Rambly rambly xmas rambly
Nov. 29th, 2011 02:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
susie_floGood afternoon, fiends! Is it too soon for Festive Malcolm? I suppose I should at least wait for December... but I have Xmasy things on my mind. It can't be helped.
This year, the residents of Casa Meanie will be spending Xmas in a rented farmhouse in Devon along with![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
sara_lou. That is - all of us except the girls, who will be staying home with my sister. Nobody is pet-friendly, alas. I will miss their furry little faces on Christmas morning, but never mind.
Here is the place we've hired... whaddya reckon?
More pics and details here
Unfortunately this is as far as I have got with Xmas planning. Not a single present has been purchased - (yikes and groan, in equal measure!) The only exceptions are that I have made a pudding (Delia with a twist) and purchased a selection of things in gorgeous tins from Fortnum's. So there will be a house and there will be food, at the very least.
I've been feeling crazily cheerful in the last day or two and I think it may be for no other reason than catching up on sweet, sweet sleep. Microboy is nowhere near sleeping through the night but we've had a nice couple of lie-ins together, thanks to the excellent system that we follow on days when G is at home. (At some point in the early morning Micro decides that he is full of joy to be awake and starts a campaign of grinning and gurgling and shrieking for social interaction... at which point I pass him over to G in a bleary-eyed fug. G kindly takes him off my hands for a couple of hours and stores him in his bouncer until he's sleepy again and ready to come back to bed for more food and loafing - dreamy!)
On another note, it is becoming increasingly clear that we're going to have to move out of this flat at some point, which will pain me because I love it so. But whenever we have guests we have to spend about 20 minutes moving things around just to get people around the dinner table. And on days when Helena visits it's like an explosion in Mothercare, with the combined horror of little girl stuff + baby tat. Sigh... that and the fact that G will lose his office and we will lose our spare room as soon as Micro moves into his own bedroom. (Our days are numbered on that as he is going to outgrow his crib imminently.)
In the meantime I keep making myself wail with unrequited lust over property porn that is £200k out of my price range. Staying in St Mags is not looking very realistic... the next size of property up from ours would be a small 3-bedroom cottage, which is barely any bigger and costs a stoopid amount of extra money (usually starting around £600k - tsk!) So yesterday I spent an overenthusiastic hour or two looking at houses miles away from here ...but I seem to have no self control and ended up once again looking at drop-dead-gorge inflated house porn. Oh for a crumbly Victorian pile in a pretty town centre that feels like the countryside but has access to culture and restaurants and trains and all amenities within 5 minutes. The sort of house that I would give up London for in a heartbeat... sigh. (Why don't I have an unexpected billionaire great-aunt with health problems? Whyyyy?)
Ah well. C'est la vie. Lets talk about Tivo instead! We got this installed a week or so ago, delivering fast internet and trillions of new telly channels, of which we will probably only end up watching Syfy and FX. (Geeks, we?) The user interface is as clunky as hell and not a patch on the Eye TV software we've been using until now, but it does the job and has lots of HD and at least it's not nasty old Sky.
Anyhoo... I typed this post ages ago but LJ was misbehaving yet AGAIN. I bet it goes teats-up again by the time anyone tries to read this. "Ohhhhh those Russians".
This year, the residents of Casa Meanie will be spending Xmas in a rented farmhouse in Devon along with
sara_lou. That is - all of us except the girls, who will be staying home with my sister. Nobody is pet-friendly, alas. I will miss their furry little faces on Christmas morning, but never mind. Here is the place we've hired... whaddya reckon?
More pics and details here
Unfortunately this is as far as I have got with Xmas planning. Not a single present has been purchased - (yikes and groan, in equal measure!) The only exceptions are that I have made a pudding (Delia with a twist) and purchased a selection of things in gorgeous tins from Fortnum's. So there will be a house and there will be food, at the very least.
I've been feeling crazily cheerful in the last day or two and I think it may be for no other reason than catching up on sweet, sweet sleep. Microboy is nowhere near sleeping through the night but we've had a nice couple of lie-ins together, thanks to the excellent system that we follow on days when G is at home. (At some point in the early morning Micro decides that he is full of joy to be awake and starts a campaign of grinning and gurgling and shrieking for social interaction... at which point I pass him over to G in a bleary-eyed fug. G kindly takes him off my hands for a couple of hours and stores him in his bouncer until he's sleepy again and ready to come back to bed for more food and loafing - dreamy!)
On another note, it is becoming increasingly clear that we're going to have to move out of this flat at some point, which will pain me because I love it so. But whenever we have guests we have to spend about 20 minutes moving things around just to get people around the dinner table. And on days when Helena visits it's like an explosion in Mothercare, with the combined horror of little girl stuff + baby tat. Sigh... that and the fact that G will lose his office and we will lose our spare room as soon as Micro moves into his own bedroom. (Our days are numbered on that as he is going to outgrow his crib imminently.)
In the meantime I keep making myself wail with unrequited lust over property porn that is £200k out of my price range. Staying in St Mags is not looking very realistic... the next size of property up from ours would be a small 3-bedroom cottage, which is barely any bigger and costs a stoopid amount of extra money (usually starting around £600k - tsk!) So yesterday I spent an overenthusiastic hour or two looking at houses miles away from here ...but I seem to have no self control and ended up once again looking at drop-dead-gorge inflated house porn. Oh for a crumbly Victorian pile in a pretty town centre that feels like the countryside but has access to culture and restaurants and trains and all amenities within 5 minutes. The sort of house that I would give up London for in a heartbeat... sigh. (Why don't I have an unexpected billionaire great-aunt with health problems? Whyyyy?)
Ah well. C'est la vie. Lets talk about Tivo instead! We got this installed a week or so ago, delivering fast internet and trillions of new telly channels, of which we will probably only end up watching Syfy and FX. (Geeks, we?) The user interface is as clunky as hell and not a patch on the Eye TV software we've been using until now, but it does the job and has lots of HD and at least it's not nasty old Sky.
Anyhoo... I typed this post ages ago but LJ was misbehaving yet AGAIN. I bet it goes teats-up again by the time anyone tries to read this. "Ohhhhh those Russians".
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no subject
Date: 2011-11-29 03:12 pm (UTC)I think Mr Pops is thinking about Tivo but I already spend more time than is necessary watching crime programmes and other rubbish (Gossip Girl is latest guilty pleasure) and if I got Alibi and True Crime channels I'd never get anything done at all.
no subject
Date: 2011-11-29 03:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-11-29 03:25 pm (UTC)What do you think of Forbrydelsen II? Thomas Buch is no Troels Hartmann, wha? *sadface*
no subject
Date: 2011-11-29 03:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-11-29 03:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-11-29 04:03 pm (UTC)(I haven't got to a man on the run yet.)
no subject
Date: 2011-11-29 03:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-11-29 04:12 pm (UTC)Right, I'm moving to Ethics...
no subject
Date: 2011-11-29 04:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-11-29 04:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-11-29 05:56 pm (UTC)Also, your icon has made me go all "Oh I must re-watch that again".
no subject
Date: 2011-11-29 05:59 pm (UTC)And hooray for reviving the Tucker!
no subject
Date: 2011-11-29 06:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-11-29 08:53 pm (UTC)