A grinch ought not to

receive gifts but he does :-)

As a long time fan of The Lord of the Rings it came as no surprise that the 4 disc extended version of The Return of the King was under the tree (wrapped in Grinch wrapping paper - strangely enough, all of my gifts were wrapped in that paper ).

There were also two treasures. The first was The Royal Hunt of the Sun[^]. Yikes - what a URL. Wonderful great love it movie. I've just finished watching it after a gap of about 20 years. I'm still impressed by the way the soundtrack (in the first encounters between the Incan speakers and the Spanish speakers) (the Spanish is actually English but let's not quibble) does a cross fade between what I assume is meant to be Incan and English. I'm not expressing it well. But the movie avoids the clumsiness of assuming that everyone speaks the same language without resorting to sub titles. Those scenes start with the Incans speaking Incan, the Spanish speaking English; and in a few seconds of cross fading the Incans are speaking English. I'm still not expressing it well; you'll have to see the movie. But I wish you luck. The DVD is out of print; it was on my Amazon wishlist and my wife tracked down a copy on the secondhand market.

The second treasure is Barfly[^]. Well, perhaps it's not a treasure but it is a movie that I really enjoy.

As for the day itself? It was perhaps a little less painful than it could have been. The 'unwrapping of the presents' (why am I reminded of Gormenghast?) was mercifully short. In part this was because Morgan, the 16 year old, was less of a bossy boots than in previous years. In part it was also because the number of 'stocking stuffers' was markedly reduced. When you're dealing with a 20 year old, a 16 year old and a 13 year old one tends to go for fewer items where each item costs a bit more.

But the buggers do listen. Amongst my presents were two bottles of Malt Vinegar and two bottles of real Australian Rosella Tomato sauce . As I said to them at the time, if anyone in Australia gave a bottle of Tomato Sauce as a Chrissie pressie the recipient would look at them and think 'you cheap bastard'. But here in the USA it was a whiff of heaven. Indeed I grossed Morgan out by dabbing malt vinegar behind my ears. I said it was to keep the teenage girls away . I'm not sure she bought it.

We also had a drama. Sometime during the night the water main broke. Our apartment is three level. The floor of the room I'm sitting in as I type this is about 5 feet below ground level. To my left is the living area - at ground level. Above that are the kids bedrooms. Anyway, the windows of the rooms on the lowest floor are at ground level (which suits the cats just fine I might add). Just outside the ground level windows is typical Arizona desert with a small depression. Enough scene setting. At 11:30 our neighbour knocked on the door and told us we had a small lake behind the apartment. We took a look and sure enough there it was. See my third image gallery over there <--- for a pic. Tomorrow I'll take (and add to the gallery) a picture of how it looks normally.

Our neighbour (whose apartment wasn't in the least threatened as far as I can tell) was out there with a sledgehammer knocking a hole in the cement kerb to let the water drain out. He had and has my thanks! He didn't actually succeed in creating the hole; that honour went to my eldest step-daughter Shelby's boyfriend Matt.

Look at the tree in the picture, centre frame. See the high water mark? That was where the water was about 5 minutes before I took the shot. The second photo shows Matt being a dag!

Thus passed noon!

At 4:30 PM all was in place for Christmas dinner. A rather large ham (I fear I'm going to be eating ham for a month) plus a few dishes that I, an Australian, don't understand. How on earth can one marry ham with marshmallows? Americans, it seems, can achieve that feat without even batting an eyelid . Worse, they seem to enjoy the experience! Americans are strange people! But I did manage to hold my own - I shocked the buggers by mixing Keens Extra Hot English Mustard with Malt Vinegar (a chrissie present) and smearing it on my ham. Delicious.

After dinner we played scrabble. I won even after giving Andrew and Morgan (the younger two) a freebie by pointing out that the letters A C N E could be placed on a triple word score. At 10 PM I'd had enough and anyway, Chef! was starting on PBS followed by the Red Green show.

One of the least painful Christmases I've endured. But I'm sure I'll never get to the point of actually looking forward to Christmas.

Bah Humbug!!!!