EIGHT DAYS TILL XMAS?!?!

I don't know, I've been so busy working on papers for school that it seems unreal somehow. Hard to get into the x-mas spirit just yet.

i've been off work for the last few days and i come back and there's cards and a POINSETTIA (sp.?) on my desk? what is the deal with that? are they particularly Christmassy plants? hm. well, i dont feel particularly festive either as i've not done half my Chrimbo shopping (though i have got storming pressies for my mam and boyfriend) and my cat had to be put down. so, no more stealing bits of goose and chasing tinsel for Ossie *sob*.

Haha we have no xmassy decortaions up in the office. A few people have cards on their desks (I have two! Hurrah!) but apart from that, what christmas??? Brixton road has CHRISTMAS LIGHTS but to someone growed up on Blackpool Illuminations they are rubbidge. Our flat isn't decorated. I haven't bought presents yet either. Or booked tickets home... actually I shall do this now! AH, the usefulness...

I have so much too much to do. Christ. Buy Christmas presents (including for Isabel). A billion tiny little work jobs. E-mailing back to all the people I need to e-mail back to re. their FT articles. Endure staff go-karting challenge. Plan boozing. Tidy house. Etc.

Aw, katie, sorry about your cat.

our office is like a glittering palace of delight. six poles with tinsel in alternating gold and red wound up them, connected to each other with gold, red and silver paper chains. dangling from the ceiling are manyhued seventies drop down decorations (hung far from the sprinklers so as not to contravene safety standards), paper stars, gold, pink and silver tinsels and scattered pine cones around the microfilm machine.

most presents bought. most christmas cards written. am i the only person that was gripped by a festive frenzy as soon as december hit the calendar? whoot!

Awww, Katie, that sucks.

I'm really sorry to hear that Katie, I know hard losing a cat can be.

Ossie's ashes will be buried in the shrubbery where he loved to lurk under the bamboo plant and freak out the passing birds, so it's all (kind of) good. thanks for the sympathy cat-lovers!

i bought stamps. small ones this time. i bought the greetings ones in a fit of festive organisation, only to find that they are TOO BIG for my dinkly little Chrimbo cards and obscure the addresses. so back to the Post Office i went... ack.

Sorry to hear about your cat, Katie.

This epidemic of frantic pre-holiday fretting (what to buy, double checking with relatives, wrapping the gifts, blah blah blah) certainly wears one down, year after year. It's especially saddening because no one I know really gets all that excited about the damn holiday - it's just another stupid obligation that needs obliging, and, you know, I'd be just as happy flossing my teeth with barbed wire. In my circle of life, I'm the only post-adolescent with a smidgen of that Christmas day twinkle I once had as a kid. And I'm not saying that we should all be as wide-eyed and mischevious as we might've been back in the day, but ... can we pretend this is NOT a chore, that it's not the equivalent of Sunday mass w/ a post-church gathering of all the relatives we don't like?

Not that I'm talking to anyone in particular. The only piece of remotely festive decoration in my office (barring the usual onslaught of cookie cutter holiday cards from our board members' organizations) is a plastic ficus tree. Ficus ain't festive.

I'm not really a cat lover, but all my sympathy katie. I hope you have many happy memories.

I also thought at first you'd written "Oasis's" ashes, but my thinking was a mite too wishful.

really? shit. i haven't even sent out xmas cards yet.

I managed to do my first stint of Chrimbo shopping yesterday, amazingly enough. I bought 2 presents and now fel the warm glow of satisfaction. Unfortunately I still have lots more to buy. Arse. I can't be bothered.

Oh, no, wait - the ficus tree in my office is REAL. My roomy is the one with the FAKE ficus. (Christ, two ficus trees in my life is two too many.)

My weakness in gift buying is my reliance on entertainment goods (video games, CDs, movies, gift certificates for the same) - tchochkies are not my strength. And, then, of course, everyone I know (including me) is just like 'pheff, I don't know what I want, maybe world peace and a nice muffin'. Crapola.

Oh me oh my! :( I am sooo down today and I can't seem to find what I'm looking for. I have been to every shop in town to no avail:(

I made a half-hearted effort to put x-mas decs up at work. I can't wait til Friday.

Hi Katie, I am an animal lover and I know how you feel :( I'm so sorry.

Condolences as well -- pet loss is never fun.

The Xmas spirit for me is weirdly secondary, for lack of a better term. Normally some part of me has fully gotten into things, but I haven't even listened to A Charlie Brown Christmas by Vince Guaraldi once yet! I have seen A Christmas Story, though, so that much has happened. ;-)

haha i got ALL MY XMAS SHOPPING IN OXFORD STREET DONE TODAY hurrah. Then i came home to find there was a silly error in the magazine (not mine!!) and the presses had been stopped until it was sorted.

cards tonite

you lot will get a one-size suits all "e-card" = seasons greetings post if you're lucky

bah humbug

Aaaaarrrrrghghrhghghgkjjj! Still, I don't really have that many people to get presents for, but my mother has asked for something which seems to be impossible to find. And nearly Christmas = nearly January = aaaaaargh, in fact even more aaaaaargh than previously realised due to Things Nobody Bothered To Tell Me Until Yesterday.

PS aww, sorry about your cat, Katie... :(

humbug. i am not down on christmas these days, and i am obscenely poor to boot this particular year. parents presents sorted (thankyou ed, you are a genius) and i am negotiating non present buying truces with any other relevant parties. my bro seems to have pre-empted me and shyly admitted that he and his missus have got me 'a few little things'. bastards. now i am obliged to parry their present buying offensive with a gift based counter attack and i lack time, money and inspiration.

christmas will probably be spent re-wiring ed's room. festive or what! one year, on new years eve my father and i decided to redesign the whole antenna system in our house and we nearly got stuck without the box for christmas. didn't matter anyhow, dinner is invariably produced at the beginning of the showdown scene of the bond film.

bummer about the cat man, you get well attached to cats. inexplicable bearing in mind the contempt with which they hold us humans, but true.

I dont get to start shopping till Friday. Damm you exams.