We had quite the week leading up to Christmas. Derek and I had been ill since Friday, and my cough was so bad that I went to the drop-in clinic (aka open-access surgery) on Monday morning and was given a week of antibiotics to use in case the illness got worse. It did, so I'm now halfway through the week-long course of pills and am feeling much better. My energy levels bounced back so fast that I went from spending every day lying on the pull-out couch in front of the tv/laptop to spending Tuesday and Wednesday afternoon in the library reading Parliamentary Debates from 1810-1814. Derek kept me company on Wednesday afternoon, which was very nice. It was a productive two days that alerted me to an impending deadline that I wasn't aware of. New posters were up letting everyone know that due to the continuing redevelopment of the library the second floor is about to be cleared out, and according to the nice librarian I spoke to, the books probably won't return until 2012. Of course I need them much sooner then that, and the Parliamentary Debates are considered reference books so I can't take them out of the library, so when the library re-opens on the 28th I'll be in there reading those volumes as fast as I can!
Anyway, back to our Christmas. On Christmas Eve the day started with wrapping presents and the arrival of the laundry machine repair man, who discovered that the reason our dryer had never heated up was because the previous tenant had made it overheat and the emergency shut-off had engaged. Not a big surprise, seeing as when we moved in the handle had been broken right off the machine by the guy. Life is so much better with a dryer that dries, even if it only mostly dries and it takes over an hour to just about dry a small load of 1.5 kg of clothes. In the afternoon we went on a long walk and made a bunch of snowmen and snow animals in the Meadows. When we got back Derek put together a lovely selection of nibbles, and we snacked and skyped with family and even opened a couple presents from his siblings.
Christmas morning was great. We had an excellent breakfast -- Derek had an omelette with fried mushrooms, and I had french toast with blueberries, yogurt and honey. We opened our present from one another, which included classic wii controllers, a movie, and a CD-Rom to learn Latin, something Derek's been working on. We got into the Latin, which it turns out is really just a scanned version of the Latin textbook, but it does have a narrator reading the text and interactive exercises. I think it'll be fun -- a good refresher for me, and a challenge for both of us.
In the afternoon we went for a walk through the Princes Street Gardens. Our intention was to see Santa's reindeer, who have been staying in a pen there for a few weeks. It didn't occur to us that Santa would have needed them the night before, and so they were gone. But it was a beautiful walk, and we got to enjoy the almost silent downtown. Some of the touristy Scottish shops were open on the Royal Mile, and tourists were going from one to another along the street.
We did a lot of skyping with family in the afternoon (which was still Christmas morning back home), and then had a great turkey dinner with The Santa Clause on (the Tim Allen one from the mid-90s. Derek didn't think he'd seen it before, and I hadn't seen it since Dad took me when it first came out in the theatres.) In the evening we watched Blackadder's Christmas Carol and played our new Wii game, the New Super Mario Brothers Wii, which is an excellent, old-school style Nintendo game with great graphics and a co-operative mode in which we can work and play together to get more points. I die an awful lot more than Derek does, so he's quite nice about sharing his 1-Ups with me :) It was really fun playing an old-fashioned style but new game. The controls and goals come completely naturally to us, having grown up with NES's Super Mario Bros.
So that's the story of our first Christmas in Edinburgh. It was a beautiful day and we had a very nice day together, and although I got a little sad and homesick at times, Derek kept my spirits up with extra hugs. With more games to play and dvds to watch it'll be a good weekend! Then, back to the bookstacks!
1 comment:
Hey Paula!
What a bummer about your books. Do they not have any in the NLS? Might be worth trying the Scottish Parliament's library if not- if it's anything like Westminster then it'll have copies of stuff like that for reader access! Was a bit of a lifesaver when I was doing my undergrad!
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