Well, it's Christmas Eve eve. Tomorrow we're heading up to Northampton, and in a slight twist to the tale, we're taking the cat, who will stay up there with us for the three days we're there, and then for a few more days while Jonathan and I visit my parents. I hope she's not too phased by the "holiday". She'll get to see Naomi again, who she lived with in the house of dogs. Amazing how she's been with us for nearly a year now. Cute little thing.
On other news, my computer started behaving very strangely the other day, and reset my computer to settings I had shortly before the virus got onto my computer. Over a year and a half ago. So I'd lost all my nice pop-up blocking software, as well as other things, like Norton... and when we tried re-installing it, it didn't like it at all. To cut a long story short, we went out to PC World, bought a new hard drive (10 times bigger than my last), bought a Windows XP upgrade, and Jonathan installed them both while I wrapped the presents I bought him.
As I had to have everything else new as well, I installed Mozilla Firebird as my primary browser (it has pop-up blocking as standard, as well as other cool features), and Jonathan decided I needed Mozilla Thunderbird as an email client as opposed to Microsoft Outlook. They're not all that different, so I couldn't be bothered to argue the toss.
And as I had new everything else, I decided to change my desktop from the blue I've had for years, and go for pink. And pink it is...
Christmas shopping was interesting. We parted, so I could buy his and he could buy mine. Something we also do around birthday times, and anniversary. When I came out of a shop, I saw one of the children who's left from my group, Irene and her parents, so I stopped to chat and have a hug. They had a bag of pistachios grin and Irene said "Miss Brown, you want one?" So I said "Yes, that would be lovely, Irene." So she picked one out, and went over to the bin to de-shell it, during which her parents offered me some from the bag. Irene came back, with the pistachio she had de-shelled for me, and put it in my hand. It was such a sweet gesture, and made me want to take her home! I am going to miss her. Perhaps the most of the three that went before Christmas. Still, I'll likely see her again, her little brother is going to be coming to nursery when he's old enough. Hope he's in my group, if I'm still there when he goes...
Then, when we were queuing to pay for our car park ticket, I saw a little boy who's in LC's morning group, and he literally shouted (in front of 20 or so other people) "HELLO MISS BROWN!" to which I said slightly quieter "Hello Toby!" He ran up to me, so I picked him up and gave him a quick hug. It's gonna be so hard leaving when I do eventually. I hope I have a group of pickles, in a way. It'll make leaving a bit easier if I'm not emotionally attached to all of them.
Anyway, we've got to get to bed soon because we've got loads of stuff to pack into the car (two families worth of presents plus cat stuff. I can tell that the next week is going to be very hectic. Not just for us, I'm sure, but for all of you too that have to fit in two families over the space of a week. Heh, well it's three for us. Fun fun.
Have a happy christmas if I don't update before-hand.