Christmas loot

I got other stuff as well but these are my geekiest gifts :-)

(I really need to get my good camera fixed - the shutter button fell off and I've been making do with my phone and occasionally pinching Tom's or Caitlin's camera.)

Call for submissions

The eighth edition of the Down Under Feminist Carnival is being hosted by Stephanie (stephiepenguin). Submissions are due before New Year, Stephanie is particularly interested in posts around feminism and intersectionality, particularly race and/or ethnicity.

All the guidelines are at the Carnival homepage, and the carnival submission form is at Blogcarnival. If you can’t access the form, you can use the Hoyden contact instead.

Hoyden About Town also has a call out for nominations for Femmostroppo retrospective 2008 - the most memorable feminist posts of 2008.

Well, that was extraordinarily frustrating

Santa brought Guitar Hero World Tour for the kids this year. It was unpacked and set up with much excitement...and then nothing, the game wouldn't start up, we couldn't get the PS2 to read the disc. Great. We know it's not the player, all the other games still work just fine.

Rather naively, as it turns out, we assumed that we could simply take the disc back and have it swapped for one that worked. HA! Oh foolish ones!

We took the disc in to EB Games at Hornsby and explained the situation. We were told that no, they couldn't just swap the disc, we'd have to bring in the whole bundle and by the way we don't have any replacement bundles in stock and we won't have any for anywhere from 2 weeks to who knows when. With steam coming out our ears we went home, with 3 kids in tow, packed up the whole box full of tricks and took it back to the shops.

We were kind of hoping that when confronted by the ginormous box with the packaging all messed up that the staff would come to their senses and decide that maybe just swapping the disc wasn't such a bad idea after all. (Though I'm pretty sure they'd have been out of stock of the disc only versions of the game too, most places seem to be sold out.)

Nope, they couldn't possibly do that, there was no way to enter such an action into their system (um, so don't enter it into the system?). In the course of me trying to persuade the staff to think outside the box (and maybe act like they give a shit about the whole thing) one of them finally asks had we been in touch with Activision, because apparently if there's a problem with anything to do with Guitar Hero there's a slip of green paper in the box that says you're supposed to ring Activision up and they'll send you a replacement part (which they're doing because there's been lots of problems and they don't want the stores to have to deal with doing lots of replacements). Um, no. We hadn't seen any green paper, what with the kids unpacking the box and all.

I turn to the guy who told us to bring the whole box in and suggest that it might have been nice if he'd mentioned that in the first place. He says he assumed we'd have known. Bullshit, when I told him we had a faulty disc it should have been the first thing he asked me.

So we take the box back to the car. After finishing our other shopping we head home. Adam goes to the Activision website. Yep, we can ring them- at $2.50 A MINUTE. Fuck that. The links for Guitar Hero support in the Asia Pacific region lead to a dead end with a drop down list asking what country you are from but without Australia as an option. After a bit lot of surfing around the site he discovers the crowning glory of this whole saga.

If necessary, take the game back to the point of purchase and exchange it for another disc.

Eventually we do find the green slip of paper. It specifically says to contact Activision for problems with Guitar Hero peripherals. Not the games discs.

The only reason I was willing to go through the contacting Activision route in the first place was because we'd have to wait for the shop to re-stock to get a replacement through them and I hoped Activision might be a little quicker getting a new disc out to us. Right at the moment I feel like printing out a copy of the trade practices act and throwing it at somebody.

We'll be ringing EB Games in the morning.

2008 in review

At the beginning of the year I posted a list of things I wanted to do during the year. I kind of lost interest in keeping some of the more mundane things on the list updated but looking back I'd say I've managed to do almost half of what I planned.

1. Bushwalking.
2. Swimming 50m laps.
3. Bike riding at Western Plains Zoo.
4. Cooking new meals.
5. House extension planning.
6. Bowling.
7. Selling jewellery.
8. Join the archery club.
9. Go see a play - not Shakespeare.
10. Camping with the Huscarls.
11. Learn bead making.
12. Write book reviews.

1, 2 3 & 6. I've done bugger all bushwalking, swimming or bike riding and haven't been bowling very often at all (which is a shame because I really love bowling).

