A few things from the week

Posted by louisa on Friday 30 December 2011 in meta | 5 comments

One. Whenever we tell people we don’t celebrate Christmas, the first question is often “what do you do on the 25th?” – we don’t do anything special, we just treat it like a normal day. A few years ago, when the 25th fell mid-week for a few years, we worked – it was a good day for doing things to busy websites or the like. Last year, it was a Saturday so we had some equally unobservant friends around for pizza and to watch dumb movies – a common Saturday event.

This year it was a Sunday so after a lie-in and a lengthy Lily-dog walk, I cleaned out the chicken coop as I do every Sunday morning – it was so warm that I was fine out there in just a t-shirt, quite different compared to last year! – then hoovered (the new bale of wood shavings had ‘leaked’ as it was carried through the house), then spent the afternoon gaming. Just a normal Sunday really.

Two. I spent that afternoon – and most of the last week in fact – in the World of Warcraft. I’ve jokingly called it a “holiday in Azeroth” – it’s changed a lot since the last time I was there two years ago and I wanted to have a look around to see what’s new – but it’s actually been more of a holiday than I reckoned. It’s as absorbing/disruptive to normal life as being out of the country for a week! I do like that I can create a character that cares about nature and spends as much time looking for herbs, crafting things, cooking & fishing as she does killing things :)

Considering there is a lot of WoW which feels like chores, it really pushes my buttons and I can play it non-stop for hours and hours. I’ve been complying a list of ways it does that – along with ways that my other favourite video games do too – to see if I can transfer some lessons from them onto my real life — make my real life to-do list as fun as running around killing murlocs.

Three. While I was gaming on Sunday, John went for lunch with his family – as he does whenever they all gather together – and returned with a huge pile of leftovers for us, so we’ve been able to join in the “when will we finish all the turkey?” game even without celebrating Christmas ourselves ;) We’ve had turkey & ham leftovers each day since then, and I made a turkey & chorizo jambalaya (like the one mentioned on here) last night which was yum. John also brought home leftover meat from people’s plates for Lily-dog & the feline duo, and leftover veg & fruit (including a LOT of melon) went down to the chickens. Glad we could use it up rather than it all going in the bin.

Four. The chickens’ new roof is working well – and by the amount of digging that’s going on in that area, I think they’re enjoying having a new dry part. If anyone sailing about 700miles south-east of Invercargill in New Zealand (the antipode of West Yorkshire) spots some chickens, they’ll be mine – having dug right through the earth.

Five. I bought some forced hyacinth bulbs a couple of weeks ago as and aside from getting a bit leggy/too heavy for their own good, they’re pretty – and so fragrant – at the moment. I am regretting it a bit though – I prefer plants to cut flowers but while these are in soil, they’re essentially as disposable as flowers. I will plant them out in the garden, to see if they’ve got enough energy to grow again in the future (apparently hyacinths are more likely to grow again in future years than something like tulips), but I’m not holding my breath over them.

What have you been up to this last week? Had a mountain of turkey to get through too? Any tips for helping my hyacinths along?