Nothin’ to do all day but open presents, feed dad some lunch and then bum around the house in my new sweater, made with love by Mom, so why not give my other friends who are similarly bumming around watching 90210 reruns on TVtropolis the gift of a long-ass LJ entry to read?

First off, my cousin Keira, previously known as , has decided her old LJ identity needed to be scrapped along with all of 2006, and so she has renamed herself . Please friend her at will, she’s turning a new leaf and will hopefully be posting more in future. She’s trying to return the online networking favour by teaching me about MySpace, which I have not yet broken into. We’ll see how that goes.

is also a big charming ball of snot at the moment, having contracted The Plague, which prevented her from coming out to my (very) intimate birthday luncheon at Julia’s on Saturday. In fact, a combination of Plague and family commitments prevented almost everyone from being able to attend, so my Mom and I enjoyed our spacious 10-person table alone for about 20 minutes until my friends John & Tina showed up. We actually had a great lunch, as Mom has known John since before his voice broke (he was my high-school boyfriend). We talked about J&T’s wedding plans and pitfalls and mutual friends and generally had a really good meal together. Good times.

Sharing a bed with Plague Girl is giving me nightmares about waking up on December 31st with a raging sinus infection. Thoughts of completely crapping out for New Year’s Eve have me recoiling in Howard Hughes-esque horror from her every sneeze and exhalation. Yesterday, I actually yelled “SNEEZE into your SLEEVE, dammit!” and then immediately changed tactics screaming “NO! NO! Wait! You’re wearing MY hoodie!” Sheesh. I need to relax. And swallow nine more vitamin C tablets.

Attempts to introduce to certain aspects of my beloved geek culture have been met with mixed results. MST3K proved to be a wild success, as our viewing of ‘Santa Claus Conquers the Martians’ has now given her the new welcoming gesture known as “head butt” and whenever, say, the excessive consumption of turkey has caused a slight case of flatulence, the phrase “lentils!” now makes gas that much funnier.

Doctor Who was not such a hit. I briefly debated the pros and cons of showing her Eccleston’s first episode with its atrociously CGIed lava creature, versus Tennant’s first episode where he is either overacting or unconscious, and chose Tennant because dammit he’s cuter. This may have been a bad call because after 10 minutes of watching politely while occasionally giving me the wide-eyed, raised-eyebrows, what-the-fuck-is-this? look, she turned to me and said “you know, I’d be enjoying this a lot more if there was a row of theatre seats and three silhouettes at the bottom of the screen.” Ouch! I think the Doctor just got served.

I’m writing it down, just so it’s on record: I owe one screenplay (my first!) for a 15-minute short entitled “The Christmas That Really Kicked Ass”, wherein a curmudgeonly girl and a curmudgeonly boy both discover the true meaning of Christmas.

Solved! The mystery of the anonymous gift from Chapters… was from Cait, the cunning wife of my other cousin. She apparently saw a track listing that includes “Osama Got Run Over By a Reindeer” and “Be Claus I Got High” and immediately thought of me. I blame Outlaw Golf.

My Boxing Day to-do list includes:
– see Clive Owen in ‘Children of Men’
– get new clothes due to massive clothing purge on Christmas Eve
– buy this: