Sushi For Breakfast

Day 364 One bonus about not being at work is that there's proper coffee available every day, should I want it. And the current coffee is appropriately Christmassy:



It's nice, dense and wintry. Am needing a decent coffee kick right now so it keeps me awake now and will fade during the day, given that I slept roughly 6am-12 noon today. Six hours sleep isn't a problem, but if I can't fall asleep until an hour before I'm due to get up next week, that definitely will be.

Day 362 This is the Christmas Amaryllis I bought for Mum & Dad last week - you can sit & watch it grow:



I had intended today's pic to be another pic of home-made sushi, but on venturing into the kitchen I found all the saucepans in use. I've just found out - now that it's evening and it's too late to start on the sushi tonight - that we still have some of the old saucepans (even the ones with the dodgy handles) and if I'd just looked on top of the very high cupboard which I can't see without the stepladder then I'd have been able to make sushi today. Well, if I knew they still existed, I could've looked for them. Maybe I should take a complete inventory of everything in the house and learn it by heart.

Day 360 Following yesterday's present haul, I'm not short of DVDs to watch:



Although for now, I'm quite happy enjoying the silence while spending hours at a time on Wikipedia reading about EastEnders characters from the 1980s or whatever. Also my sleep schedule is totally wrecked, because it's so cold at night my sore throat is irritated further and I'm up most of the night coughing, so sleep happens mostly between 5am and 11am, with odd hours before or after if I'm lucky. So long as I can shift this cold I should be fine about getting back on schedule, I'm not in work until 4th January, and I'm past the stage in my cold where I need an extra snooze in the afternoon.

We don't really have any leftovers apart from the turkey and half a jar of good quality cranberry sauce. Because we had Christmas dinner late in the afternoon we didn't have a buffet-type meal during the day, so we never bought the accompaniments usual for this (eg dips, breadsticks, cheese straws, etc) that are so yummy when eaten as leftovers. We do have the stilton of course, plus some strong cheddar, various relishes, and the box of biscuits for cheese, which I made a start on as part of breakfast. I was thinking it was a shame we didn't have the dips, but then they're so predictable, everywhere sells the same quartet, it's no longer a novelty and no-one ever wants much of the thousand island dip. But I still plan to make sushi at some point next week.

Day 358 Christmas Day preparations are underway:



Dad has gone to Morrisons because apparently the nuts we have aren't up to the usual standard. He's also said he'll get some more Paracetamol - I am getting better slowly but still getting through the stuff at speed. Meanwhile I am keeping up with NORAD Tracks Santa (as I type he's heading for Shanghai) which I just love so much. afjelkjfjflajflkjfldjfklsj so wonderful, hi-tech meets Santa magic saljfal;fj;dsjf;lsjfl; OMG just wait until Bean is old enough to be introduced to NORAD Tracks Santa dljflajflkdjsflslkl

And last night The Good Life episode "When I'm 65" was on! It normally never gets shown, it was a one-off episode made for the Queen to attend the studio filming. It was shown with the Queen arriving beforehand and meeting the cast and credited crew (ie studio managers, makeup artist) after. The voiceover mentioned how some of the crew had been with the BBC for a while ("He came as a pageboy in 1931" and so on).

Day 356 It's snowing again! And I'm finished work and finished food shopping so that's fine by me. Just as long as the roads are clear enough to get around on Christmas Day.



I definitely have a cold, or something. My nose is nominal but the rest of me aches a bit, but the paracetamol is nice. And my Open University hoodie & T-shirt have arrived! Haven't opened the parcel yet so I hope they're as I ordered.

Day 354 One of our team brought in her homemade signature cake, Chocolate, orange & poppyseed:



It was utterly delicious. It's plain chocolate so it's not a sweet cake, but it is totally divine. The chocolate is just lightly soft, so it squidges slightly and melts in the mouth.

We were supposed to have Bean stay overnight, but her parents' plans have been postponed by the weather so they came to collect her. But I got to play with her in her jungle swing, she was laughing and smiling so much, such fun <3 <3

The snow means I may possibly be working from home tomorrow, which I'm fine about. I went to Sainsburys & for petrol before work today, and left work this afternoon not long after 3pm because the snow was really coming down - they were closing the office at 4pm but said if anyone wanted to go earlier that's fine. So, my shopping plans turned out to be a wise move.

Day 352 This is our Christmas tree, complete with assortment of decorations:



Most of them now date from the 1990s, a few survive from older days - such as the green bell and the pink and yellow slot-together star - and out of sight are the pair of bells I made at playgroup out of a polystyrene eggbox with glitter. And yes, that's my graduation picture from Warwick behind the tree.

Day 350 This is the Christmas tree at work, in our reception area:



The blue lights flash, and cropped out of the picture is a rather sad-looking wound-metal star which makes the top of the tree droop over.

Day 348 If only other areas of life were as bright and fluffy and predictable as this.



This is a strawberry shortcake corner. Someone took the spirit of Madeliene Bassett and created a 21st-century dessert. The reason for this verbal sigh is that the weather is predicted to be on the crapola side on Friday (the West Midlands and Warwickshire are orange on the Met Office warnings map) and this is the day of our Christmas lunch. So, it's possible that bad weather may prevent us from getting there. And if we do arrive, bad weather may prevent us from leaving. I hope neither of these scenarios happen. Hopefully the problems we've had with the Secret Santa will be all the bad luck associated with this meal.

Day 346 I put some new socks on :) I really like these, but I haven't worn them very often, they tend to get pushed to the back of the sock drawer.



Bean went home after lunch, my sister and her partner came to collect her and stayed for bacon sandwiches. Bean was very good, despite getting rather worked up into a tantrum last night, she went to sleep straight away when she was put to bed and was wide-eyed and smiling and singing this morning.