Archive for December, 2006

Team picnic

Published on 17 December 2006 in Christmas, 2006, party and work. 2 Comments

Yesterday we had our annual Christmas party. My team has a nice Christmas tradition - instead of subjecting ourselves to the usual too-expensive Christmas fare (turkey/ham plus trimmings in a crowded restaurant) - we have a picnic down by the little lake on campus. We each bring a plate, and The Boss and the Deputy Uber Boss bring drinks (mainly alcoholic, with bottles of water).

This year we had quiche, chicken, cold meats, breads, prosciutto and melon, sandwiches, dips, cheeses, salads, fruit, plum cake and cinnamon loaf, washed down with a choice of white wine, Coopers’ Sparkling Ale, or water.

After eating we usually play bocce. I’m pretty bad at it - my technique consists of variations on chucking the ball - but it’s fun nonetheless.

This year is probably the last time we’ll have our picnic in this form, because from next year our little team is being amalgamated with a larger one. I don’t know if the Deputy Uber Boss will be providing us with beverages next year, either, as he’ll be officially retired at the end of the year.

There’ll be a few changes in the new year - which I won’t blog about just yet - which should make 2007 an interesting one, workwise.

Flickr friends, and family, you can look at more pictures if you’re so inclined.

Christmas cards

Published on 17 December 2006 in greeting cards and Christmas. 3 Comments

Just read Iris’s post on sending, or not sending, cards for Christmas. Of all the practices at this time of year, sending cards is probably my favourite activity. Each year I send about forty cards, to various friends and family members. (I wonder how many Tim Kelly sends?)

I don’t usually write much in each card - usually a greeting and some sort of good wish, with the occasional snippet of news thrown in. My grandmother gets her card written in Chinese. I’d probably find it too stressful to have to write forty here’s-how-my-year-went letters. I’d hate to do a form letter, and would want to personalise the letters somewhat, but I don’t think I could manage to write forty different letters in one sitting. But do I really need to do that for people who read my blog anyway? (Granted, not all the people I’ve sent cards to even know this blog exists!)

I think I like writing and sending - and receiving - cards because it feels personal. There’s something I really like about holding a card in my hand, that I know a friend selected for me, and to read their handwriting and see their good wishes. I like being able to tell a friend I haven’t really heard much from all year that I’m thinking of them at this time of year, and I hope they’re well. And I’m probably the only person in the word who enjoys the feel the pen nib makes, and the flourishes on the card.

The people I haven’t sent cards to are the friends I’ve made over the past year and a half or so via this blog - only because I don’t have their addresses. So I’ll have to make do with sending good wishes online.

Appearances

Published on 17 December 2006 in biscuits and Christmas. 9 Comments

Funny how important appearances are to us, really.

On the way home from a shopping expedition, we stopped to fill the car up with petrol. M went to pay while I cleaned the dusty windscreen. He came back to the car, laughing that he was a sucker for packaging. He’d bought a new look Coca Cola.

Anyone else seen this new look Coca Cola? What is it about this style of packaging soft drinks? Is the long skinny can more attractive, or something?

We’d been in the city, braving the hordes of Christmas shoppers. I wanted to buy a gingerbread man cutter. That’s all I wanted, but do you think it was possible to find any such thing? We went to about five different shops but all they had were Christmas-themed biscuit* cutters, trees and angels and the like - no gingerbread men.

Finally, tired and ready to give up, I suggested we go to the bakers’ supplies shop near our home. They were only open this Sunday because it’s Christmas. Of course, they’d sold their last gingerbread man cutter yesterday - but they did have lots of really cute biscuit cutters, in various animal shapes.

Our three year old nephew is dinosaur crazy at the moment, so he might enjoy some Christmas biscuits shaped like triceratops. And his sisters may appreciate teddy bears, giraffes and hearts. (The other shapes are an elephant, a crocodile, and a lion.)

You’d think I’d just be satisfied with plain old biscuits, wouldn’t you? But no, how these biscuits look is probably as important as how they are going to taste.

I wonder if Mum has any gingerbread cutters…

* I think what we consider to be biscuits (biccies) in Australia are cookies in the US. What Americans call biscuits, we’d consider to be scones, I believe.