4. I've cooked lots of new meals, probably more often than once a month, and some of them have even been recipes of my own devising.

5. The house extension planning hasn't made much progress at all but I do have a couple of recommendations for builders so that's something at least - and we did put the ducted air-con in with allowance for the extension if/when it's built.

7. Jewellery sales have been slow but gratifying, I need to get more of my stuff posted online to sell.

8. We joined the archery club but have yet to be offered a spot in a beginner's course, that should happen some time in the new year.

9. Haven't seen any live theatre at all this year, but I asked Mum for tickets to Belvoir Street Theatre productions for my birthday and Christmas presents so we'll be going to a few different shows in the year to come.

10. This one we did with a vengeance! Fun times. And some not so fun. We're already talking about which events we'll attend next year, I'm looking forward to it.

11. I loved learning how to make glass beads, so much fun! I have a big bundle of glass rods waiting to be turned into pretty beads, hopefully I'll get a chance to do some while the kids are on holidays.

12. I have no idea why I ever thought I would write reviews of anything I read, let alone everything, I didn't even manage to keep my no frills list of books read up to date.

As for the things I didn't plan on:

We inherited a dog.

And....

I was offered a job, but it turned out to be only 2 weeks work. Then I was offered another job - at my favourite bookshop. Then the first job wanted me back. And suddenly I went from not having been in paid work for 11 years to working 4 days a week. Still haven't quite adjusted to that (and probably won't for a couple of months yet because I'm lucky enough that when the kids are on holidays I don't have to go to work).

All in all it's been a pretty good year

Christmas Eve

I am in the very strange state of having nothing much on my to do list for today, all that needs to be done is a bit of tidying around the house, folding some laundry, buying some bread rolls and eggs...and taking myself off to the doctor :(

I woke up this morning with the beginnings of a bout of cystitis and there's no way I'm risking not getting some antibiotics for it now as we're heading into the Christmas break. So, feeling a little sorry for myself but AWFULLY thankful that everything else is done and I can sit on the lounge and fritter the day away.

Tonight, if the weather holds, we may head off to a Carols by Candlelight in a local park, or if that seems too much like hard work we'll break out a Christmas CD or two at home. Just before bed-time I'll light the candles in the lounge room and we'll have fruit mince pies and age appropriate drinkies for supper. I'll read the last bit of Dicken's A Christmas Carol to the kids along with a couple of other Christmas favourites, they'll put out a plate of supper for Santa and some carrots, apples and water for the reindeer and then be put to bed with the traditional threats of dire consequences should they be out of bed before...oh let's say 5:30am (I'm a realist, just so long as it's not 3:30am!).

I hope everyone is having a very wonderful solstice celebration of whatever flavour they prefer, I'm certainly enjoying my anachronism laden Yule appropriating winter solstice festival in summer! Whatever it's history and supposed "real" meaning, I love Christmas :)

May it be marvelously merry for you all.

Gingerbread House - Aussie style

Here it is, a definitively Australian gingerbread house, inspired by Megan, baked by me and decorated by my kids - with a little help from me and my Mum (ok, I confess, the kids got bored and Mum and I finished the job, the lolly encrusted sides are totally Grandma's fault).

Give me a home among the gumtrees

With lots of plum trees
A sheep or two,

a kangaroo

A clothesline out the back

Verandah out the front

And an old rocking chair

There's an outdoor dunny and a water tank (though it's a little on the small side).

We've even left the front door open for Santa, can't get much more Aussie than that!

Tom has it all worked out

This morning as Caitlin was rummaging through the presents under the tree (as you do when you are 10 years old) she asked me "Why are there no presents here for us from you and Dad?"

Me: "Santa brings you presents. You can pick, do you want presents from Santa or presents from us?"

Tom: "SANTA!" then with a sly grin "But presents from Santa are really from you and Dad."

Me: "I don't know about that. Are you sure?"

Tom: "Yeah, 'cause the real Santa wouldn't come to our house."

Me: "Oh? Why not?"

Tom: "Because we're not nice!"