So, it is New Years Eve. Once again, I have planned diddly squat. Here are my options:

• Try my luck in the city, with the crowding, and the hours of waiting for a taxi, etc.
• Accept the invite of a work friend and head up the coast to watch the fireworks and drink wine. Downsides being we have no place to stay up there, so I'd be limited to inhaling the scent of the wine rather than drinking any, because I would need to drive home afterwards and I am a giant cadbury.
• Sit at home with beers and watch the fireworks on TV.
• Sit at home with beers and watch a DVD, and pretend it isn't happening.
  

Option Four is looking quite tempting.

There are some people who hate Christmas, so I figure that I am allowed to hate New Years. The biggest, most ridiculous build-up, for a night that is inevitably a let-down, because there's just too many fricking people out who are insanely drunk and driving me mental. Yep, I think that New Years is maybe not the best event for somebody who isn't a fan of people. Despite this, I am still in two minds about what to do, because saying that I sat at home and watched Battle Royale instead of some elaborate celebration will most likely make me seem lame.

I am thinking that I should maybe just accept that I Am Lame, and move on.

I am lazy. La-la-lazy. Take me away from work and put me at home with no plans whatsoever, and watch me turn into a gluttonous procrastinator who takes frequent naps. I have made a mental list of all the things I should really do over this Christmas break, and my plan of attack so far has been to lay on the couch a lot, and play Fable II until my eyes are so bloodshot that I look like I celebrated Christmas by smoking a small mountain of pot.

In fact, right now I am currently experiencing a high of the most energy I have had so far these holidays, and rather than cleaning up this sty of a house, or planning next year's trip away, I'm putting it to good use on this here blog, before I go out to gorge myself on Thai food.

Cirque du Soleil: Last night, Beardie and I went out to see hundreds of circus freaks prance about on stage, and it was absolutely awesome. Beardie had splurged and bought VIP tickets, which meant that we ended up in a la-de-da tent with other similarly posh people, drinking free booze (FREE, NEVER ENDING BOOZE) and snacking on hors d'oeuvres (and one day, I hope to be able to spell that without looking it up). My favourite was super bendy girl (total freak of nature) and the boys who jump through small hoops. Hoorah!

And now for a full, feature-length episode of The Sordid Lives of the Mountain Dwellers!!!!!: On Boxing Day, Beardie and I traipsed out into woop-woop to go and see mumsy and bro for some merry Christmas cheer. We stopped at the local country pub (the kind of place where the bearded locals put down their beers and stare at you when you arrive) for a bite to eat.

Mum: Pineapple juice! Do you know what it has in it?
Me: [shakes head]
Mum: MAGNESIUM! And hardly anything has magnesium in it these days. Oh and the neighbour's ducks are at my front door every morning now. One of them was shot by our other neighbour and then lay there in the sun for hours, its blood congealing...
Me: [spluttering] Mum!
Mum: [laughs] Oh sorry. So, Beardie, since the last time I saw you, you look... how do you say it.. fuller?
Me: [chokes] MUM!
Mum: Oh, I don't mean it as an insult. You were too thin the last time I saw you. Now you're average. [to my brother] Tsk, you're drinking Coke. It doesn't even tell you that it has aspartame in it, you know. Oh, it's not diet. Well it doesn't even tell you it has six teaspoons of sugar in it, you know.
Bro: [guzzles drink, making Mmmm noises]

Christmas cheer: for the first time that I can remember, I have visibly gained weight over Christmas. I am normally not that much of an overindulger, but this year my gut is noticeably bigger, and I don't like it one bit. Unfortunately, the whole house is so jam-packed with chocolate, jelly beans, and leftover candy canes, that my chances of making any difference are not that crash hot. But I have decided to at least try and go to the gym next week, to try and pilates my gut away. We shall see.

I hope your Christmas has been very merry indeed.

Friday, glorious Friday. Plans for the weekend:

