Back! Happy New Year!

Wow.

This must be my longest non-blog ever!

I blame Number One Son.  This Christmas he travelled light, so instead of bringing one of his desktop PCs with him he said he would just borrow my laptop when he needed to.

Sounds fair, I said.

As it turned out, I never got a look in.  He had an assignment that he was working on, and when he was not working on that he was doing some programming for relaxation, and when he wasn't doing that we were all doing something together and when that wasn't happening we were sleeping off all the fun, food and excitement!

So it is his fault that I have not been around.

I have managed to do a bit of FB on my phone, and did drop in on the occasional blog with it, but commenting is just a nightmare so I have taken to just lurking if restricted to the phone.

Anyway, enought feeble excuses!

We had a really good Christmas, one of the best for a long time I think.  Everyone was happy with their presents, and we didn't break the bank either.  In fact, given that the kids were all feeling a bit poor this year (Number One Son is poor during the Autumn term, our daughter does not start her job until Monday and Younger Son is still at school) we decided that all of the after dinner presents should be bought from Pound Shops.  Yes, no afternoon presents were to cost more than one Pound, but had to be carefully chosen for that person.  And it was hilarious!  We found some great stuff and had a hoot opening them all.

We got lazy with Christmas dinner, though.  Given that 2 of us no longer eat meat, we thought that a massive turkey would be a waste, so the meat eaters were treated to some wonderful steaks, while Mrs RC produced a very interesting looking nut roast for her and our daughter.  My mum and Spot were with us for the day, having steak too (mum shared hers with Spot, as we knew she would) and a fabulous dinner was had anyway, without 30 years worth of left over turkey to deal with!

Mrs RC and I did spend a good amount of time lounging in front of the TV, resting our tired bones and watching some real trash.  It was heaven. 

One show that we stumbled on was Utopia US.  Did anyone catch this during its 2 month showing in the US late last year?  From the write up and watching the first show I was convinced that it was a spoof.  It was hypnotic!  The premise was that they were setting up a commune 15 people who would have to create a mini society and survive for a year.  The characters were so amazing that it had to be a spoof. There was a toothless redneck called "Red", and a young black guy from Harlem who was just out of prison.  And they made friends!  There was a hippy who believed in the magical healing power of sex, and they showed her saying goodbye to her 2 boy friends and her girl friend.  There was a tall woman who called herself a Hunteress, who brought a hunting bow with her, but even when they were trying to survive on less than 1000 calories a day and there were deer roaming across their land, she did not even try to shoot one!

And I won't even start on how dysfunctional they all were!

It had to be a spoof!  Surely?

But no, after the 2nd episode Mrs RC was sure it was real.  I googled it to find out the truth, and she was right!  It was real!  These were real people!  For some reason it was cancelled after 2 months.  Might have to watch the rest to find out why.  Did they starve?  Did they kill each other?  Could the Hunteress actually use her bow?

Anyway, it is great to be back!  See you again soon!