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jencat
Well, it's been an interesting season this year... vast amounts of snow (but never a white Christmas, naturally), vast amounts of alcohol for one night only (the work xmas party, of which i remember scarily little. And then had to call in sick the next morning with, er, not a hangover. Honest. It was a cold!). There was a surprisingly fun little 'office do' where we handed out the Secret Santa pressies, and our manager decided to bribe us with M&S party food, and now I don't have to be back at work for another... nine days, woohoo! Not that it's particularly awful, but I am starting to feel a little like the Ghost of Christmas Past these days, drifting around with lots of things leftover to do but no real purpose. It doesn't exactly encourage mustering much enthusiasm for the whole thing, hence it was kinda easy to give in to the hacking cough that's been plaguing me this week and not roll in until the afternoon on Monday, Tues and Wednesday... ho hum.
And then I did all my lastminute shopping yesterday with surprisingly little stress, wrapped everything in existence last night while downing a bottle of mulled wine fizz (surprisingly drinkable!) and watching rubbish tv. As everyone managed to behave themselves today, the only real moment of stress was hacking open both turkey crowns to realise they still hadn't bloody cooked properly, despite not showing any signs of this when we took them out of the oven originally... (although, given the vast amounts of butter and maple syrup stuck in and on the things a la Nigella, there was no chance they were ever going to be dry..!)
But it was good... only one kinda dud present that I really really hope my parents didn't spend much money on (I'm kinda vocal about how I can't stand books on CD and not a big fan of depressing 'classics', so the Penguin 45 disc set that begins with The Mayor of Casterbridge and runs through Wuthering Heights and Crime and Punishment did not set my heart aglow. Can I be an ungrateful bitch? Well... I can't focus on things being read to me so even the books I like on there, such as P&P, would be things I'd rather read than hear, so I'd rather they'd taken my suggestion and spent the money on actual books I actually wanted rather than shelling out for something that will never get used.
The guy who wrote Scroogenomics kinda has a point, which is why this year I had no qualms about buying stuff I wanted myself and handing it over to parents/grandparents for them to wrap up and give me. Half the time I don't even get the money back, but I'm not really bothered about that - I really just can't see the point of buying meaningless crap that isn't wanted or likely to be used. And hell, yes, I started my shopping in August (it's a marathon, not a sprint!), finished around 5pm on Xmas Eve and even though I didn't finish the blanket I was knitting my little sister in time, I was pretty confident I could get away with that by splashing out on a couple of bits from Urban Decay (penniless students with glittery eyeshadow addictions are ridiculously easy to buy for though..). Anything I wasn't sure about I raided the sales for, so at least they weren't expensive write-offs, and I didn't wind up feeling vaguely nauseated about the whole experience.
Today was kinda fun, actually - thanks to the wisdom of buying lots of dinner prepacked, even my mum's scary inability to co-ordinate oven timings didn't get in the way of us serving up a scalding hot dinner (after the inexplicable roast potato disasters of the last few weeks, I was worshipping the frozen guaranteed-crispy cheats ones we used. I am that sad.) and all I had to do was be the Reheating Nazi for a couple of hours, barking out "Shut the kitchen door to keep the heat in!" and "wrap the damn thing in foil again!" at regular intervals. On a side note, guests who decide they have to smoke in the kitchen while I'm cooking them dinner, with the back door ajar to let in both their smoke and the freezing cold air... Not impressed. I'm used to my relatives lighting up anywhere and everywhere but today was getting ridiculous. Smoke does not mix with cooking, I still have a hacking cough and it's just freaking inconsiderate. Ahem.
Oooh, btw, was somebody feeding Russell T Davies lots of sugar and/or caffeine before he wrote the Doctor Who finale? Because all I've read in interviews is him raving about how epic and heartrending it was to write, and what we got in the first part tonight was a couple of brief moments of epic/heartrending, but mostly it felt like the hyper ADD kicking off of someone on a severe sugar high. There were random explosions, meaningless superpowers, competitive burger eating, Obama namechecking, Ten doing a frankly disturbing little 'oh yeah, went on a little holiday, got married, shagged Elizabeth I' WTF moment at the beginning to the Ood, who could obviously care less... Worse of all, it's all directly continuing on from the end of Season 3, when I had stopped watching at that point due to the dual irritations of Martha and stupid storylines (with notable exceptions in Blink/Family of Blood obviously, which had nothing to do with the crappy mythology episodes). I still haven't watched a single ep from that series with John Simms in it, and frankly haven't felt I missed anything until it turned out to be the whole basis for the grand finale this week... Excellent, I don't think.
And I really, really don't want to be disappointed with these eps, but sometimes DW does just lose the plot, and this isn't looking good. There was an Ominous Narrator, with Timothy Dalton intoning pretentious crap at the beginning and end, and Timelords are back! And they just turned (almost) the entire human race into John Simm, at which point my brain imploded and I was kinda whimpering quietly on the sofa. Frankly, it's gone too far to be salvaged next ep, and right now it just looks like RTD wrote that bit so we got lots of creepy/faintly amusing shots of John Simm in drag waving at himself. Heh. I'm finding it hard to care. The stuff that makes me stop and chew my nails are the characters, and they're nearly all gone - they all got parcelled off at the grand finale of season 4 and Torchwood's Children of Earth so we're really just left with Amnesia!Donna and Wilf, and it looks like Donna's brain just literally exploded, sooooo they just brought in a whole cast of new people I don't care about and turned them into the Master (actually, I quite like the daft green cactus aliens, especially as one was played by George's girlfriend from Being Human).
Heh. I have a horrible feeling that the grand finale will be brain-meltingly awful, or maybe just a bit too... meh. We've had all our tragic goodbyes, we can't lose Rose again; Donna had a wonderfully terrible fate already... there really isn't anywhere left for Ten to go before his song ends, and what's worse is that RTD won't make us realise why we should miss him so much already.. he's going out with a whimper rather than a bang, and Ten deserves so, so much more. Bastard.
