The lyf so short

The family arrived earlier than planned yesterday so there was no time to leave a Merry Christmas post...
but better late than never:

Wishing you all a very merry Christmas [or whatever else you choose to celebrate] with lots of cheer, love and light!


Our tiny Christmas tree, with my last-minute pottered créche
and all the presents my parents dropped off for later. Jeez, you could've
thought the entire clan was about to come and celebrate, rather than just
seven people!

To be entirely honest (if - doubtlessly - a bloody ingrate), the best - because thoughtful and not useful - gift I got was from my brother: The Folklore of Discworld by Terry Pratchett and Jacqueline Simpson. LOVE. Lots of shiny, wise, folklory love inna red dust jacket.
There were some excellent "useful" things, but really I'm a big child and need some senseless, enjoyable fun with my Christmas, no matter how much I can use a new coat or warm socks or money for a dishwasher.
(Husband's-brother's-wife - of all people! - actually came in a close second, with books on wild herbs and fruit and how to collect, store and use them: Thoughtful and appropriate, AND useful without being un-fun.)

Anyway.

Went to the midnightly Christmas service in Altenberg (which has a huge and rather pretty and surprisingly light cathedral), which may well be turned into a new family tradition if I get my say. It was amazing, nicely choreographed, almost medievalish, Catholic (my first ever Catholic Christmas service; I am Lutheran, remember) and... full. Insanely full, considering the nightly hour and that Altenberg is out of the way of everything, really. Various people brought chairs of their own; we hadn't, so we had to stand through the full one-and-a-half hour ceremony.
And yet, enjoyable. Heck, guys, I am a LARPer (AND a student of Cultural Anthropology). I swear church services are really exciting when you know a thing or two about historical rhetorics and ritualology (if that word even exists). So much to analyse! And to be frank, I have yet to see a decent LARP ritual that's fit to hold a candle (hah!) to a proper high mass. Sometimes the difference between acting and acting out can be decisive. And I just like proper shared rituals and ceremonies. As the abovementioned shiny, wise book so beautifully puts it, Legends don't have to make sense. They just have to be beautiful. Or at least interesting.

- But this comes across damn defensive. And I don't really know why I should feel the need to grow all defensive, except I recently had to hear that someone was actually disappointed in me because yes, sometimes I actually enjoy going to church, so now I always feel the need to tag a little "and this is why" onto it. But let's keep the thoughtspam on Faith And Ritual for some other time.

Anyway.

I had meant to make a nice Christmas card for this LJ, as usual. Plans centered on either an illuminated Middle English Christmas lyric or a decorated syntactic tree for "We wish you a merry Christmas and a happy New Year". No time for the former, and my syntax skills are too shaky even for the latter (disgraceful, I know).

So have photos of cats instead.

( Lo and behold, it's a kittenspam! )

Right! Off to the next feast.

'náro and Darcy have just hunted their first mouse. Applause for the two hunters please.

I just lugged the last two or so steres of firewood off the paddock. With one wheelbarrow. Paddock is rather hilly (this is, after all, the Bergian county) and has a brook in the middle. Wheelbarrow keeled over once. Wood rolled into brook. Wheelbarrow full of wood darn hard to move uphill, I tell you. Back and legs hurt.

Soooo, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix!
It's good. For a movie. Especially for a Harry Potter movie. As usual I have several gripes with the things they changed from the books, but on the whole I manage to understand the points this time. Although I still think if you could keep yourself from extending certain scenes for the sake of showing off special effects you could without trouble keep one or two significant book scenes in. But on the whole, it works. Pacing is good too. Movie is gloriously dark. Definitely not a kids' movie anymore, but that's doing it a whole lot of good. Cinematography is shiny.

( And the rest is slightly spoileriffic. Oh right, there probably will eventually be spoilers in the comments as well, so tread with care. )

We got the German trailers for Stardust and The Golden Compass before the movie. I find it slightly disturbing they pronounce "Lyra" the English way (/laıɹa/) instead of the German way (/lyʀa/). I normally wouldn't care, but in book 3 there's that Lyra/liar thing, and in German the only way that works is Lyra/Lügen - not nearly as close as the English anyway, but with the English pronunciation, the only German word it'd work with is something with Lei- (like Leier 'lyre' or Leiter 'leader/ladder' or something, none of which makes any sense in the context).
Also it sounds just plain weird.
Oh well, it's just the trailer dubbing, so the last word's not spoken yet.

So they're showing this dog on TV that can do all sorts of tricks.

And 'náro is attacking the TV dog.

And finally he realized that he couldn't reach the dog.

And walked behind the TV set to look for the dog there.

That so made my evening.

♥