Christmas and My Thoughts On The Church On Ruby Road
Christmas was a bit different this year because my brother and his girlfriend were going to be spending Christmas all day with his girlfriend's family. That meant we had to open the presents from them and to them on Christmas Eve. And that's what we did when they first arrived. I did get a gift from them, which was a book, but I already owned the book, so I have to take it back to the bookstore. Hey, any excuse to go to the bookstore, lol. The book was The Bone Shard Daugher by Andrea Stewart, and I might just have to move it up my TBR. Like fate is telling me I should read it or something.
After opening the presents we played games while waiting for the prime rib to cook. There was a lot of time to kill and quite a few games we played. I'm not sure if I'll remember them all, but I'll try. Some of them were gifts. The first game my mom had us play was something she played with her tennis friends, which was the Right family game. My mom was telling a story, which is a Christmas story, and we passed a stuffed dog around the group whenever she said the words “Right” or “Left” and whoever had the dog at the end would win a prize. My mom had four wrapped presents for prizes. I think N (my brother's girlfriend) won the first prize. Then we played this dice game called Left Center Right. This was another game my mom played with her tennis group. There were three dice with L, C, and R and we each got a pile of quarters, and when rolling the dice we either gave a quarter to the left, right, or center, which is the pot. Whoever has quarters left in the game would get the pot. We didn't keep them though.
The last games I remember playing were this Disney meme game with cards. It's similar to Apples to Apples or Picwits where you match funny captions to the pictures. That was kind of fun. The other game we played was Blank Slate. Of course we've played that many times before. You get a word with a blank and you fill in the blank and try to match to some people. Edit: And I forgot about Tapple, which is kind of like a quick game of Scattergories.
Then it was time to take the prime rib out and my parents got to work cooking the rest of the food. Did I mention we had prime rib for our Christmas dinner? :P We also had crispy kale chips, scalloped potatoes, and those Red Lobster cheddar biscuits. Not our usual traditional Christmas dinner, but I loved it all. :D We were also going to have broccoli, but N doesn't like broccoli. She has food issues like I do, but she ate the food. My mom also made her spice cake with the gingerbread house mold and decorated it with frosting, candy, cookies, and white chocolate pretzels. It didn't turn out looking the best, but I've seen it come out worse before. We also had vanilla ice cream with it. It was good. I think my brother and N left afterward, and I escaped to my room. So, that was Christmas Eve.
Christmas day was of course just the four of us: my mom, my dad, Grammy, and myself. However, N and my brother did stop by to have the french toast and bacon. I happened to find some excellent bacon at the store. It was a brand I randomly chose because they were out of Oscar Meyer. Going to have to get some more. :P Anyway, my mom wasn't thrilled I dug into my stocking first thing, but inside was a magazine about Willy Wonka, a candy cane, Reese's nutcrackers and Hershey Bells, and a Steam gift card (which was on my list).
As for the rest of the presents I got, my mom had to be creative because I didn't have much on my list, but I did get those things excepting the desk (I'm going to go back to using the old one) or a dresser. Not something you can wrap. Let's see if I can remember the rest though. I got a three framed painting of a dragon to be hung over my bed (that's pretty cool), and I got a couple other books. One was about old amusement parks in Southern California, which is perfect because I've gotten into the Defunctland YouTube channel where he talks about theme parks and rides that have gone... well defunct. I've always been interested in theme parks and roller coasters. The other book was Christmas Stories by Louisa May Alcott. Not sure when I'm going to read that because Christmas is now over, but I'm sure I'll like it. I also got a Beauty & The Beast mouse pad, a Disney hidden picture card game, my dot-to-dot book with dogs, which I'm already kind of hooked on, some Totoro socks, and a backpack purse with flowers on it. My mom wanted to get me one so I could take it to Disneyland, but it would be such a pain to transfer everything from my purse to the backpack every time, and I wouldn't have easy access to my phone. I can't say I'm all that thrilled with that gift. Grammy gave me one gift (because she continues to give Derek all her money) which was a book written by her friend, but we already had that book. I'd honestly prefer no gift over that. I'm happy to have gotten the other books from my mom though since I only asked for one and I got three lol.
After opening the presents, I watched the Doctor Who Christmas special. I'll talk about that next, but then we had lunch and we played even more games. We got this game buzzer game (it was one of the prizes), which we played. It was similar to Tapple, but with buzzers. It was all right. Then we played the Disney hidden pictures card game I got. That one was fun. Grammy also brought over cards from the What Were You Thinking game she had and we asked questions to each other from those cards, but forget about that lol. No one enjoyed that. Finally, we played a Wheel of Fortune game, and that was pretty good. So many games. I dismissed myself after that and came back down for dinner a couple hours later. My brother and his girlfriend stopped by again to bring over cookies and biscotti and chatted with my mom. After they left, we all watched the Dick Van Dyke 98th birthday special we recorded a few days ago, which was really nice. He was so delighted by how people paid tribute to him. It was touching. And it's amazing how well he's got it together at that age. So, that was my Christmas.
