Tag Archives: Christmas

Time Stretch

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This week has gone slower than the week before and the week before and the week before and the week before. It’s just perspective, but even so, it’s as real and anything can get.

A new year dawned 6 days ago. Christmas even longer ago. Getting to each event was fast. Now with this one new week, they seem so distant, removed and far away. At some point in the last two weeks in our house we were talking about the PS Vita “that it’s only … away!” when we’d get ours. Now it feels stretched out of reach, just over the horizon, something that was right in view all the time, anxious for the day to arrive, now it seems further away than ever.

It’s only perspective. It’s been one of those weeks, this and that, news of internet stuff, be it threats of one group or another, to make things unpleasant for many, many folks. These times are insane, it doth seem.

The Christmas Spirit and Me

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I have to get some things done today. Get things going to get another stage of Christmas Card creation on it’s way. (I have a basic form and the front done, but the decor is not done 100% and I don’t know what I’m doing yet with the other parts.)

Dec Daily Day 6

Figure out how to get the children to get things picked up, do their educational work even though they don’t want to, make room for the Christmas tree, get a Christmas tree, find decorations. Add to Christmas paper chain. Show 15-yr-old how to put lights on a Christmas tree (so I don’t have to do it anymore!) –I took over Christmas tree decoration in my teens, I never let anyone else do it until sometime in the last 10 years when I grew weary of it (half of that is because of living where there was no motivation for doing it except for me and having no support from hubby or the Christian scene –hard to explain here, so suffice it to say, I make it, or it doesn’t happen and after blah, blah, blah years of that, sigh, oh well.)

I then need to get everyone cleaned up in nice winter clothing and take a picture, get that printed so I can send it with cards. (doesn’t feel like it’ll happen this year though!)

I’m married to Half-Scrooge. He’s not rich, he has a bah humbug idea of Christmas, it’s totally stressful and he’s not creative with gift giving, if he can buy it, he will, but grumble about it at some point. He would do well to be a super duper billionaire, but seeing as he’s not … it’s trouble for him. He’s so plain, who cares about a Christmas tree, or lights on the house, or flowers on the table, or nice dishes for holidays (where is my China? Don’t have any. I can’t get any. I’d prefer to get a mish-mash of stuff collected but that’s another of my things that isn’t his thing. I LOVE going to Antique sorts of stores, even Good Will. His idea of that sort of thing goes with books only. He’ll buy new or used, books, but not clothing or other things usually.

Readers, this is not “dump on hubby” stuff. It’s just about “The Christmas Spirit” and how hard it is to maintain the power to do things with such grummpy-dom nearby.

It’s these times that I reflect on bad choices.

(un)Holy Cow! PSN takes the cake

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Sony is depressing me terribly today. I’m glad I didn’t go to their playstation blog yesterday, when I really couldn’t have dealt with it at all. I’d have thrown all my PS* stuff out by now if so. And seriously be considering the best way to … I don’t know, live without PlayStation, get rid of my whole love of PlayStation stuff and go to Nintendo, or … no, I couldn’t go there, or there solely like I could have with PS.

The stinking part of it is, I was GOING to get the PlayStation 3D Display and a 3rd PS3 to go with it, plus a pair or two of extra 3D glasses, extra controllers, and have a great office/craft room/playroom by early 2012.

Must re-think it all now.

My eldest son is 15, he and I are PSP fans. 3 other children are younger and getting interested in PSP’s.

UMD’s aren’t really being produced much now. PSP’s will eventually have no new disc content, only PSN ability and old UMD’s.

PSN content after Nov. 18th of this year (2011) can only be on up to 2 activated PS3′s and 2 activated PSP’s/PSVita’s

How it is right now, we have 2 PS3′s and we have 3 PSP’s and (plus 1 that is still activated, but we don’t have it, it was exchanged at Best Buy with their Black Tie service, but oops, forgot to “de-activate” it right. I tried, but it’s not done according to the one place I can see that stuff, the music unlimited site. [login with PSN ID])

How about the big plan we had: For Christmas me and my son were gonna get PS Vita’s. Ha. That isn’t happening, no matter how much we want it, it’s not coming to America until practically Spring 2012. (Where we live it usually is nearly Spring by then, and it’s close a lot of places)

Now if we go with when the PS Vita will be available, will we even want one? Before today, yes, but I was wondering how they’d change activation, and it looks like it’s so frickin restrictive that I’m gonna totally puke. In our house we have more because it’s 2 adults and 4 children, we all play video games.

