I am cool calm and collected. For the past few years since ending my second marriage, life and Christmas have been much calmer. My adult children have always been around for Christmas dinner. Last year my daughter went to Woolongong to join her Father's side of the family for a big Christmas reunion. This year my son and his new wife have moved to Perth to live and it is the very first Christmas he will be away from us. I am going to my daughter's for Christmas lunch (traditional) and will see my grandson's who are two black cats and two charcoal rats! I am cooking the Turkey buffe and the rolled pork roast on Sunday and taking it to her place around 9-10am Xmas day. It is just the same as our regular roast dinners except a little flasher

Excited

same old...............

I feel kind of bad not replying in a brand new thread after I've already voted.  We don't get many new threads and when we do I don't always post in them.

I don't feel like I have much time to post though, and it ls very late at night, but part of the reason is that I get a little stressed at Christmas time.  This happens regardless of whether or not I actually have a lot to do or a lot of engagements.  This year I don't and I'm content to  be lazy, even still though, I feel a little stressed.  I don't even know where it comes from, I don't remember having stress associated with Christmas, it just started happening somewhere along the way.

Now that I think of it, the one engagement that I do have, I'm not 100% comfortable with the situation.  I really shouldn't worry about it... actually, I think I worry about it because of the Christmas stress, there's no way it's the other way around.

Well this has been slightly helpful to type.  Thanks for the thread

That's great MD
Sufficiantly confusing

YEah I like to reply in new threads, they are so exciting hehe

Thanks for making my day Dean and being sufficiently confusing like Dara commented!
I am a naturally stressful person but because I have no visiting commitments and don't 'have' to be seen to be doing 110% I am very calm when all about me lose their heads.  

Cool, calm, collected. My contribution to Christmas is to turn up, give presents, receive presents, and eat! If I were to host Christmas, I would most certainly have it catered so I could still just turn up, give presents, receive presents, and eat!

Tired usually, there are always so many hours at work

It's over...

I can't take down the tree until the 7th of January because of some weird South American tradition.  My tradition used to be after the New Year.

My wife is at those stupid stocktake sales where they say everything is 40% off but it doesn't really matter because the price was already ludicrous to begin with and unless you wake up at 4 am to wait in a queue outside the store, everything will be gone anyway... plus you have to put up with 42 times as many people in the store as what NSW safety laws dictate.  Honestly, there should never be a need for security guards to keep people from jumping the queue to get on the escalator, and there should never be a queue for the escalator anyway.

Christmas was good.  I had a good time.  Everybody liked the gifts I got them... or more accurately, my wife liked hers and other people liked the ones that my wife got for them from us.  I used to get them for other people but I stress out about it so my wife did this year... and last year too I think.  She rocks.

I got presents.  I opened them.

I finally got my head around mencoder good enough to... erm... backup DVD's and also make DVD format out of other formats, good enough that for example I happened to be doing something (which I rarely do btw and it's usually just sort of a buffer until I watch it on the DVD player then everything gets reused).  Anyway, for batch job of 5 disks, it cut about 10 hours out of the process which is huge... and the quality is WAY better.  I'll write a GUI once I'm sure that everything is working well between formats... but I won't post the code anywhere because I'm mean... just like my name... YEAH BABY! Muahhahahahhha, Muahhaahahahah, Muahhahahahahaha.  Just kidding.  I'll wait until it's more complete and I have a couple more features to add.
I mention that because it's partly what I did on Christmas Day.

Okay... so my wife watched the Dacinci Code and I fell asleep because I've already seen it... and she apparently fell asleep during the whole part where they were at Magneto's house, then she woke up and watched the rest of the movie.  She asked me a couple of questions after it was over and I realised that she didn't understand something and I started asking "do you remember this," to figure out where she fell asleep.  So we watched that part again and it was a lot of trouble to get it to the right parts, but of course all so she could have the same reaction that the rest of us did... "That's wasn't that good... it was okay I guess... why did the Catholic Church care again?  Really! What a monumental waste of money."
That was Christmas Eve so I'm allowed to include it.

In a world of movies where good almost always overcomes evil, I wonder what would happen if Frodo went up against Magneto or Darth Vader.

I think that Im getting to old for christmas, as I work almost all of them its just another day for me, I do like to give presies to family, But it realy gets up my nose with the shops cashing in on it all the sales the sales, and now that the fact that easter eggs and hot cross bunns are in the shops now ! come on let seasonal things be seasonal.
from : boring old fart.