Now getting into the nitty gritty. The Doctor Who Christmas special, which was called “The Church On Ruby Road.” A baby is left at a church on Christmas Eve. This is the story of Ruby Sunday. A young woman who desires to find out who her real parents are and how she meets the Doctor. I'm guessing he was watching over her for a while and no doubt when he was dancing at the party he was deliberately trying to attract her attention. Ruby's been plagued by bad luck that seems to follow her, the cause of which are goblins. Yes, goblins. They're more like gremlins actually and are attracted to coincidences. It's a little puzzling, but it's something they feast on.
Ruby's adoptive mother receives a new foster newborn baby, which attracts the goblins attention because of the Christmas Eve coincidences and they kidnap the baby to be fed to their goblin king. Yeah, this story was quite a bit like Labyrinth too. The Doctor and Ruby make it up to their ship. I learned this Doctor is an inventor with his special gloves. Maybe we'll see more of his inventions because that would be an interesting character trait to make him stand out. We hear a little goblin song, which I knew was going to be in the episode. However, what I wasn't expecting was to hear Ruby and The Doctor sing too. Is this the first time the Doctor has sung? I enjoyed it, and both The Doctor and Ruby already have great chemistry together.
They successfully retrieved the baby. However, attracted to coincidences once more, the goblins decide to go back in time and take Ruby when she was a baby. The Doctor goes back to save the day and kill the goblin king. All is well once more. After hearing the Doctor had time traveled, Ruby gets excited and finds the TARDIS and the Doctor inside ready for an adventure. I love the Doctor and Ruby already and can't wait for the new season. There is something very interesting to note though. Ruby's neighbor is Mrs. Flood, and she very clearly knew about the TARDIS and the Doctor. There's no reason for them to focus on her so much if she wasn't important. So, the question remains: who is she? I've checked out some fan theories online. A lot of people say River Song because of the water connections, but I don't quite buy it. Other theories pose she could be the Master, the Rani (that would be interesting bringing back a classic character) or even an older version of Ruby. I don't buy that last one either because I thought it wasn't possible to visit the same timeline twice. I'm sure we'll find out eventually though. Very curious. This was yet another great special and I guess I have to wait until spring for more. I saw someone online say May, but I hope that's not true lol. Here's a screenshot. Ruby and the Doctor are a bit tied up on the goblin ship.
After opening the presents we played games while waiting for the prime rib to cook. There was a lot of time to kill and quite a few games we played. I'm not sure if I'll remember them all, but I'll try. Some of them were gifts. The first game my mom had us play was something she played with her tennis friends, which was the Right family game. My mom was telling a story, which is a Christmas story, and we passed a stuffed dog around the group whenever she said the words “Right” or “Left” and whoever had the dog at the end would win a prize. My mom had four wrapped presents for prizes. I think N (my brother's girlfriend) won the first prize. Then we played this dice game called Left Center Right. This was another game my mom played with her tennis group. There were three dice with L, C, and R and we each got a pile of quarters, and when rolling the dice we either gave a quarter to the left, right, or center, which is the pot. Whoever has quarters left in the game would get the pot. We didn't keep them though.
The last games I remember playing were this Disney meme game with cards. It's similar to Apples to Apples or Picwits where you match funny captions to the pictures. That was kind of fun. The other game we played was Blank Slate. Of course we've played that many times before. You get a word with a blank and you fill in the blank and try to match to some people. Edit: And I forgot about Tapple, which is kind of like a quick game of Scattergories.
Then it was time to take the prime rib out and my parents got to work cooking the rest of the food. Did I mention we had prime rib for our Christmas dinner? :P We also had crispy kale chips, scalloped potatoes, and those Red Lobster cheddar biscuits. Not our usual traditional Christmas dinner, but I loved it all. :D We were also going to have broccoli, but N doesn't like broccoli. She has food issues like I do, but she ate the food. My mom also made her spice cake with the gingerbread house mold and decorated it with frosting, candy, cookies, and white chocolate pretzels. It didn't turn out looking the best, but I've seen it come out worse before. We also had vanilla ice cream with it. It was good. I think my brother and N left afterward, and I escaped to my room. So, that was Christmas Eve.
Christmas day was of course just the four of us: my mom, my dad, Grammy, and myself. However, N and my brother did stop by to have the french toast and bacon. I happened to find some excellent bacon at the store. It was a brand I randomly chose because they were out of Oscar Meyer. Going to have to get some more. :P Anyway, my mom wasn't thrilled I dug into my stocking first thing, but inside was a magazine about Willy Wonka, a candy cane, Reese's nutcrackers and Hershey Bells, and a Steam gift card (which was on my list).
