A festive Christmas wreath with red and tartan ribbons, frosted pine cones, and red berries, hanging by a twine loop with a blurred background.

The Christmas Edition. Some parts might be missing. We were BUSY!

  • 🍱 I’d been trying to have lunch, or a beer, with a friend of mine for a while now. His life got in the way (big time), and we’ve have been unable to see each other for what feels like months. This week, right before Christmas, we finally got around to it, after another failed attempt last week. If felt good. His life is a huge mess, and he does not deserve it. At all. We cannot help, not in any meaningful way, except by being there.

  • πŸ˜΅β€πŸ’« Seeing that this is the season to celebrate and be merry, on Friday we had dinner with more friends. At home. I cooked, with the help of one of them, and the girls and kids played around. Always nice when this family shows up. Acted as a trial for what would come later, kids running around screaming, too much sugar on their system, and parents trying (unsuccessfully) to keep things under control.

  • πŸ‘ΆπŸ» Saturday: pizza, beach, babies. Yes. All that. movieStar thought we could go to the beach, enjoy the incredible weather we’re getting, and get some pizza at a nice pizza place by the sand. She messaged one of her brothers who lives there, and he talked to the other one. Soon we were nine. We had pizza, a stroll on the beach, a visit to the Christmas fair, a ride on the Ferris wheel, and then we got the news: both wives of my brothers-in-law are pregnant!! Darn! We’re going to be uncles, twice! BIG news to share as a Christmas present. Everyone was super thrilled. tinyMovieStar is getting some cousins!

  • πŸŽ„ Not sure how to start, or IF to start. It’s a blur, still. Christmas, both days. We drove up and down the highway, meeting both families. On my end a smaller event, but a HUGE one with movieStar’s family. Since both my mother-in-law and her sister live on adjoining houses, and all the sons made their way home for Christmas, with their families as well, it gets crowded! Party well into the night, with the little ones dancing around, and the older crowd playing poker into the night, after most went to sleep. The following day felt like the same, Part II. More partying, more food, more drinking, more family. Kids going crazy with attention, excitement, sugar. Everyone is exhausted by the end of all this. When the three (?) days were over, all I could think about was staying in bed all day. Of course that was not going to happen.

  • 🍦 Tuesday. Time to drive back to the city. We dropped the little one with her uncles, and they went to the movies. Alone. First time the little one did that. She loved it. Her aunt (now pregnant) spoils her. We met them at the end, and had pizza, ramen, and ice-cream to top things off. Great.

  • 🍺 Lazy Wednesday. We found out movieStar got us flight tickets to Menorca! We welcomed the little one’s godmother (in town from London), and my best friend, for dinner. We’re all huge fans of both of them, and always have a great time. We cooked, didn’t go out. Cosy, late into the night, with (maybe) a little too much beer thrown in. Waking up the following day would not be easy.

  • πŸŽ₯ Thursday started at noon. movieStar had a meeting, so I grabbed the little one and went to the movies. Back home, watched another movie before dinner time. She still has another week before school resumes. Not sure we’ll make it that far. We’re VERY exhausted by now.

  • 🍿 We did watch a few movies this week. Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising. What a load of crap, as they say. I’ll say that as well. Laughed once. Candy Cane Lane. Had high hopes. It’s bad. Home Alone 2: Lost in New York. A classic, still the best one out of all the crap. Wish was not great. The Grinch was pretty good.

  • πŸ“Ί Blue Eye Samurai. Done. Liked it, well worth the time. Looking forward to the promised next season. Slow Horses. One of the great shows, in my opinion, has also ended. You will be missed, Jackson Lamb and friends. See you all later. Stonehouse, just an episode. Will probably watch it all. It’s a small, three episodes long show.

  • πŸ˜… Updated my /now page. One of those omg.lol services I keep forgetting about. Thanks ner3y!

  • ✏️ If you’re looking for more ways to use your omg.lol account, you can now try write.omg.lol, a pretty nice (and very basic) text editor that uses your omg.lol pastebin as cloud storage.

  • πŸ™…πŸ»β€β™‚οΈ Deleted my Substack account. All my subscriptions were deleted, and then my account. Tired of Nazis. It was MUCH harder to stop using Twitter. That account is still ON. Not using, but it’s there. This one was gone without a second thought. I’ll miss a few newsletters that I subscribed to, but that’s it. I’ll survive.

  • 🚨 Threw another €10 at updown.io. That’s enough to keep an eye on 5 sites for a year. The service works great, is very decently priced, no reason not to keep supporting it.

  • πŸ–ΌοΈ Bought another set of wallpapers. How many do I need? These look sweet, though.

  • 🌐 Got maique.lol again. Adding all the subdomains again…

  • 😈 We caved in, and subscribed to YouTube Premium. That’s what you get when you get the kids in the family together: we add another service to our growing list of family subscriptions. We actually wondered how we didn’t include this one earlier, seeing that we already had almost every streaming service in the country (Amazon, Netflix, HBO, Apple, and Disney). It took me 5 minutes to get used to no ads, and I’m already trying YouTube Music. Maybe it’s time to say goodbye to Spotify?

  • πŸŽ₯ Added another streaming site subscription, this one as a gift: FILMIN. Art, independent, alternative, you name it. Catalog looks incredible. I’m sure we’ll watch a few, that will surely take us back to our younger days, when we’d regularly go to the Cinemateca, and binge on vintage Italian movies!