Last night I went to see Narnia. I'd taken the half-impressed reviews and ignored them, as for me, this could be something fantastic and I didn't want the critics ruining it before I had a chance to see it. Admittedly, not the greatest adaptation ever; unfortunately continuity and thought process was lacking in places, but it still was worth the watch, however I don't see the other six or so books ever making it to the big screen.

In the foyer of the cinema I was accosted by someone who I hadn't seen in a longtime, someone from school. I can only believe my totally blank look gave away that I had no idea who I was talking to, except this person was from OSH and they were a lot taller than when I remember. I hate it when I can't put a name to a face, especially if they appear to know me really quite well.

I've got a nasty pain in my back today, probably to do with the ridiculous posture I'm keeping up with all this work. To say I'm apprehensive about the way it's all going (in terms of time) would be an understatement. I was hoping to have all this cleared by Monday, but this is looking very unlikely now. I need to make a start on degree stuff asap. If anyone knows any miracle cures for urgency, send them in on a postcard. Actually, email is quicker.

On Tuesday we had the neighbours round for a meal. It was in part an effort to extend some hospitality to them over the Christmas period while they are still living in a pokey caravan at the bottom of their own garden, while Andy (the husband) co-ordinates the extension work on the house, which has been the conversion from a bungalow to a full sized house.

The other part of it was driven by my own insistence to The Mother to finally get some people over to entertain. It's not that the desire didn't exist, it's more that we just never have done it and everyone is always too busy to do anything else. But I pushed the point and eventually the whole thing happened of it's own accord.

It was a nice evening and I spent a lot of time discussing things with Andy, being a printer/retoucher by trade, there was much to talk about and I was quite interested to actually meet someone, anyone, face-to-face who actually has some idea what I'm going on about at least some of the time.

Turns out he knows Sister Two's boyfriends father (coincidence number one), and later Sister Two told me that Paul and Sam had shown up at the French Hen (where she works) and it happened to be that Sam's aunt is the person who owns the restaurant. Small world.

Aside from coincidences, I've been working solid all today on various projects (even ones I said I wouldn't) and thinking about pork pie, which for some reason I currently am experiencing an insatiable desire for.

In parts, I have been working my way through my Monty Python collection DVD (a present from Sister Two) and looking disappointedly at the state of my desk which is peppered with an assortment of Christmas cards, cables, chocolates, cameras, a guide to Cantonese, some collection of observations by Jeremy Clarkson, a bottle of toothpaste, music vouchers, art related magazines, letters and waiting correspondence, a glowing rubbery anemone thing, some other toiletries, a bag, a recipe folder, and odd receipts here and there gluing the entire monstrous pile together.

Tomorrow I carry on in stoacist form.

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.

For some reason Photoshop has been slowing up recently and so I find myself finding little things to do in between applying affects, pasting images and that type of thing. I've found that rejigging my rather overfull scratch disk didn't do much good, so I'm a bit stuck at the moment. This said, I have produced a significant body of work in the past day, most notably a flyer for Tours4 and the O'Crème Management branding, which I'm really pleased with.

I also took quite a lot of photos of the cat, and am now going to decide which ones get printed, that is, if the printer works. According to The Mother I might encounter some technical difficulties. I should have brought mine home, but lugging a A3 breeze block of a printer about isn't particularly desirable, especially when there is so many more important items to lug about.

This morning was dentist time, which means an unusual length of teeth preparation time was necessary. In the end it probably wasn't worth it as apparently I don't have any fillings, holes, cracks, gaps or anything quite so easy to fix. Instead Mr Payne (no joke) informs me that one of my back right wisdom teeth has come up and got lodged under my final tooth, meaning it won't come up any further. After further explanation, it became apparent that this is a Bad Thing and I will have to 'have it out'. I've never had to have much done in my mouth - in fact I haven't even had so much as a filling in twenty years, but according to my dentist this one is a hospital job. Great. Nothing like a Christmas present from the dentist. Well two presents really if you count the fact I didn't even realise I had any wisdom teeth before 11.30am this morning.

The rest of the day has been spent constructing flyers, web banners and logos for companies. More progress is timetabled for tomorrow. I also spent some time on the phone to both DDS and Will Haden. Hopefully I will be meeting up with Will later this week, as for DDS we were discussing the lack of movement with all things related to Dandy, but in a way it hasn't been too bad for me as I currently don't have the time of day to even think about it.

