Well, Merry Christmas, everyone! 🙂 I’m sorry this is so late, but… we’ve been without full power for most of the afternoon! 😦 We’ve been noticing, for the last three days, a lot of power fluctuations – lights flickering on and off for a couple of seconds, and then behaving normally, the ups* beeping a couple of times, and then shutting up again – little things like that… annoying, but we just put it down to the hot weather and everyone running their air conditioners, or whatever. But this afternoon, at about 3 o’clock, everything went a bit… crazy! First of all, the lamps in the Den here started flickering madly, and then went off. Then the doorbell started ringing… and ringing, in a strange and staccato manner, only there was no-one there ringing the doorbell.

And then the air conditioner went off, and I went pale, and very quiet… I don’t handle heat easily or well… and today was very hot. If the power was going to be off for some time, I was going to be a most unhappy little vegemite indeed!

The men folk went around trying to ascertain what was wrong, and it was discovered that one of our phases (phasers? fazers? I’ll ask Julian when he comes in) had dropped out (look, don’t ask me! I’m totally non technical! I’m just paraphrasing what I heard Julian saying this afternoon!) Well, as it turned out, that is exactly what had happened – one of the fuses on the power poles outside had completely burnt out, and one of the ones next to it was about to blow too! But we didn’t find that out until nearly 7 o’clock this evening… by which time I was more than “wilting” in the heat.

Luckily all this happened well after we’d cooked and eaten our Christmas Dinner, and consumed many extra calories afterwards with a few chocolates and nibblies. We’d all retired to the couch to drink our coffee when all of these power problems occurred – in fact the kids had been talking of making a move towards their own homes when the air conditioning went off, so we did, in fact, have a very happy Christmas, despite the later drama!

This morning we woke up as usual – in fact, we even slept in for half an hour – then of course it was head to the bathroom, and then the scales. I’d gone back up another three points, from 64.1kg to 64.4kg, but as I’d already decided to totally ignore whatever the scales told me on these “Three Days of Christmas” (Christmas Eve Day, Christmas Day, and Boxing Day) I simply said something along the lines of “meh!“, flung on my clothes, and galloped down to the lounge room and the bulging Christmas Stockings! Julian and I opened up our stockings in glee – and lots of little (and some big!) surprises tumbled out! I found incense, makeup, a small dream-catcher, a large(ish) carved metal floral ball, a “shawn the sheep” type candle (which I couldn’t ever light! It’s just too cute!), a small cat statuette wearing a Santa hat, and a box of DVDs: “The Whole Bean” of all the Mr. Bean series, including “Bean: The Ultimate Disaster Movie”. Julian found another large(ish) carved metal floral ball (but with a different floral design) in his, plus a gorgeous “trinket box” with a  statue of a Steam Punk Dragon on the lid (my favourite eldest daughter turned green with envy when she saw it 🙂 I told her that I would have got one for her, too, but it was the only one they had, unfortunately!) and quite a few hot sauces, an interesting sounding jar of Chutney, and a couple of small bags of spicy and hot nibblies.

Then we had our Christmas Breakfast of (Motta) Panettone, and moved on to our main presents to eachother 🙂 Flipper had asked me if I’d get something for Daddy from her, and would I wrap it for her too, please, because she didn’t have opposable “thumps” (I think she meant opposable “thumbs”!) and that she couldn’t work the sticky-tape thingy, coz it got stuck in her fur! Of course, I said that I would, so she gave Julian “The Great Australian Cookbook”, which he’d seen when we were out shopping the other day – and as he just happened to wistfully mention to me that “I wouldn’t mind getting that, you know…” – so he did! 🙂 I gave him a very good Zanger ICEL knife set (in a wooden knife block, too!) to replace his old ones which were getting to old and worn to hold their “edge” for very long. Julian gave me a Samsung Galaxy Tab3 Lite, because I’d been saying for ages that I’d like to have a Kindle Fire, so that I could see colour illustrations and stuff, and he said that the Samsung is the same as the Kindle Fire, only better, so I spent the long, hot, sweltering afternoon reading on my new Samsung Galaxy Tab3 Lite! I do like it – but you know? They don’t sell cases for it here in Australia! I’ll have to have a look online for a good case for it so that it’ll have some protection when I shove it in my handbag! 🙂 He also gave me the Estée Lauder eyeshadow “kit” that I think I told you all about some time ago – it was the subject of an email newsletter I got from them a month or so ago, and because it was such absolutely brilliant value for money, I think I said at the time that it would be almost criminal not to buy it! He also gave me a “Promissory Note” re. building “our” aviary in the New Year! 🙂 My favourite youngest daughter gave me two beautiful Turkish towels in lilac and fuchsia for my new bathroom, and the two of them gave us (Julian and me) a positive swathe of gardening tools and implements, including a wheelbarrow of our own (we’d been using theirs for a while) and some irrigation gear, for our (as yet unplanted) veggie garden! 🙂 My favourite eldest daughter and her husband gave Julian a JB Hi-Fi Voucher (which was what he’d asked for) and they game me a small bottle of the new Yves Saint Laurent perfume, “Black Opium”, which was what I’d asked for, and which is so very nice that I’m seriously considering making it my new (in best Gruen voice fx) “Favourite Perfume Of All Time” (“Ahhhhh!”)

Well, I already told you all about my weigh-in this morning, and that I’m going to totally ignore what the scales tell me for these 3 days – however, I am going to record the weights, and we shall see what happens next week – thank heavens that New Year celebrations don’t – in our family anyway – involve a lot of face stuffing and/or drinking, so I really only have these three days in which to over-indulge! 😉 I did manage to get my morning treadmilling in – and I finally made it to two kilometers (2.02km, to be precise!) which took me 35 minutes – but although the treadmill was operational (it was on a different circuit to the air conditioner) there was no way I was going to try hiking on the treadmill for even one kilometer, let alone two, in the heat this afternoon! So I’m afraid I only got the one walk in today – hopefully it won’t set me back too much!

Anyway, that was our Christmas Day! 🙂 Until 3 o’clock today, everything went well – dinner was yummy, the pudding was delicious, the company was lovely, and a good time was had by all! I hope that all of you out there in Reader Land had as good a Christmas as we all did, and if you did, then may you all have very many more such happy Christmas Days! 🙂 And that’s about all from me for this evening! Do drop by again tomorrow night to see what we’ve been up to! Did we go to any Boxing Day Sales? What did my weight do (or not do!)? Is there any pudding left? Find out tomorrow night! 😉 Until then, do try to bee good, not for any particular reason, but just “because“! 😉 Also, don’t forget, in the end, it’s not the years in your life that count, it’s the life in your years – and always remember to drive carefully, to look after yourselves, and to keep cool – or warm – depending on the weather… but most importantly, remember to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

*uninterruptable power supplies – if your power goes off for any reason, these essentially glorified batteries are designed to sacrifice themselves by cutting in and keeping your computers going long enough for you to power them down properly (i.e. about 15 minutes) so as to avoid damage caused by a possible power surge when your power is restored