I'm back in Norwich again, after what feels like an age away from home. I spent Christmas week at my parents' house, with presents and pantomime and kids and chaos. It was nice to have an almost completely offline break, with the only exposure to my laptop coming from watching my nephew play Age of Mythology on it. I was happy to see his imagination captured by the strategy and thinking genre, rather than the usual Playstation beat 'em up. I think I'll send my old Red Alert CDs back, and see if I can encourage this more challenging gaming streak.
There was also the usual festive PC fixing sessions, documented well elsewhere in the blogosphere. This year's fixups included reinstalling a scanner, setting up a new digital camera for my dad, installing Service Pack 2, and a whole heap of Anti-Virus, spyware and adblocking updates.
I was home briefly on Thursday 30th to dump bags, pick up clean clothes, and get a good night's sleep, then on Friday I headed down to London to spend New Year with old friends. It was good to catch up with Trace, Steve, Nessa and James, and to meet Trace's old school friend, Sam. Keeping up with the catching up theme, I spent New Year's Day getting absurdly drunk with David, Elise, Trace and Thom. So much so, in fact, that I wound up sleeping over at Trace and Steve's again, as there's no Norwich train out of London at 2am. Whoops.
So that's the whirlwind marathon festive season over for another year. Hello 2005. The usual resolutions apply - get body, finances, house and life in shape.
It feels like I didn't make much progress in 2004. Let's see if I can make this year count.