Not a creature stirring....

2010-12-26T09:52:00+00:00

As the sun rises on a clear blue boxing day morning my body ponders what to do with the excess calories of yesterdays toughing. After so many years of the Bennee clan together with occasional grand-parental input we are now entering a new phase of the Christmas dynamic as the extended grouping of Bennee's and Roberson's gather to celebrate the days finally getting longer. Together the 9 of us have scoffed a small mountain of food, challenged each other in mental battle and revelled in classic party games. One particularly fun game was the one known as Dirty Santa which has the interesting dynamic of present theft built in. I missed out on the Lava Lamp but did gain a pair of touch screen enabled gloves which is very handy in this cold weather.

I was quite happy with the Doctor Who special although the scientists in the room did call out "Double Paradox!" at one point. The Grand Mof is certainly a safe pair of hands for the franchise. I'm looking forward to the 2011 season with much anticipation.

I hope everyone has enjoyed their Christmas celebrations and best wishes a we head forward to the new year. What are we calling this decade anyway?

So that was Christmas

2009-12-28T12:03:00+00:00

You'll have to excuse the radio silence since my last post. The run-up to Christmas was a rush to ship the next version of the product to the testing team for next year. This wasn't helped by a whole day being taken up with the company Chrimbo do for clay pigeon shooting and lunch in one of the colleges. They also changed their mind and let everyone have the whole of Christmas eve off instead of a half day as a freebie which cut into my release schedule. Still it all came out right in the end.

As this is the first year in our new house Fliss had decided to offer to host the festivities for both families. Although catering for 9 seems a fairly daunting job at first (especially without a dishwasher!) it all seemed to go pretty smoothly - mostly due to Fliss' careful planning. I was mostly operating under instruction. The willing army of washing volunteers also helped keep that particular aspect under control.

For Christmas Eve we played an Agatha Christie murder mystery game while Fliss served up some wonderful local Duck. Christmas was the usual Turkey affair (again Norfolk local) but with plenty of top-ups throughout the day. Fliss then prepared a wonderful piece of pork which was cooked for 16 hours overnight leaving a third delicious piece of meat for Boxing day. We also did plenty of fresh stock preparation which should see us through the next few weeks of warming hearty meals.

Although it is probably unseemly to talk about Christmas swag I will say the PS3 faeries have been good to both of us. Although SingStar Queen is unlikely to see public light unless I'm very drunk both Batman: Arkham Asylum and CoD: Modern Warfare 2 have been exercising the console in the post Christmas chill-out zone. I suspect Fliss will finish Arkham before testing out Assassin's Creed II. The winter months truly are designed for idling the hours away on a console.

Unlike previous years there hasn't been a rush to get out an visit other places straight after Christmas so we have mainly been relaxing. We are due up in Manchester on the 30th and shall be at C&P's for New Years Eve.

Alex's Adventures on the Infobahn - christmas

Not a creature stirring....

So that was Christmas