December 22: Felt pretty dumb at school this day. More than half the people in school skipped and I only got work done in two classes. In French class, period 1, we had the opportunity to hand in an assignment early for bonus marks. Almost everyone there handed it in, knowing they needed as many extra marks as possible, but one poor guy thought he'd be clever and hand it in and leave before the teacher got there. Unfortunately for him, the teacher didn't give him the marks. After that, I had biology, which was pretty uneventful, and then a nice long poker-filled lunch period. When chemistry rolled around, I was surprised to find that the classroom was packed... with people from other classes that is. It turned out that it was where everyone had decided to watch movies. I caught the end of She's the Man to kill some time, but decided to leave when someone pulled out a GameCube and started hooking it up to the TV, but that was okay since my teacher cut class too. Several card games later, we had an assembly that was so-so. It was put on by the teachers and the teachers' pets and involved some skits and some songs. Really, the only good part about it was that I got out 10 minutes early and got a free candycane (but since it was thrown the length of the auditorium, it was really only a fine powder by the time it reached me). I then walked home in the freezing cold wind and rain, with an umbrella that kept turning inside out and flopped down on my computer chair half an hour later feeling absolutely exhausted. A few hours later, I found myself packing up the car and going up north to visit my grandparents (on my dad's side) for Christmas.

 

December 23-24: Pretty uneventful days that seemed to drag on a bit with the prospect of Christmas morning looming ahead. We played a lot of Clue, Sorry!, Careers, and Oh Heck to pass the time, and I ended up seeing practically every Christmas special YTV had to offer, courtesy of my younger sister.

 

December 25: Needless to say, I didn't sleep well this night. When I first woke up, I was all excited, but when I checked the clock, I was appalled to see that it was only 11:30; it wasn't even the 25th yet! After falling asleep and waking up a few more times, I decided to just get my stocking and watch TV for the next few hours until everyone else got up. So for the next four hours, I entertained myself by watching early morning TV and sustained myself with some of the chocolates from my stocking, knowing that it would be ages until breakfast. Finally, I heard the sound of little feet running around upstairs, which meant that my sister was awake and that present opening was imminent. After everything was handed out and opened, I found myself with the following:

• Defilak
• Dekar
• Morak
• Thulox
• Axonn
• Brutaka
• BIONICLE Legends #5: Inferno
• LEGO Star Wars II for Nintendo DS (surprisingly good graphics)
• BIONICLE Heroes for Nintendo DS
• Maze of Shadows for GameBoy Advance
• Two funny T-shirts
• The Risk boardgame
• Artemis Fowl: The Lost Colony, by Eoin Colfer
• Voyage of Slaves, by Brian Jacques
• A photo album
• A new umbrella (my old one having half of its spokes bent out of shape)

December 26: Woke up early to get back home fast enough so we'd have enough time to prepare for my mom's side of the family coming over to visit. After hours of back-breaking work, everything came together and we all had a great time. Around the end, we had a present exchange where I came uncomfortably close to winning a cake plate, but luckily got to trade it for a boxed DVD set of the Da Vinci Code.

 

 

So that's been how I've spent the holidays so far and with a week and a half still to go, things are looking good.