• Piano lesson tomorrow morning (and I can play the fast staccato-ey bit of Für Elise with almost no mistakes, so I expect my teacher to congratulate me as if I am a toddler who just did my first wee in the grown-up toilet, or I'll be upset).
• Christmas carols tomorrow night, via the television. I missed going to the real-live carols (the perils of late-afternoon napping) so I am going to sit on the couch, air conditioner puffing away, and get boozed while I sing at the top of my lungs. Beardie's participation in this ear-bleeding punishment is doubtful.
• Avoidance of all shops, and of going outside in general. Due to the major case of the crazies that has struck everyone in this pre-Christmas madness. So yes, crazy people, and also I hatehatehate it when people stalk me for my car park.
• Finish off the pack of Fantales on my desk.
• Ah, shit! I have just realised that I have to go out this weekend, because I need to buy rum balls and candy canes and various other edible things to give to people at work. Bugger.
• Contemplating how I managed to land the dodgiest Secret Santa present in the history of dodgy presents. I spent hours hunting through shops to buy something ideal for my person, and I am repaid with a plastic toy which is supposed to shoot bubbles, but doesn't really work properly. Yes, I shouldn't be ungrateful, but I think that whoever had me must've had about $8 change left out of the $10 budget after buying my gift. Or they found it in a gutter somewhere. Perhaps saying these things makes me a horrible person, but I can only keep The Happy-Lovelies going for so long at work before The Whinge starts spewing out, via blog or all over Beardie.
• Thinking of what else I can buy Beardie for Christmas. I am completely stumped. Under the tree, there's currently three more gifts for me than there is for him, and I can't handle it. I am considering wrapping up household items like the kettle, or the toaster, just to bulk up numbers. Normally I am quite good at this stuff, but this year I suck.
  

And I hope your weekend is very lovely indeed.

You know, deep down I know that Christmas is a pile of bollocks. And that there's no such thing as a day when everything is perfect, and that the Magic of Christmas is actually the Magic of Spending Heaps o' Cash, etc. etc. Yet! I still get this excited squealy feeling in my stomach when I know Christmas is coming. And I get all soppy and start swaying over old Christmas songs. And we've had our tree up since the end of November, and I put the lights on every night with the blinds slightly open so that we look like Those People who have a Christmas tree with lights on in their window.

I've been wondering why I act this way at Christmas time, and I think I have worked it out. A long time ago, when I was but a wee lass, I was a cynical little turd who thought that Santa was a crock. I would watch the Christmas cartoons and movies and my mum would put up the tree, but I can't remember ever actually believing in Santa, at all. So eventually, as I was the youngest in my family by several years and it was for nobody's benefit but mine, my mum gave up on the tree. We still did presents and the dinner and all of that, but no tree, no decorations, and I didn't really give a rats at the time.

Fast-forward 15 years, and here I am, getting gooey over putting up a freaking tree, having an advent calendar, wrapping presents with silver ribbon and driving people mental by humming Christmas carols wherever I go. If my mother had forced Christmas frivolity onto me well into my teens, I am sure I would be a different person today.

Life update: I am learning Für Elise on the piano and while it's not quite Tori, it's pretty darn cool nonetheless. The speed at which I'm supposed to play it makes me feel like a clumsy, fat-fingered git, but I am trying my hardest, because it beats On Top of Old Smokey by a long shot. If I can ever manage to play it without cocking it up, I will vlog it. In fact, I will vlog the shit out of it, because I am super glad that I am actually almost succeeding at something, and haven't given it up yet, for the first time in a long time.

Today I have the day off (trying to reduce my hours), and have watched an Oprah special on the Olsen twins, and wasted hours on Youtube with Electric Six videos, and the like. Hoorah!

I went to my work's Christmas party on Friday night. After a very busy week, I was looking forward to drinking, drinking, and drinking some more until I fell asleep in the gutter. There had been predictions of rain, but I figured that we might get a little bit before it passed over, which had been the case for the rest of the week.

Alas, it rained all night. Which does not bode well for a barefoot bowls event.

After our dinner, we huddled under the shelter and chatted. About 80's cartoons and the like. And then as people started filtering away, there was just a handful of us left and the conversation turned to the inevitable subject of work. And listening to work talk, at a heightened volume (i.e. screaming), with the soundtrack of a man vomiting behind our table, started to suck a bit. This, on top of my puffy rain hair, equals not that great a Christmas party, overall.

We sat there politely for a while before putting up our umbrellas and running to wait for our taxi. Y'see, this is the problem with work people. Work people at work functions. Too much work talk. Work. Work work. And God knows I do enough of that on here already. Work work. Work.

On Saturday night we went to a barbeque (yes, two social events in a row, OMGOMGetc) which was full of Beardie's work people. So I got to play the role of Person Who Doesn't Work There, which Beardie had played the night before. Much Singstar (or Screamstar might suit better) ensued, and after crashing the night and eating leftover bacon for breakfast, we headed home.

And today I had a day off work, and had lunch with my mum. In today's episode of The Sordid Lives of the Mountain Dwellers!!!!!!!: "The neighbour's four-year old grandson is a little bastard, who screams all the time! They're raising that child all wrong. Oh, and the neighbour-across-the-road's cat was flattened by a car the other day [said within earshot of large group of children] and it stayed there for days. What a smell! Oh well. You're not covered in tattoos, I see. You're one of a few! Every man and his dog is covered in tattoos!"

My mum and my brother gave me my Christmas present, which consisted of unusual, imported beer. I must look like I need it. And a very boozy Christmas, indeed.