Christmas Eve at templeravenmoon

The roommates are out with their biological connections. V came over today so I could help her get her laptop in spiffy, top-notch shape. She came over at 12:30. It's now 11:20, and she's just departed.

The first order of business was to get the laptop powered up. She lost the power adapter, and we bought a universal replacement -- and we had to call the manufacturer to figure out the polarity. That went smoothly, reasonably, except that the adapter tips were either too loose on the center pin of the power socket of the computer, or too loose in the hole. I got the concept to stick by calling the crucial power contact areas "the cervix" and "the g-spot". Did I mention that V is not very technical? She's also just a few years younger than my own mother, which is very amusing. I'm about her son's age. We evaded giving V her internet service with AOL; she went with Earthlink instead, and she feels so much better and less dirty.

We went to Fry's Electronics to exchange the power adapter and get me a serial-to-USB adapter for AzureBlue, along with several other geeky things. We wound up having large amounts of fun, looking at things, getting necessary things for making her very old computer functional in this decade. She learned a lot of things.

Our next stop was the grocery store, where we ran into digitalambience. His forehead was bruised. His wife is still pregnant; their child is due any time now. He said that the story of his forehead was a long one. I should pester him about it over e-mail; I am one of the people who gets to give him a hard time about things, just because I've known him and he's Adam.

What followed was a comic scamper about the local areas of Phoenix, looking for a food place or two that was still open. No one felt like cooking. We circled several blocks until V was exceptionally disoriented (despite being the driver). We wound up back near my apartment at a Subway, and had a delightful dinner with shammash very interested in the proceedings.

By the time 11:00 hit, V and I were both punchy, the modem was installed, the power cord was sort of working when on a level surface and not jostled, the USB card was not installed, the computer was online via modem, and I was cursing at the Palm Desktop software and the Yahoo! Intellisync software. That was on my machine; V still doesn't have her palmtop synching with her desktop yet. But it was bedtime.

This was a fairly ideal Christmas Eve. I got a few gifts for other household members, including shammash and eris_raven. I had fun, and there was decent food and good company and a lot of laughter and happiness.

A visit from Santa

Santa dumped a metric pantload of wrapped gifts around the tree. The bulk of them are for the Little Fayoumis, but I saw a few for Sis. There were one each for marxdarx and Sis from the Oak King and the Holly King. I added my Christmas presents for Sis and the Little Fayoumis to the stack.

One of my favorite things about presents in my family is that sometimes, the person who's wrapping it has been nicely cryptic, and has put a message on the outside with a joke about the contents. For a past birthday, when I'd been in need of a watch, FatherSir wrote that he hoped this gift was "timely".

Sis's gift from me is "In honor of the return of the light (batteries not included)". The Little Fayoumis has one for him, "but not for people's eyes".

At some point tomorrow, I may want to go out and find some D-cells.

Holiday update in which nothing of import has happened

The living room has so many feathers scattered over it, it looks like a rooster was murdered. (Actually, a murdered rooster would have left about a hundred times as many feathers, and more blood and guts, but it looks like a rooster had a really close escape. And I know it was a rooster, because it's the pointy and shiny hackle and saddle feathers.) The cats have been cheerfully trying to disembowel their little ball-with-feathers toy. There were three of them. shammash raided the shopping bag and started playing with them when they were still in the package. I decided to give it to them then, and stored the other two (per the helpful hints on the package) in the catnip jar.

I have washed dishes. I have found breakfast/lunch. I have not sought out batteries. I have not vacuumed. I have been reading good classic fanfic. I have decided that if I ever am published, and some of my favorite scenes get snipped out per editorial decree, I shall make myself a sockpuppet account and put up the fanfic up somewhere where it will be appreciated. And yes, I shall have it betaed first. Honestly, I think that's an appropriate compromise. Even if it's not a sockpuppet, even if it's just a random hard-to-find corner of the author's site, cut scenes put up as fanfic, cut scenes that are still good... One can fanfic one's own work, yes?

It's a nice and peaceful holiday. No one's shouting outside, which is a nice change.

The other night, some complete twit left broken glass all over the space where we usually park Sis's car. Argh. Twits.