The past few days have been quite busy, hence lack of blog. I can only remember as far back as Christmas Eve, so that's where I'll start, although I'm probably going to miss out some important stuff that has slipped my memory for the moment.

So, Christmas Eve, and being Christmas Eve means midnight mass somewhere or other. Usually it's at the little church at Clent where we used to go as children, but the Mother had always talked about the Oratory in Birmingham being a pretty amazing place and so we decided to swap destinations at the last minute. As Uncle Mike has now had his driver's licence revoked for six months, he hadn't got any way of getting there, so we offered to take him a long too. All in all we didn't get back in until 2am and then there was all the traditional pork pie, cheese, sherry - the full works, which I love, but a 3am feast meant that the next day I was a little dopey.

On the Christmas morning we all unwrapped each other's presents (I say we all, but anybody who got a present off me didn't get to unwrap it, as I never got around to putting it in paper in the first place). Later we all got in the car and went off to the Cheney's (our cousins/aunt and uncle) for a turkey lunch, plenty of mulled wine, beer and vino, a walk around the farm yard to see the waterbuffalo and then back inside for nearly 6 hours of television. Now I can sit and watch TV for a bit, but not for six hours and I started getting itchy to move when the good stuff had all finished. We got home by 11pm and once again I found myself stuffing myself silly with pork pie, cheese, pasta in sauce etc, etc. I love it, although I can't believe I'm going to be losing weight this way.

Boxing Day is considered a bank holiday by most people, but unfortunately for me it was back to work as I had to chip my way through some hardcore CMS coding for one of my projects. I really do have to get as much stuff cleared as possible asap as I've got this damn major project to work on and it's lurking menacingly in my peripheral vision.

Later in the evening I went to meet up with Donk, his brother Si, Brits and Gwyz down at The Crispin. Everybody seems to be good, and we spent most of the night talking rubbish, drinking beer and listening to Jim doing Anchorman impressions (some intentional, some not).

We later moved on into Lloyd's bar, and ventured into the back, which I assumed existed but never actually got in that far before. It's good in there, but like all Lloyds bars, far to noisy to speak to anyone. Gwyz and I went to pick up pizza before wandering home and trying to scare some girls in the park. All good fun.

This morning I am scouring the online shops for the first hints of bargains. I agreed with The Parents that my Christmas presents from them could wait as firstly, I need to make sure I get the exact thing, and secondly, it'll be much cheaper to buy the stuff after the big day.

I'm hunting down the following:

• A lens hood (camera)
• A spare battery pack (camera)
• A UPS backup battery (the World Domination Machine)
• A Bluetooth dongle (the World Domination Machine)

Very exciting. Oh yeh, it's snowing.