The Thessaliad Redux

Step One

- Make a post (public, friends-locked, filtered...whatever you're comfortable with) to your LJ. The post should contain your list of 10 holiday wishes. The wishes can be anything at all, from simple and fandom-related ("I'd love a Snape/Hermione icon that's just for me") to medium ("I wish for _____ on DVD") to really big ("All I want for Christmas is a new car/computer/house/TV.") The important thing is, make sure these wishes are things you really, truly want.

- If you wish for real life things (not fics or icons), make sure you include some sort of contact info in your post, whether it's your address or just your email address where Santa (or one of his elves) could get in touch with you.

- Also, make sure you post some version of these guidelines in your LJ, or link to this post (it'll be public) so that the holiday joy will spread.

Step Two

- Surf around your friends list (or friends' friends, or just random journals) to see who has posted their list. And now here's the important part:

- If you see a wish you can grant, and it's in your heart to do so, make someone's wish come true. Sometimes someone's trash is another's treasure, and if you have a leather jacket you don't want or a gift certificate you won't use--or even know where you could get someone's dream purebred Basset Hound for free--do it.

You needn't spend money on these wishes unless you want to. The point isn't to put people out, it's to provide everyone a chance to be someone else's holiday elf--to spread the joy. Gifts can be made anonymously or not--it's your call.

There are no rules with this project, no guarantees, and no strings attached. Just...wish, and it might come true. Give, and you might receive. And you'll have the joy of knowing you made someone's holiday special.

(My list'll go up in a bit. Unfortunately, there's only about 1 person on my flist for whom I can actually manage this as yet, so I'm hoping a lot more people do this meme than have so far. It'd be nice to be able to get stuff for my friends despite currently being impoverished. *g*)

From my mother, I mainly got clothes this year. Two pretty skirts, three nice tops, underwear and two pairs of boots that are too small for me. I have to go and take both pairs back - I could exchange them for a larger size, but I don't really like either pair. dodgyhoodoo thinks they would suit me, but I'm not much for zip-up calf-length boots because they're never all that comfortable - not unless there are also laces and buckles that you can adjust. I don't know where designers got the idea that you could judge someone's calf size by their shoe size but it's erroneous and stupid. We'll have to see, though - I do need at least one decent pair of shoes that are also comfortable ... if I can find a pair that meet that criteria.

Anyway, I also came home with Terry Pratchett's Discworld (animated versions of Soul Music and Wyrd Sisters, plus a copy of Going Postal in paperback), a pretty pair of earrings and 1001 Nights of Snowfall, which is moderately fantastic. dodgyhoodoo liked his gifts too (he can tell you about them himself if he likes) and found out over the course of the evening just where some of my quirks come from.

Okay, so the entire 'Christmas at Mum's' thing was embarrassing and a little bit weird, partially because I haven't been 'round hers for Christmas in ... what, four years? But I survived, pretty much. Now I just feel ill and tired for no damn reason. And the RP party's tomorrow so I just hope I feel better by then...

This will be divided into sections, mostly just because I feel like it.

( Presents! )

( Dinner! )

( Entertainment! Or lack therof! )

On the whole, it could have ended better but it was a pretty good Christmas Day regardless. Happy holidays to all of you, and hope your day was as filled with at least as much laughter, hugs, love and general *squee* as mine was.

My apologies to darkdanc3r, ilyena_sylph and leopard_lady, but I have to cancel my upcoming holiday. I know, I don't like it any more than you do, but at this point there's no other option.

Look, I got a letter this morning from my boss, who's not in a happy place right now. Apparently he'd been emailing all last week (the week I already told him I was signed off for, on an address I don't often use so wasn't checking) asking for details I didn't have. The last message I sent to him was a week last Friday, telling him that I'd been signed off for all of the following week and put through for tests, and I would let him know what was going on as I had details. So now he's pissed off because I wasn't answering his emails asking for details I didn't have and for being sick for so long. I'm not liking it either, but there's not much I can do about it. I'd have emailed him Friday if Dr Buckman had said anything worthwhile at all.

Anyway, this can be summed up with the following statement: My boss is pissed off, I'm still sick and I can't justify taking holiday so soon after being on long-term sick. So I'm going to have to cancel the holiday and rebook it for another time.

