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The above (subject header; see also tag) is my new favourite name for This Time Of Year, courtesy of the lovely jetspeaks. Yay!

The daughters did it again this year: let us sleep in until 8am before they came to wake us up. Are they mutants or what? Whatever, we were very grateful, because the Boy was a little restless last night. We had a leisurely morning of present-opening and a large breakfast, during which the only downside was that I had a bit of a tummy ache that I put down to overeating. We pootled off to Nanny and Pa's farm for more presents and overeating, during which I discovered that the aforementioned tummy ache was very likely the same gastrolurgi that felled my Beloved for large portions of last week. So I am now feeling infraclimatic (that's "under the weather", for any laymen who may have wandered in) though at least it didn't spoil our afternoon, which was most pleasant and definitely the best way to spend The Day.

So: a week until Hogswatch, before which time we plan to do yet more flooring and perhaps a bit of general house maintenance. But right now I'm going to bed to see if I can sleep off this lurgi before it dissolves me from the inside out. Merry Thingy, and to all a good night!

The BatPup and the EDoD are going to get insane quantities of loot tomorrow.

I've been fairly slack, concentrating on frivolous frippery like floors instead of trawling the shops for pressies, but I did put together one present I'm proud of. The BatPup has lately started noticing the logos on cars -- Toyota's stylised T shape, Holden's lion, Mitsubishi's triple diamond, and so on -- so since I work right near a bunch of car yards in Woden, I popped around and asked them if they had any stickers, fridge magnets and the like with the logos on them. Some of them were very generous: the spotty lad from Commonwealth Motors gave me a sticker, a poster and a balloon; the bloke from Toyota had a keyring, as did one from Ford; and the guy from the scooter shop gave me an actual Vespa logo taken from an actual Vespa; and more besides. So the BatPup will have a collection of knick-knacks to play with, which should pique her interest and help make "spot the make and model" the driving game of 2009. Meanwhile, I couldn't think of anything for the EDoD, but I'm sure I will by Hogswatchnight, so that's OK. And anyhow, the Beloved has been her usual inhumanly legendary self, so they'll have more stuff than they'll know what to do with tomorrow. They won't feel hard done by.

Meanwhile, my back and neck are killing me for some reason, so I shall pop some more Nurofen and go beddy-byes. I'm up to January 11 in my LJ tagging now, so I should have it all done before much longer, but not now. Must sleep.

Bah humbug.

I am no great fan of socially mandated jollity; that's why I loathe laugh tracks, Red Nose Day and any religious organisation based out of California. So Christmas generally gets on my nerves. Fortunately I have a sane family¹, which means we treat Christmas with the apathy it deserves. We have a tree, hand-picked by the EDoD from the in-law's neighbour's farm and decorated by all of us together, so we don't mind that it looks like someone took a conglomeration of mutant zombie shrubbery pieces, nailed them together blindfolded and then dragged the lot backwards through the Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras at speed. We will also have a few presents ready for the official day, despite the best efforts of Australia Post to mislay the ones the Beloved bought on Ebay (because Christmas came as a complete surprise to the poor dears, who evidently thought it was still only August and they'd have plenty of time to prepare).

But the real Big Day in our house, decided through a combination of pragmatism and concentrated meh, will be the final day of the year, Hogswatchnight. As any Discworld fan would know, Hogswatch is the first of Ick, being the first day of the year by the agricultural calendar, and so New Year's Eve is Hogswatchnight, when the Hogfather comes around in his sled pulled by four enormous boars² delivering presents and pork sausages to all the good boys and girls on the Disc. It is also the one night of the year that witches (presumably including thelancrewitch) stay at home, although nobody knows why. So we shall have Hogswatchnight, and take advantage of the post-Christmas sales to provide a more interesting greed-based experience to our youngsters.

¹ Immediate family, this is; no such guarantees exist for the extended family, most of whom are fruitloops.

² Note spelling. They are Gouger, Tusker, Rooter and Snouter, not Ruddock, Conroy, Fielding and Abbott. In case you wondered.

I sent my family my Christmas/birthday wishlist yesterday, because I got a grand total of minus one presents from them (long story). But tonight I remembered something else I really really want, and which they'd have buckleys of finding anyway.

When I was living in Sydney, which I was for going on three years a while back, one of the things I loved about the place was a band called The Deadly Nightshades. They were on their last elbows even before I was introduced to them, and they've since split up and possibly even moved to Perth, but while they were still around we used to try to make it to all their gigs. They're a shouty percussy guitar band, which I'd probably be able to describe better if I were more of a wanky music buff, but suffice to say they were scads of fun and it's a shame they never got noticed by The Powers That Wank at Triple J because they were a lot better than a most of the crap that does get airplay there.

The Deadlys, as they were inexplicably called, had three albums: Deadly Nightshades, Real Face and... another one. I used to have all three, but they disappeared during the great sharing out of possessions that came with my move back home -- the same split that lost me the silver cutlery set but let me keep the tent (so apart from that it wasn't too bad). What I'd really really like would be to get hold of copies of each of the CDs. Originals, preferably, but if that's impossible then even just MP3s will do. I don't imagine any royalties ever get back to Lisa, Brendan and wossname, now that they're munchkin-wrangling in the land of sand and bikinis, so I can't see much ethical difference. I just liked the album covers, that's all.

So: Sydney folk (I'm looking especially at you, tqd): do you have any idea where I can get these elusive CDs? I'll happily pay for it all, including postage; this is not a begging letter.

Help!

Edit: Thanks to whooz_queen and Didgeridoo Records, and through the mystic application of credit card numbers in the appropriate places, I now have the first two CDs winging their way to me. The third, however, is almost impossible to find; maybe they only ever released it at concerts. I think it was only a five-track release, but one of the songs is my personal Deadlys favourite. Any ideas where I might get that? And no, Google appears to know nothing...

Singing:

We wish you a merry FestiRamaChrisNukkahZaaSticeWatchUrnalia,
We wish you a merry FestiRamaChrisNukkahZaaSticeWatchUrnalia,
We wish you a merry FestiRamaChrisNukkahZaaSticeWatchUrnalia,
And any one of over a dozen mutually exclusive happy new years!

And in case you're wondering, FestiRamaChrisNukkahZaaSticeWatchUrnalia is celebrated on the 11th to the 19th of December this year, according to the following table:

	Start	End
Festivus	23-Dec	23-Dec
Ramadan	23-Sep	23-Oct
Christmas	25-Dec	6-Jan
Hanukkah	15-Dec	23-Dec
Kwanzaa	26-Dec	1-Jan
Solstice	22-Dec	22-Dec
Hogswatch	31-Dec	31-Dec
Saturnalia	17-Dec	23-Dec
Average	11-Dec	19-Dec