Harry Potter and...the Christmas Stuffness
GRYFFINDOR!
You scored 28% Slytherin, 24% Ravenclaw, 48% Gryffindor, and 24% Hufflepuff!
You might belong in Gryffindor,
Where dwell the brave at heart,
Their daring, nerve, and chivalry
Set Gryffindors apart.
Gryffindors are known for their courage, audacity, and devotion to what is good and honest.
My test tracked 4 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender:
You scored higher than 76% on Slytherin
You scored higher than 30% on Ravenclaw
You scored higher than 36% on Gryffindor
You scored higher than 10% on Hufflepuff
Link: The Sorting Hat Test written by leeannslytherin on OkCupid Free Online Dating, home of the The Dating Persona Test
Now that that's out of the way... *grins*
Christmas is going well so far. On Thursday we had Thai food with the whole extended famdambly and then went back to my uncle's house for mulled cider and gifting. My family doesn't generally buy for everyone, but instead buys inexpensive gifts and does a gift exchange that involves drawing numbers out of a hat and stealing. It can get pretty funny, and the gifts are cheap, but usually well-received anyway. And it's a heck of a time- and money-saver to do it this way.
I ended up with a little reading light, which also came with a water bottle and touque I will never wear *grins* But I wanted the reading light, so I stole the bundle from my stepbrother, John. Overall, much fun was had by all.
Since then, Miko and I have been working on a sewing project and generally relaxing. I'm THIIIIIIIIIS || close to finishing FFXII, though I still have a tonne of hunts to do, etc., etc... I think I will likely finish it off today when Miko gets up, and keep a saved game for doing the last hunts and finishing it off properly in the future, because I'm impatient to see the end after 120 hours!!!
Yesterday we did some shopping and errands. I had to renew my car insurance (-_-;;;) and do some other things. We have another family gift exchange for those of us who aren't currently in Hawaii, tomorrow, along with the usual turkey dinner with all the fixins. The Hawaii trip was why we did the first Christmas get-together so early. I'm really looking forward to finding out what Miko got me, tomorrow, lol. She's completely confused me, by this point.
Hope everyone is having a happy holiday!
ETA I realized after there was something else I wanted to write about, but I decided not to make a separate post after all, since the ol' flist is rather slow today.
Every Saturday, Miko and I have our Weight Watchers meeting around 9:30 and then go to Japanese class. The class is run at this Japanese cultural centre in Japantown, and most people who go there speak...very little English. It's fantastic, because it's really like immersion, and I feel like my fluency is improving in leaps and bounds every time I have a class.
So a couple of weeks ago Naito-sensei asked us if we were interested in learning calligraphy, and received an enthusiatic yes.
Yesterday halfway through the class we packed up our stuff and went down to the calligraphy room. We met this old Japanese man who had approximately three teeth in his head, and who very kindly and sweetly started to teach us how to do real Chinese calligraphy. We started by making ink, which involved doing a lot of scraping of this hard ink block in this ink well, and got a brush, learned how to hold it properly, and started tracing out the characters for "Shinnen omedetou" which means "Happy New Year".
It was totally awesome, and I can't wait until next week to do some more. Miko and I wanted to actually take their calligraphy class, but it was more money and another chunk of time out of our busy week, so now we don't have to do that XDDD It's really kinda fun and messy. Anyway, I wanted to talk about that, because it was neat.
Edit the second: The other day Terry Pratchett's Hogfather was released, and I downloaded it *grins* So far as I know, it's a direct-to-TV movie that aired only in the UK. I'm about halfway through it, and it's just beautiful. I dunno if it'll ever come onto this side of the pond, but I certainly hope so. For those of you who, like me, love Pratchett and didn't know about this, it can be downloaded on torrent from mininova.org.
I'd stick it up somewhere to be shared, but YouSendIt doesn't allow large files anymore unless you pay for a membership, and I don't know of any other good filesharing places. The movie is in two parts, each half about 700 MB.