I feel really bad about this. I've been looking forward to this for ages and so have the people I was visiting and now I can't do it because my body hates me and my boss is pissed off. I just don't know what else I can do at this point. I can't afford to lose this job, and it's still a possibility given the depth of piss-off my boss is having right now. I'll just have to do it in the new year, is all. Doesn't stop me from feeling even worse now.

So now I go and get leeched further (more fucking blood tests), then contact my boss and then the people from whom I booked my tickets so I can cancel and hopefully get at least some of my money back. I'd cry if doing so wouldn't make me so much a wuss.

Still ill. Everything that enters my stomach turns me into a miserable ball of queasiness. And none of this was helped by the fact that my bank is entirely staffed by arseholes.

My bank card stopped working on Monday. This happens occasionally, generally due to server crash or something, I suppose, so I tried it on Tuesday. It still did not work, so today I went to the bank to find out why. It turned out that the order to replace my damn card after it got eaten the other month went through at least twice, and then my card got upgraded, so the card I got issued first was now cancelled because there were not one, but two new ones sitting at my bank branch.

Unfortunately, my branch is in Belsize Park. Cue public transport trip from Hades and two very confused tellers waving various of my bank cards and trying to work out which the hell one would actually work.

Turns out it's the upgraded one. Which at least means that I can book my plane tickets next week (payday). Now all I need to do is get my passport renewed. I've got it pretty well itinerised (is that a word?): a week in Missouri - has to be seven days minimum to get the seven-day advance discount on my Greyhound ticket, I think, depending on whether the Greyhound site takes Maestro. Then about a week in New York. I will update all those involved on proper itinerary (like, when I'm landing etc) when everything's booked. I'm going on holiday!

Well, at least I have something to be happy about...

It's a relatively simple system. We have these little cards upon which we document what's going on with a paper. An arrow pointing to the initials of the editors means, fairly obviously, that the paper with the two completed referees' reports have gone to the editors. Simple, right? Seems not, because I get into work and apparently there's this query about a paper that we got the referees' reports on last month while I was on holiday. Seems Michael labelled this paper as having gone to the editors when he was trying to say that it was just ready to go to the editors. But since the paper was labelled as having already gone, of course I didn't do anything with it. So apparently I now have to double-check everything I send out to make sure it all went out, just because he fucked up the labelling system. Whoopee.

Also, Ham-Fisted Editor. There's this series of papers by this one author. I sent Ham-Fisted Editor what opinions we had on these when we had 'em. He went away to think about it. This was months ago. They checked up on this paper after I went home last night and apparently, Ham-Fisted Editor has absolutely no memory of me having sent him this, told him anything about it or otherwise dealt with it in any way. Never mind that I know I sent him the referees' reports because they are sitting in my scanned reports folder on the desktop. And yet apparently, this is somehow my fault, and further proof that I have to double-check everything because people paid immense amounts more than I am cannot for the life of them keep anything straight.

Oh, and the most competent person in the office (and the only one anywhere near my age, I might add) is leaving for pastures new soon. So that leaves me with maybe two people in this office that I actually like. Have I mentioned lately how much I hate my job?

In other news, I spent some time this morning tweaking around with PlayOnline and paying up my Deathgnome for the next three months. Something like £30 for the quarter isn't so bad, though I had to fuss about until I could find out how to change the card details with which I registered, as my old card got eaten and my new card has different issue number, security number and expiry date. So I don't have to worry about it until November's paycheque. Go, Deathgnome! And payday along with new card means I have to start thinking about flight bookings. Ah, quick-plan holidays, how I love thee. Samhain in the US, huzzah! Plus I'm thinking of trying a new little Japanese restaurant for lunch today. So there's always a little silver lining. Always.

And we do not mention Chicago except in the context of "hour and a half layover therein on my way to St Louis".

I am so knackered. I was fairly wired yesterday, partly due to expecting a righteous bollocking at work, but now that's over and done and I feel like someone's tied weights on me. I want to go home, but obviously can't. Whee.

The 'bollocking' didn't really happen so much. It seems all Michael wanted to know was that I appreciated that all this being sick is a problem. Well, duh. I don't like being ill any more than he likes having my desk empty for a week. Shit happens. *sigh* Well, at least he's not threatening a sacking.

