Sunday of my Life

Now, a bit of explanation before I begin.

I’m the youngest child in my family, the youngest of four. I’m also the only male (aside from my father) in my family, so we all know what that means. I have three older sisters. The youngest two still live at home, and the eldest is married and now lives in New South Wales.

The middle sister is off to Queensland today for a week. I hope she has a good time, but I wish she hadn’t woken me up early this morning.

Before she could leave she wanted to make up some CDs for the trip. So she’d been valiantly trying for about a half hour. Every time the same thing would happen. She’d make up the playlist, insert the blank CD and tell it to burn. 4 seconds into the burn process the computer would lock up (and I’m talking everything, from keyboard and mouse control to monitor refresh). OK…restart, make up playlist again, burn again, 4 seconds in, locks up.

Eventually the younger sister came down to my bedroom and woke me up to come help. Woke me up…after 4 hours sleep…after christmas night. Come off it! Biggest party of the year, and all I get is 3 or so hours of sleep?

*sigh* so up I get and solve the problem (mainly by transfering all of the stuff off the family computer onto my computer and doing it all there). It’s now 7am, and I haven’t gotten back to bed yet. The middle sister has just left for Queensland, and I’m going to drop back onto my pillow soon. Just thought I’d write a quick word about this before I left.

The things I do for family.

Well then boys and girls. Gifts have been exchanged in my looney-bin..er…house. On my list of things received this year We have:

1. Lord of the Rings Monopoly - Trilogy edition

This is very cool…includes 6 collectible pewter figurines of Aragorn, Arwen (or Galadriel, can’t really tell the difference), Frodo, Gimli, Gandalf and Legolas. Also includes a brass version of the One Ring. Most Triumphant.

2. 2004 Far Side Flip Calendar

What can I say. I love the Far Side. Gary Larson is a genius.

3. A book of Lateral Thinking Puzzles

I love anything which challenges the mind.

4. “Bored of the Rings” - A Lord of the Rings parody story by Harvard Lampoon

I love a good piece of comedy; so I love this book. It tells the adventures of Frito (son of Dildo) and his quest to destroy the One Ring. Joining him on this quest are his “faithful” companion Spam, the wizard Goodgulf, Arrowroot the Ranger, the Elvish archer Legolam and Gimlet, son of Groin, the dwarf. Trying to stop them reaching Fordor are the doleful Goddamn, Sorhed and his fearsome Nozdrul. I haven’t read all of it yet, so I have yet to discover exactly why Spam is considered “faithful”, or a lot of the other things about it, but to promises to be a most amusing tale.

5. Lord of the Rings - Weapons and Warfare

For all trivia buffs like me, this book and it’s other companions are a must-have item. This book goes into minute detail on all of the battles and the weapons used in the Lord of the Rings movies. Foreword by Christopher Lee, who was probably given the foreword of this book to occupy him while they quietly axe his scenes from the third movie.

6. Dragondrums - Anne McCaffrey

I’m a big fan of fantasy fiction (my…I seem to be a big fan of a lot of things, don’t I?). Anne McCaffrey sits alongside Terry Pratchett (who combines my two favorite genres, fantasy and comedy, in his delightful Dicworld novellas), Terry Brooks (writer of the Shanarra and Magic Kingdom of Landover series’), Douglas Adams (and if you don’t know who he is by now you had to have had your head in sand for the last 20 years or so), Tamora Pierce (and who cares if her stories are a bit simplistic and are technically classed as Young Adult Fiction, they’re still damn good pieces of work with highly engaging stories) and Timothy Zahn (writer of a long string of Star Wars novels) as one of my favorite writers. I own a good number of her Pern Chronicles, and I wanted to round out my collection of the Harper Hall series (Dragonsong, Dragonsinger and Dragondrums) with this, the final book for that section. So now I finally have. While not as good (in some people’s estimation) as the first two books of this trilogy, I still highly enjoyed this book the first time I read it, and I still enjoy it now. Huzzah for Anne McCaffrey.

7. Deodorant

Now, is someone trying to tell me something here? Received this from my next-door-neighbour, whom we shall simply call Mr. Annoying (there are several other, even less complimentary things I could call him, but I digress). While I still think it’s nice that Mr. Annoying sees fit to give my family gifts at Christmas, and have given him something in return, he’s still annoying…and for some reason seemed surprised that I’m male and my name isn’t Erin.

Go figure.

8. 2 Pairs of 3/4 lengths

A must-have item for the fashion conscious (or fashion unconscious) person in an Australian summer. I would have preferred something a bit shorter, but I’m a pretty large guy (ok…I’m grievously overweight, but I’m working to correct the folly of my youth), and they don’t really make anything in my size. So I get over it and buy stuff that does fit. These 3/4’s fit quite nicely anything, and are actually quite nice looking and comfortable. So I guess I can live with them.

9. A day of free bandwidth

This is probably my favorite gift. My ISP, iiNet (whom I highly recommend to anyone living in Australia who’s thinking of switching to ADSL broadband, or is thinking of moving away from one of the Big Four ISPs [which I also highly recommend doing...after a year with Hell$tra PondScum, I'm quite happy not to be connected with them anymore]) has given every one of their members a day of free bandwidth, from midnight of December 25th to midnight of December 26th. Anything, anywhere, anytime within that period. Doesn’t matter how big it is, it doesn’t count.

I love days like these.

But, as they say, it is much better to give than to receive, so with my meager budget I managed to get gifts for my entire family and many of my group of friends, so I’m feeling that all is right with the world.

More from me later.

Greetings all…well, as many can see, this is a new blog, run by me…Adrian the Insane.

It’s Christmas over here in the Merry Ol’ Land of Oz, and I thought…hell if I had to do a Christmas greeting at one point, may as well make it my frist post too. More from me later, as life passes by.

Come visit me and my buddies at the Ozone Asylum, land of the insane.