I guess I can only play what I can get on my Google Android tablet now (or soon). I’ll be stuck with my old digital content on my PSP and whatever UMD discs I have and hope to God I don’t get sick of them or that the machine breaks.

OR I get a Vita and so does my son. No one else can have one and no one else can have our old PSP’s except as closed off things.

I’m not so sure I’m very thrilled with the idea of playing Dust 514 anymore, or Resistance: Burning Skies, or Starhawk.

We enjoy playing together when we can. We had 1 copy of Warhawk bought recently (disc) we went and found another right away, it was a lot of fun. We were looking forward to a third PS3 and maybe a 4th eventually, playing together online. We’ll be able to do it with Warhawk, it’s an old game, lots of them available in stores for $20 and down to $8 depending where you go. That one it’s OK about it to buy it for each machine, we get enough value out of it.

Not so with how Warhawk from PSN is, only 1 account can use it. Only 1 PS3 in any 24 hr. time slot can use it. Yikes!

It costs a lot on PSN too, so no biggie, we bought it for $8 each at Gamestop.

Resistance 3 is out now. I’d like it, was gonna get it with the pre-ordered 3D Display we payed $5 for holding one for us … were gonna get it in a few weeks when the Display was in stock. We hubby had different plans than I did, and Sony is releasing it sooner than originally they said, so hubby is on a different page about it than I am, and we will not be getting it until December at the earliest, so I am NOW saying, we ain’t getting one at all. Nope.

It makes me so mad. All of it together, or just Sony PlayStation Nov. 18th crapola all by itself.

How about this quote from the future: “Sorry, children, only me and your one of you are aloud to play this game. It’s not you though. When you get a job, you can buy it for yourself.”

We aren’t paying $59 for most games. Some we do and we only get 1 copy of them. Some things we’ve bought digital but it won’t be so friendly as it is now, any PS3 it’s OK for now, but soon enough it would have been alright with the 3rd I wanted. This is just so restrictive, it’ll end up hurting them more than us, I dare say.

We’ll seek other things and other ways and Sony will have been the cause of their own demise. At least they have shot themselves in their collective foot.

Christmas is coming

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It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas … it is. Actually it did before Thankgiving, depending on where you were, but now that Thanksgiving is in the past, it’s “OK” to have Christmas things out. :)

We actually got a Christmas tree (at Costco, first time) this year, on “Black Friday” which is never very black for us. Usually little black to use. Very red, very, very red.

The Christmas tree is in the vehicle, we don’t have a place to put it up in the house yet. Still installing the dratted floor! It’s such a pain, it’s lovely that we have the wood and stuff to finally get the real wood as flooring that I’ve wanted for ages and ages. It is not so very straightforward to install in the living area though. It’s a fairly custom job, more-so than our bedroom floor install of 2007 went. I was very pregnant (6-7 months along) when I was fitting in pieces and drilling & nailing by hand (hammer) with my then 11-year-old son helping nail (hammer) some as well as setting most of the nails (hammer & nail set). That was fun. I guess it was more fun since I was so pregnant and therefore limber swinging the hammer, sitting on the floor, all the different positions one needs to get into when putting in a custom floor. (My hubby did start THAT floor with a floor nailer thing, but it jammed so much, we got sick of it. Wood split too. So we started pre-drilling and hand nailing and it was so much nicer, slower, but better overall.)

This current floor install is a pain, I have to do the cutting and fitting mostly. I have to make decisions and there is my husband who hasn’t been involved much and doing very little without me, and then I go and say “that has to come out and we have to find better pieces for that row” and so the work stops, takes three steps back … one step forward, slowly.

