Caesar ad sum jam forte
So: every year, we have an unconventional Christmas, and every year it is different. Some years, we have a faux-Christmas dinner in some guise or other; and this year we didn't, at all. We didn't even have any cranberry sauce, which upset me far more than having no Christmas presents on actual Christmas day (most of them, having not arrived or having been already opened) - but we did have our unChristmas dinner.
We started this a couple of years back, when Jennie and John (some of Mum and Dad's friends; my sister and I have grown up with their kids; Tess once said that I was a bit like the second brother that she didn't have) invited us for a Christmas dinner which ended up being some time in February. We found it rather fun, and it became a festival of some sorts in our family calender: that at some point during the year following the twenty-fifth of December, we would have an unChristmas dinner with Jenny and John and family. This year's was yesterday, and was immense fun. My mother, being the wonderful, wonderful person that she is, decided to get a silly extra present for Debz and I as well; Debz got some chocolates, and I received a little three-pack of interesting jam-like substances.
(There is a reason for this; when in Germany - and boy, does that seem to be coming up a lot at the moment - I discovered some rather unusual and interesting jams, including mango jam and blood orange marmalade, which I discovered I enjoy rather a lot. I returned with 750g of jams in my luggage, and never looked back.)
So this morning, I had two slices of toast with pink grapefruit curd and a cup of tea (with sugar and milk) before I went to school.
It was okay; I managed the first half of a maths paper rather easier than I had expected to, which is rather heartening given that I have a stats exam next Friday, enjoyed RS immensely (I need to explore my arguments on just why capital punishment is so vehemently wrong and integrate that into my mostly Utilitarian philosophy) and had immense fun in Mr Pedroz' English lesson talking about expoding rivers and the Great Stink. So that was okay.
The second book of the year has already been read, (yesterday) and it was, in fact, a disappointment. The Plot: The Secret Story of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion is 'a book of graphic history' by Will Eisner chronocling the creation and journey of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. It's an interesting subject material, he is lauded as the father of the graphic novel, and it had a foreword by Umberto Eco; and yet it was flat, dull, and unchallenging. There was nothing like enough on each page to hold interest, the art was proficient but simple, and the narrative was simply boring.
On the books front, however, I have rather a ot ahead of me. The Plot was picked up whilst on a scouting mission at the library for Maus for my sister, as were books by Roger Zelazny, Jonathan Saffran Foer, Iain Banks, Thomas Pynchon, and possibly someone else as well. I also bought another Banks from the second hand bookshop, as well as Shaemus Heany's Beowulf; and today, .after resisting a sudden urge to spend eight quid on a copy of Neverwhere in Smiths I went into the cancer research shop and spent a fiver of four books - one that I'd wanted for ages, an Oscar Wilde book, Feankenstein and a random book on foretunetelling with dice that looked like it could be interesting material to use for something, somewhere, so I felt more virtuous.
Anyway; I shall have a lot to get though. Which is good.
ETA: Spelling mistake fixed. :)
We started this a couple of years back, when Jennie and John (some of Mum and Dad's friends; my sister and I have grown up with their kids; Tess once said that I was a bit like the second brother that she didn't have) invited us for a Christmas dinner which ended up being some time in February. We found it rather fun, and it became a festival of some sorts in our family calender: that at some point during the year following the twenty-fifth of December, we would have an unChristmas dinner with Jenny and John and family. This year's was yesterday, and was immense fun. My mother, being the wonderful, wonderful person that she is, decided to get a silly extra present for Debz and I as well; Debz got some chocolates, and I received a little three-pack of interesting jam-like substances.
(There is a reason for this; when in Germany - and boy, does that seem to be coming up a lot at the moment - I discovered some rather unusual and interesting jams, including mango jam and blood orange marmalade, which I discovered I enjoy rather a lot. I returned with 750g of jams in my luggage, and never looked back.)
So this morning, I had two slices of toast with pink grapefruit curd and a cup of tea (with sugar and milk) before I went to school.
It was okay; I managed the first half of a maths paper rather easier than I had expected to, which is rather heartening given that I have a stats exam next Friday, enjoyed RS immensely (I need to explore my arguments on just why capital punishment is so vehemently wrong and integrate that into my mostly Utilitarian philosophy) and had immense fun in Mr Pedroz' English lesson talking about expoding rivers and the Great Stink. So that was okay.
The second book of the year has already been read, (yesterday) and it was, in fact, a disappointment. The Plot: The Secret Story of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion is 'a book of graphic history' by Will Eisner chronocling the creation and journey of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. It's an interesting subject material, he is lauded as the father of the graphic novel, and it had a foreword by Umberto Eco; and yet it was flat, dull, and unchallenging. There was nothing like enough on each page to hold interest, the art was proficient but simple, and the narrative was simply boring.
On the books front, however, I have rather a ot ahead of me. The Plot was picked up whilst on a scouting mission at the library for Maus for my sister, as were books by Roger Zelazny, Jonathan Saffran Foer, Iain Banks, Thomas Pynchon, and possibly someone else as well. I also bought another Banks from the second hand bookshop, as well as Shaemus Heany's Beowulf; and today, .after resisting a sudden urge to spend eight quid on a copy of Neverwhere in Smiths I went into the cancer research shop and spent a fiver of four books - one that I'd wanted for ages, an Oscar Wilde book, Feankenstein and a random book on foretunetelling with dice that looked like it could be interesting material to use for something, somewhere, so I felt more virtuous.
Anyway; I shall have a lot to get though. Which is good.
ETA: Spelling mistake fixed. :)