As for the rest of the presents I got, my mom had to be creative because I didn't have much on my list, but I did get those things excepting the desk (I'm going to go back to using the old one) or a dresser. Not something you can wrap. Let's see if I can remember the rest though. I got a three framed painting of a dragon to be hung over my bed (that's pretty cool), and I got a couple other books. One was about old amusement parks in Southern California, which is perfect because I've gotten into the Defunctland YouTube channel where he talks about theme parks and rides that have gone... well defunct. I've always been interested in theme parks and roller coasters. The other book was Christmas Stories by Louisa May Alcott. Not sure when I'm going to read that because Christmas is now over, but I'm sure I'll like it. I also got a Beauty & The Beast mouse pad, a Disney hidden picture card game, my dot-to-dot book with dogs, which I'm already kind of hooked on, some Totoro socks, and a backpack purse with flowers on it. My mom wanted to get me one so I could take it to Disneyland, but it would be such a pain to transfer everything from my purse to the backpack every time, and I wouldn't have easy access to my phone. I can't say I'm all that thrilled with that gift. Grammy gave me one gift (because she continues to give Derek all her money) which was a book written by her friend, but we already had that book. I'd honestly prefer no gift over that. I'm happy to have gotten the other books from my mom though since I only asked for one and I got three lol.
After opening the presents, I watched the Doctor Who Christmas special. I'll talk about that next, but then we had lunch and we played even more games. We got this game buzzer game (it was one of the prizes), which we played. It was similar to Tapple, but with buzzers. It was all right. Then we played the Disney hidden pictures card game I got. That one was fun. Grammy also brought over cards from the What Were You Thinking game she had and we asked questions to each other from those cards, but forget about that lol. No one enjoyed that. Finally, we played a Wheel of Fortune game, and that was pretty good. So many games. I dismissed myself after that and came back down for dinner a couple hours later. My brother and his girlfriend stopped by again to bring over cookies and biscotti and chatted with my mom. After they left, we all watched the Dick Van Dyke 98th birthday special we recorded a few days ago, which was really nice. He was so delighted by how people paid tribute to him. It was touching. And it's amazing how well he's got it together at that age. So, that was my Christmas.
Now getting into the nitty gritty. The Doctor Who Christmas special, which was called “The Church On Ruby Road.” A baby is left at a church on Christmas Eve. This is the story of Ruby Sunday. A young woman who desires to find out who her real parents are and how she meets the Doctor. I'm guessing he was watching over her for a while and no doubt when he was dancing at the party he was deliberately trying to attract her attention. Ruby's been plagued by bad luck that seems to follow her, the cause of which are goblins. Yes, goblins. They're more like gremlins actually and are attracted to coincidences. It's a little puzzling, but it's something they feast on.
Ruby's adoptive mother receives a new foster newborn baby, which attracts the goblins attention because of the Christmas Eve coincidences and they kidnap the baby to be fed to their goblin king. Yeah, this story was quite a bit like Labyrinth too. The Doctor and Ruby make it up to their ship. I learned this Doctor is an inventor with his special gloves. Maybe we'll see more of his inventions because that would be an interesting character trait to make him stand out. We hear a little goblin song, which I knew was going to be in the episode. However, what I wasn't expecting was to hear Ruby and The Doctor sing too. Is this the first time the Doctor has sung? I enjoyed it, and both The Doctor and Ruby already have great chemistry together.
They successfully retrieved the baby. However, attracted to coincidences once more, the goblins decide to go back in time and take Ruby when she was a baby. The Doctor goes back to save the day and kill the goblin king. All is well once more. After hearing the Doctor had time traveled, Ruby gets excited and finds the TARDIS and the Doctor inside ready for an adventure. I love the Doctor and Ruby already and can't wait for the new season. There is something very interesting to note though. Ruby's neighbor is Mrs. Flood, and she very clearly knew about the TARDIS and the Doctor. There's no reason for them to focus on her so much if she wasn't important. So, the question remains: who is she? I've checked out some fan theories online. A lot of people say River Song because of the water connections, but I don't quite buy it. Other theories pose she could be the Master, the Rani (that would be interesting bringing back a classic character) or even an older version of Ruby. I don't buy that last one either because I thought it wasn't possible to visit the same timeline twice. I'm sure we'll find out eventually though. Very curious. This was yet another great special and I guess I have to wait until spring for more. I saw someone online say May, but I hope that's not true lol. Here's a screenshot. Ruby and the Doctor are a bit tied up on the goblin ship.