I also got an email back from Fat-Controller, the student magazine I was on about the other day. Apparently they were impressed with what they saw, and have asked me if I'd like to contribute some more. Well, I'll see as time permits, but this would be good and credible experience, plus I'm interested in any publication that is vaguely better than our own student magazine.

Aren't holidays brilliant? The answer is yes. What I am particularly liking about this holiday is that the harder I try to work, the Christmas goodwill does it's job and separates me further. This is not necessarily a Good Thing, but in terms of having a proper break, fate appears to be on my side.

Yesterday I was due to do some work. Instead I was fished out of bed at about 10.30am to do the annual family pre-chaos xmas shopping trip. Usually this means the delights of the marble/chav city of Merry Hill, however this year we got all upper-class and went to the Bullring. Six or seven hours later I had successfully bought just under two presents, bringing my Grand Total Of Presents for this year up to two, the other gift (previously acquired) being the cat's.

This does not bode well for my fellow family members, however I can rest assure at least they will have managed to get me all the stuff I want. Once again, fate may have a hand in my failure - after all the DVD present for Sister One's birthday (three weeks ago) never showed up. Perhaps someone up somewhere is saying "You really don't have to give anymore back to society, thanks for the effort so far" which can only be beneficial to my bank account (except the bastards charged me for the DVD. I detect a flaw in my logic).

Last night was occupied with social activities - namely catching up with James, then later on John and Mike. Darwus had come over to enlighten me of his plans for the following six months, which mostly involve being in somewhere near Michigan. Following this is his 'free time' and it looks like I'm going to be winging my way over to New Zealand for three weeks, then Oz for another three before heading back via Hong Kong or alternative destination. Sounds good to me. This will actually all depend on when I have to hand in essential pieces of coursework, and it looks like I will be spending my 21st birthday (my first birthday) out of the country. Mind you, it won't matter anyway as everyone else starts their exams on the hallowed day, so any party would consist of me and just me. Much better idea to delay it to when people haven't got anything better to do.

We headed to The Crispin for some catch up with the other two and James eventually dropped me back before heading home. Good news comes from OSH; the new Mr Goode and Mrs Goode are now expecting, and there was plenty of other scurrilous talk from the walls of our ex-school to keep the night interesting.

This morning I was awoken by my phone at half eleven (which later became half ten when I realised the clock in my room hadn't been put back - it only took me four days to notice). It was Pennell, who I had agreed to meet up with. This was the second part of my friends' attempts to sabotage any meaningful work effort, and we ended up in Merry Hill shopping for blenders and one or two other presents before being picked up by Sam. A tour of the Dowling household and some food later I was shipped back home in time for me to sit down and get on with something constructive (by this point I was guilt ridden). I've had two really good days, even if my original studious plans have suffered. Tonight I learned that I have a dentist appointment mid-morning tomorrow conspiring against my work ethic.

Oh, I've also been asked to do the OSH careers convention again this year. I'm actually quite enthusiastic this time, but this is maybe in part down to it taking place on a weeknight in the third week of semester two, which means any motivation I have for attending the event can be attributed to work-avoidance.

And so the moment I've been waiting for has arrived. After the best part of 4 weeks of waiting, no longer do I really have to concern myself with coursework. Admitted I've got some other work to do now (the enjoyable kind) and I will have to make a move with that pretty soon, but it just feels good to stop.

On Thursday night Sean and I went out for a drink, and we later met up with Mark and Zoe at Lloyds, then finished the night in Newshouse. I had hoped to be out with everyone from the house, but Ryan was working and Jono wasn't about. It was still good to get out for a bit, knowing that a at least part of my draft dissertation was printed and having a nap on my desk.

Yesterday I went and handed it in before coming back and starting work on a new client/project management system. Hopefully this will streamline workflow on future projects. Later in the evening both Swan and Sean left, meaning there are only three of us left, and the other two are off today so I have the house to myself tomorrow until The Parents come to collect. My objective of passing my theory before Christmas was never achieved. Oh well, maybe some other time...

The end to Space Cadets was really fantastic. I was pleased that they managed to mostly take it well, but some of the jokes they played on the final day had me cracking up, especially the funeral of Binky the celebrity dog, whose ashes were dropped on the floor and had to be dust-bustered up. One of the cadets realised it was a setup, but everyone else bought it.

Today I'm off for lunch with DDS before we disappear of for Xmas. I've also got to track down Nick before I leave...