It will be lovely, someday. Life intervenes though. Not much work gets done when my helper goes running off to check the scores. I’m a football widow. I hate football. Especially since there are so many teams he wants to watch. It’s not like it’s one team for college, it’s ALL the games that are on. Similarly NFL is overly watched and followed. I know he’ll not stop, it’s just that, in regard to TIME there is this day, then tomorrow, and the next, and the next … you can’t regain time. That floor won’t get put all in by me, nor by itself. If you are here, not “at work” on the phone, then be working, be in the living room, get that floor in!

Then just maybe that Christmas tree can come inside and lower her branches for decorations.

Uh Oh. We have two cats that weren’t around before Christmas 2009 (born in March ’10.) This will be their first Christmas tree. In the past we have had kittens that were bad, some that were good. It will be interesting to see what’s in their stockings on Christmas morn.

PS3 early Christmas

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We were going to buy a PS3 system for Christmas, but yesterday after getting paid for the last time before Christmas we were out doing some shopping and DH decided “let’s just get the PS3 today, and a game for the children, and one for you, and one for me” and then not wait until Christmas, but “open” it right away, not wrapped it up or anything, no surprise, except for in the aisle at Best Buy.

I had kind of suggested that already, before we left for the shopping trip, but he didn’t seem to take me seriously as I was “complaining” about how Christmas was going in our house thus far, seeing as I got us the Christmas tree early, the Saturday after Thanksgiving, and it’s still not in the house, and it just doesn’t “feel” like Christmas to me, and I can’t get it in by myself and don’t feel like doing it alone anyhow. We have to clear a space for the tree, my idea of that is to move stuff over, get the tree in, then sort out the re-organization.

DH is opposite of what I am, so we are at impass. He was traveling this week, and last week it was … I don’t know … DH isn’t big into Christmas. Big into buying things for us, but not the decorations, the traditions … he could do without. So it takes massive energy on my part to make Christmas into the magical thing it can be in a family, and I haven’t had what it takes every year since moving to Georgia, living without any friends or relatives nearby, and not having a Christmas supportive church.

I had traditions of how decorations went, having special ones purchased each year to add to the tree, and reducing the “generic” ball decorations, going for a special look of a year marking ornament, silver bell, or pewter something, or a porcelain star, the current year dated things by big household fine dinner placings manufacturers … one every year, then also getting a series from Hallmark, like cats, bears, one every year marked for the year, special, a series of 5 or whatever the number. I didn’t start that the first year we were married, but did after we went to Gatlinburg for our anniversary in 1994, and found something to start with in an outlet shop, and that went on fine until my children got old enough to rifle through my stuff in the garage and ruined my things one year, many things broken while they were looking for toys that were put aside, and they weren’t supposed to be in that stuff at all, and they found my stuff and messed it up, and that was that. Some things survived, but to this day I don’t know what didn’t exactly, it makes me ill inside to think of it.

Anyhow, the other day I found a small tote with some of that surviving stuff inside (DH had transferred some stuff sometime this past year) and miraculously a Wedgewood 2002 snowflake ornament was laying naked in the bottom, whole and pristine. I took it out, and some other things in the box and put them on top of the DSS box for a short time.

That short time was way shorter than I figured, and after putting them there, putting a CD on to play, and picking up the baby to start nursing, all of the sudden “CRASH!!!!” and the stuff fell off of where it was directly onto the floor, the Wedgewood snowflake in several pieces.

I was quite disgusted with my choice of placement and mad at myself, but ultimately I felt it the children the ultimate reason for it, since it was safely stored in the right place until they displaced everything, being there to do so illegitamately one day here and there some years ago.

I did try to put the snowflake back together, it’s all there except for one small section of which I can’t find, and I have 5 or so tiny flakes that are impossible to put together, but wouldn’t even equal what’s missing if they could go somewhere. I looked high and low, and that shard is just fully missing. I could possibly super-glue it, but what’s the point, with that missing part and anyhow, my hold on “Christmas Energy” fell apart.

I’m totally offline about it, so that’s what the “just get our presents now” idea I had was about. DH took that and decided about it along with some other plans we have for traveling North right after Christmas, to just make the plan to go earlier, and we could have the Playstation 3 right away and also do the rest of Christmas next week instead of waiting for the 25th.

