Last year I broke with tradition. Strange concept for me, tradition. However, this blog has been running for over four years, so there is a small footprint in the form of a legacy. From 2002 until 2004, I have posted an entry on Christmas Day. This has varied from a few lines with seasons greetings to all, to in more recent years a full blown account of the build up to the big day and a few lines about what I got up to. I thought about foregoing an entry this year, to make a change. However looking back on the day, I thought it only fair to cover some of the magical moments. I got up late, or rather my whole family got up late for Christmas morning. Usually we would be up and opening presents around 9am but it was well after 11am for us to get around to it this year. The most heart warming scene was my second cousin, celebrating his 3rd Christmas (but first one with us) opening his presents and being a complete bundle of joy (well most of the time). I got him the Disney Pixar DVD Box set featuring all the animated movies. I had seen some but not all and decided to watch Cars. I had not seen the movie in the summer, even though I had wanted to go to a screening. In the end I am glad I decided against the big screen and opted for the small screen and my cosy sofa. It was not very funny to me, but having spent a bit of time reading up about the movie (as I always do) it would have meant more to an American audience aware of NASCAR. Nevertheless it was extremely entertaining and did have a few moments. Well worth watching. While I prefer Luke Wilson, rather than his brother Owen, he does pull off the voice to Lightning McQueen with the large ego and style you would come to expect. There are nice touches too, a minor love story (of parts) and some cameos from famous people from within the motor sport world. Good clean family fun is my verdict. Now, what else is left off the Disney/Pixar list? In th evening I retired to my room and made an impulse buy. I suppose I better start from the beginning. My sister asked for an mp3 player for Christmas. Originally I was going to be a scrooge and not get it for her, but being the lovely big brother I am, I decided to get her one. Now, as you know I purchased a pink iPod Mini for my other sisters, back in September last year. This time around I wanted to go for something better, but more suitable for a 13 year old girl. I chose the Creative Zen Plus ahead of the iPod Shuffle for various reasons, the main being the screen which enabled both photographs and video to be watched. Plus there was double the flash memory and the incredibly small size.

It was not just the size that impressed me, but installing all the software on the family computer (I am the only user with full admin rights) I was impressed by the software. Right click and send to the player. Amazing, just as simple as sending photos to FlickR (well exactly the same method). I just had to get myself one. Hussein was online and we were had discussed the present earlier. He too, gave the full thumbs up to firstly my purchase of the gift and then when I started I was going to buy one, it was toss between iPod Video or the Creative Zen Vision M. Having just spend most of the afternoon playing around with one of the entry level devices in the family I chose the latter. I needed little convincing. However, just in case, Hussein threw at me over MSN, not one, not two, but three reviews plus a blog entry from someone on installing Linux on the player! It was just a case of tracking down the device and making the purchase. For many years people have asked me, “Teg do you have an iPod?” A few years ago my Dad was going to buy me a Nano but could not get to the Regent Street store in time. It has taken me several years to finally get around to buying one. I feel if I had continued to work in London, in 2004, I would have eventually bought something but my day to day existence does not require mobile music on the go. So, why the hell have I spent all this money? Well I want to have something that can keep me company on match days. Not just the trips across to Noth London, but potential days on the road now I have joined the travel club (no official confirmation yet). Plus, as a diehard fan of music television I will be able to travel across my entire mp3 singles collection, video collection and album collection and still have some space left on the side for more. Quite crazy when you think of the numbers. Particularly when I have spent over 7 years amassing this world famous audio collection. The purchase alone would have been criminal, I had to get some accessories. So I have ordered alternative ear phones, a docking station and of course the leather case. Having been so selfish I decided to turn my attention to someone else and become a giver of gifts. There are many millions blogs out there and perhaps just a few hundred that focus on my football team. Of course I have only been reading the Arse Blog on a daily basis but have discovered another blog. The Cannon. What stroke me about this blog was the fantastic photographs from matches throughout the last season to date. The author, who also had a FlickR account, under the fantastic name of lasagnechef. I thought as a kind gesture I would purchase him a pro account. A token gift none the less but an opportunity to push the user into uploading more great photos of the Red Army. Not sure if he will get around to writing anything about this on his blog, but you never know.