Well, I’m currently back at the grindstone, having started work on Monday again (and my first day was spent on tech support trying to bring all our systems back up seeing as we ran out of electricity on the same day at around 03:00 in the morning!), but looking back at it I really did have a pleasant break to end off the year and welcome in the new one, the first year where I now no longer can work out how old I am simply by looking at the year any more. In case you are lost, in 1990 I was 10, in 2000 I was 20, 2008 I was 28 and in 2009 I was 29. Damn you 2010 for screwing it up! (Though the more astute among you may point out that now instead of just dropping the two middle numbers I can now simply add the two number pairs up for the correct figure. You sneaky mathematicians you!)
Anyway, the point is that I had a fabulous time away from work where I did almost nothing I had planned to do during the holiday, got stuck into copious amounts of xbox playing (finished Mirror’s Edge, Stranglehold, Prince of Persia and are currently well into Tomb Raider: Underworld), visited with Ryan and Terrance for games at Ryan’s pad, enjoyed a family-orientated Christmas, became Godfather to Dean’s daughter, hosted Wayne and Candice for a visit on the last day of 2009, had a fantastic New Year’s Eve celebration complete with fireworks and pita bread at the guest house, swam in the sea, watched loads of animated DVDs and finished off the year with my first ever braai using my new braai that I received from Chantelle, with a visiting Karl, Trish, Damen and Michelle in attendance. Oh, and I walked and practiced Karate.
So really not bad when you look back over the last ten days! :)
And to top it all off, I’m feeling quite refreshed and am blazing away at work to boot! Not that I am sitting back socially just by the way. I’ve got a karate camp this coming weekend in Betty’s Bay to attend, not to mention Cats tomorrow night at the Artscape, I’ve got a weekend away at Warmwaterberg in Barrydale with the Montgomery clan the following weekend, then on the first weekend of February I have a possible weekend away with the folks at Pinnacle Point and the weekend following that Chantelle and I will be in Hermanus, to take part in Zandea’s Christening! Oh, and Ryan’s birthday falls somewhere in between!
So life is good at the moment, I must admit.
Before I forget though, I don’t think I’ve yet gotten around to chatting about New Year’s eve yet have I? Well as per usual Chantelle was on duty and as per usual the Guest House was throwing a big party to which I was invited – in fact, even the Montgomery clan joined in on the celebrations. A mixture of guests and friends, including Andy, Albert and their posse, the evening was filled with drink, music (a host of guitars, drums and even trained singers it would seem), greek delicacies (Chantelle put on a fabulous spread as always) and firecrackers – lots of firecrackers. In fact, about R1,000 worth of firecrackers were lit along a quiet stretch of Gordon’s Bay beach, most without incident – and that’s not counting the one that nearly struck the guy out on the rocks in front of us, the one that nearly burnt down the Milkwood trees or the one that exploded in the guys’ faces, causing Albert to perform a rather spectacular Matrix style back leap. Funnily enough though, the two rockets tied together actually worked just fine.
Go figure.