I don’t know, oh well, it’s OK, just not my true desire. I want a nice Christmas, the environment, the timing the mystery, fun, beauty, awe of it. I mean for me it’s all the way through Christmas Eve and is pretty much putted to nothing by Christmas morn. I have come to terms with having the most of my “christmas feeling” imbued in the evening by the fire the night before, and having us open something that night, and the rest the next day.

A few years ago we began a Christmas Tradition of going to a movie on Christmas Day. That year it was the new Peter Pan film. I want to continue it this year, even if we aren’t home … where we will be might be fine to exit for a few hours in honor of our newer tradition … we’ll be at DH’s father’s … we think. Well, it’s the current plan.

So to get back to the PS3, I have it set up, last night connected it and watched a new Blue-Ray in true HD. Ah, how nice. We saw HD in the summe of 2007 for the first time for real, in a new hotel they had a lovely large wide flat screen HD tv connection, a baseball game was it, and it was WOW! So now we have gaming and movies in HD at least :)

Yes, we have four Blue-Ray movies. 3 games for the PS3.

I connected to our wireless network with the PS3 today. I also got my PSP registered with the PS3 and that will make my PSP so much more worth it … it’s kind of cool. Anyhow, we looked at some of the pictures that are on one of my computers, via the PS3 and also fooled around with some music. Oh, we have a 160 Gig PS3.

We watched “Enchanted” last night. We didn’t own the DVD, just had rented it several months ago. We liked it then, but just didn’t “buy” it, but did last night at CD Warehouse (where we get a lot of our movies and CD’s of late) as one of our Blue-Ray movie purchases. It was fantastic to see it again, and I dreamed the music of it all night, literally. To see it so spectacularly made turning our standard DirecTivo on horrible ever since.

Today I played my new Prince of Persia game, and it was thoroughly enjoyable. It’s a great version. I have PofP Sands of Time for PS2, and PofP Rival Swords for Wii, as well. I haven’t finished either of them, but jumped right into each when I had them and never went all the way. I love the format for the new PS3/XBox version, it’s thoroughly just what I want to play.

The children have the PS3 Wall.E game. And the DH game was bundled with the PS3, Uncharted: Drakes Fortune. He’ll play that soon. Wall.E has been played by all three older children and I’m sick of the sounds already. :)

Christmas and New Year

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Happy New Year y’all!

Christmas was nice, though we didn’t have a big tree, nor any decorated tree … with a baby again, and all the stuff that comes with one, with the way our main space is these past few years … there was just not the space for a Christmas tree, nor the energy to “try to fit one in anyhow”. :(

Hubby got me a PSP for Christmas, bundled Lmt. Edition Darth Vader (as sold at Costco). It’s cool, though I’ve done more “web browsing” on it than anything. I got Atari Classics, and Star Wars Battlefront Renegade Squadron, and a couple of movies. I didn’t have Memory Stick Duo for it right away, so I didn’t play games much. I got a Memory Stick a few days after Christmas, and it’s nicer now, I have bookmarks for the web browser and saved data for games, etc. now. I haven’t taken the time to play any games really though. I was able to buy another game and another movie the day we went out and got the Memory Stick Duo. Oh, that is a 4GB Memory Stick Duo Pro, btw.

It’s nice to add more electronics to the stash.

The children got me something too, a new Betta fish. It’s moreso blue all over, with a little bit of orange on the bottom fin area. He has a nice plastic house (it’s an angled betta “bowl” with a blue cover.) I haven’t named him as of yet. He’s so very plain looking, compared to Thaddeus, who has been with us for 1 full year now, and looking good.

The new betta isn’t a Crowntail, as Thaddeus is.

I noticed that the “back” of the new “bowl” is totally flat, and the widest part of the “bowl” and perfect as a place to put something colorful … so I fitted a piece of Christmas wrapping paper to it, and that set him off nicely. He has blue stones, and he’s blue, the top is blue, and the paper is a dark but bright cranberry-ish red with “Merry Christmas” written in gold horizontally all over the paper. I can change that out when ever I desire. I’ll make up a template to make that easier (I didn’t think to do it originally until I already had the water and the betta fish in the “bowl” :rolleyes: )

Our new year is alright, nothing spectacular thus far. I wrote more about it on my other blog.