with, and school holidays off. Plus - the added bonus that one gets to work with kids, who, in general, don't irritate me, as opposed to office colleagues, who, in general, do!