Which is almost a pity, because I'm looking for a new job anyway. The way I figure it is, I know I haven't even been here for a year yet, but I see the writing on the wall. Every time I turn around these days it's something about Scenario B and the computer software whatever-thing that will apparently be designed to do my job. Frankly, I'd like to get out before I get made redundant. However, I'm having an unfortunate problem wherein I can't seem to install Office on the Frankenbox because the copy we have available appears to have some problems with it. And of course, without Office, I don't have Word, and without Word, I can't update my CV. So there's going to have to be some juggling to get my CV onto iMisc, which does have Word, make the relevant changes (this job and Affils, primarily) and then I can go apply for shiny new jobs and say in the interview, "There's an impending reshuffle in the works at my office and I'd rather be proactive about finding something new before redundancy becomes an issue". Or similar. Keeping to the positivity that they seem to like in interviews.

On the subject of the job, I'm having a bit of a dilemma. I have 25 days of annual leave in a 1-year period, which means from 1 Sept 05 to 1 Sept 06. I took a week off in February (five days), a week off in April (for a total of ten days' leave), three days in November (thirteen), one day when I had to stay home for a parcel (fourteen days), another day off to avoid problems with Tube strikes (fifteen days) and I think that's pretty much it, apart from three days over Christmas, which I'm not sure count (and make it a total of eighteen days anyway). So I have seven days of annual leave left. And I know that dodgyhoodoo says that he's taking holiday in July and has asked me to take it with him, and I have the days. But with the sick leave debacle, I feel really bad about doing so. We'll see how the next couple of weeks go. I'll be holding the fort while just about everybody's in Montreal next week (and it's really weird hearing them talk about going to my home town...) so maybe I can get into good graces enough to justify it to me as well as them.

*sigh* I want to go home. I want to go back to bed. Wah.

I'm not sure I get how judgement calls are made in this office. After the week I've had (with Michael checking over every goddamn thing I do every couple of days, which is a little frustrating but I suppose it proves that I am not the doofus here), you'd think that there was a zero tolerance policy on not keeping people informed on work-related matters. I really don't think this is the case, because James is getting away with murder.

James has a peculiar schedule; he comes in three days a week, generally whichever days he feels like, and tells no one which days he won't be in. This is irritating, but we cope. So a few weeks back, I see that Angela and James have both signed themselves off on the week of 13-17 February and remember that I meant to take the week of my birthday off. I talk to Michael (with James in the room), clear the leave time with Michael, and mark it on the board. James then says, "Oh, I'm off for most of that week too; I cleared that with you ages ago. I just forgot to write it on the board." Never mind the fact that a) he'd obviously remembered to write down the previous week, b) Michael obviously didn't know a thing about it and c) that left Michael with no cover on the admin side whatsoever. But Michael just let it go without saying a word. James has now been off for a week and a half and was supposed to be back Monday, as far as we knew. He did not show up on Monday. He did not call in on Monday. It's obvious to me that he took Monday as one of his two days off per week, but he never said as much to anyone else. He's not in today, either, and hasn't rung or anything.

Now, this is not the first time this has happened. James has booked off time, said, "See you Monday" and gone swanning out of the office for an already extended weekend, only to come swanning back into the office on Wednesday, two days after he said he'd be in, and say, "I did say ... oh, didn't I? Must have forgotten; heh." And Michael lets this slide. Wonder if it's going to be the same thing again when / if James comes swanning into the office tomorrow. Shame I won't be there to see, as he comes in an hour before I do. Well, he's supposed to, at least. I hope this doesn't reflect badly when I want to take time off in early April.

Anyway, today is yet more work, followed by drinks and basket food at the Oliphaunt with dodgyhoodoo and weaselbitch. I hope I'm in any kind of mood for drinks and basket food by the time I get out of here. I'm sure there'll be any amount of fun conversation and the company of good friends, though, so I should at least make the effort. Besides, given what I heard about the meet-up I shunned for Sims 2 last weekend, I should have many giggles from the idea of Skank and Lucius barricaded in a tiny room in Ceoris and Lucius turning around to Skank and saying, "You know, we never talk anymore..."

Also made a start on Memoirs of a Geisha. I'm quite enjoying it; it makes a change from the sci-fi that I've been focusing on of late.

Okay, so some nameless individual has a message for the people who have declared religious tolerance and so forth to be a "War on Christmas", and the message is "Fuck you".

Frankly, I don't care where Christmas came from. In the last few paragraphs, the writer obviously gets up on his/her high horse about these things, not giving a thought to the fact that the dominant religion of the Roman Empire went from Mithraism to Christianity nearly overnight thanks to Emperor Constantine. Yes, it's impossible that Jesus was born in the middle of December if you believe the stories in the Bible, because the shepherds would have been freezing their arses off and said shepherds only sat out with their flocks in lambing season anyway. Yes, it's true that the tree, the mistletoe and holly, giving of gifts, Yule logs and the like are all pagan at root. Frankly, who cares? If the Christians made a celebration without overly fucking with the traditions they found around them when they went around conquering half the planet, good on them. It's a shame they can't remember the spirit of accommodation, tolerance and universal sharing that I like to think went into that adoption of pagan traditions, but even if it can't, it's nice to see that these traditions survive in such an anti-pagan environment as the US is becoming, in whatever form. Frankly, there's room for everyone's worship in the symbology currently in use. Holly King reference or a representation of the crown of thorns? You make the call.

What I do care about is the attacks being made by that fuckhead O'Reilly on, among other groups, the ACLU. He called the ACLU terrorists, for fuck's sake! That, for anyone unfamiliar with the acronym, is the American Civil Liberties Union, which has been set up to defend people's rights to free speech, free worship and a life free of discrimination for everyone. If you'll note from this list, this includes Christians who feel persecuted by the attempts to keep prayer out of schools. Which, incidentally, is about it being mandatory, not about what an individual decides to do. This explains it rather nicely. But in cases where the separation of Church and State is clearly going overboard? There's the ACLU, defending Christians as they would anybody else.

All the links above, and many more, are available on the profanity-laden rant linked to in the first paragraph. I'm just trying to put it in some kind of perspective. No, I don't like it when people bitch about how Halloween in this country is nothing but a commercial device and a 'bad American habit', obviously forgetting about Samhain entirely despite there not being much else going on that day. I don't even like it when they bitch about Christmas being too commercial, for all I'm not a Christian. It's still a good holiday, whatever name you give it. It's a time for fellowship and joy and finding a little bit of warmth, light and happiness in the middle of winter, just when you need it most. It's not about pillorying your fellows just because they make their winter solstice devotions to different names, particularly not when most of those devotions are exactly the same as the ones you're making. And it's certainly not about crucifying an organisation that defends the beliefs you claim to have along with everyone else's rights to free worship.

Everywhere you go, you get rabid Christian fundies telling you that Jesus Christ is the reason for the season. However, let's be perfectly fair, rational and scientific about this: the tilt of the earth's axis is the reason for the season. The reason for the holiday depends on where you're standing.

There were two hours of hectic preparations, but there was also a lovely duck dinner. I'd never done duck before but the sauce/glaze thing I did turned out really well, as did all the herbs and onions and things I stuffed into the cavity. Also the sour cream and chive mash was really nice, if I do say so myself. dodgyhoodoo is off feeding and fussing weaselbitch's rats; I'd have gone along but frankly, I put myself out enough on dinner and am kind of knackered.

I've had cause to think a bit about Christmas etc, due to a somewhat Scroogeish post by nocturne_uk. And he's right, to a point. We should cherish and spoil our loved ones all year 'round. Leaving aside the fact that no one really has the time nor the money to visit distant relatives or lavish loved ones with presents and big dinners all the time, there's a much better reason to stick to the holidays: our tendency to take regular occurrences for granted. If we got Christmas-type spoilage all year 'round, it would cease to mean as much, simply because of the regularity of it. No anticipation to whet the appetite, no time to rest on one's laurels after the event because the next event is so close, no time to appreciate the loveliness of that one moment because the next and the next and the next are just exactly the same. Where's the fun in that? Where's the special occasion? What is there to make it memorable if we were just like that all the time?

Sure, you could spoil people to lesser degrees all the time, but it wouldn't be the same. With Christmas -- well, the whole holiday period, really -- you are pretty much guaranteed the time off you need or want (unless you're determined not to take it or are stuck in certain professions where not even 'on call' is an option, in which case at least you probably take your turn and don't have to do it again for a few years), there's generally a Christmas bonus that you can spend on gifts for the loved ones, and all told, you have the time and the money and the reminders that a Special Occasion is coming up, and that can, if you let it, put you in the mood for real festivity.

But of course, that's just me.