Trust Tommy

Despite the plethora of tweets and Facebook postings from Irish folks, and the announcement that schools are to close until Thursday, the Collison household has seen less than its fair share of snow, until today. We’ve been treated with the usual barrage of rain with some sub-zero temperatures, but we hadn’t been the setting for a Christmas card until today.

In one of my breaks from the Young Scientist, I looked up and noticed it was snowing. Before you could say ‘winter’, I was back with scarf, jacket and camera. The results of my expedition:

Click for bigger

Next door’s garden

Our back garden. You can even see the flecks of snow

Readers of my Mum’s blog will be familiar with these flower pots, and also with…

…these arctic creatures. They seem unusually happy for people confined to the outdoors.

I wouldn’t trust going on the trampoline in this weather. Something tells me that I’d hop on and then *snap*

Next door’s garden. Christmas Card 2010

The field behind us, caked in snow.

This post, originally posted on February 19th, 2008, less than 2 months into my no-chocolate year. John took it upon himself this year to make me eat chocolate. He failed. In honour of this, and of his efforts, which were undeniably good, here’s a reblog of his most dastardly attempt:

Sit back, relax, and attend the tale of the chocolate shampoo.

Yes. You read that right. Chocolate shampoo.

I finally got up about two hours ago, and hopped in the shower. I reach for the green shampoo but it’s empty. I grab the lynx shampoo and click open the top. I pour some onto my hand and a brown cascade flows onto my hand.

Anyone else would think that’s poo, but you guys know Trust Tommy better then that. No, this is John’s latest (in a string of) attempts to force me to eat chocolate.

I look at it.

No. Impossible. He couldn’t. That’s..

I can wonder all I like, but the truth is that, yeah, John replaced my shampoo with chocolate.

It hasn’t touched my hair of face. It’s merely dripping down my arm.

I close the lid and run the shower again, getting it off. Then I pour half of the chocolate down the drain.

I decide on my method of revenge. I get dressed, grab the bottle and head downstairs. John is innocently eating breakfast.

Nonchalantly, I approach him.

“Funny,” I say, in mock concentration, trying to keep a straight face. “When you buy Lynx shower gel, it’s usual for it to contain gel, right?”

By now, I’m right beside him.

“Yeah” I continue. “I’d be almost certain that’s the case”

John smirks. The smirk is quickly replaced with a look of alarm when I lunge forward and pour the last 1/4 of the bottle’s contents all over him.

Revenge is sweet. Hell yeah!

**

And you know what? He had the cheek to send around a photo essay!

As always, peeps, click for bigger versions

Well, because it’s the holidays, I just lose track of the days. When you’re doing nothing but drumming and playing cards, you can’t really differentiate which is a weekend day and which is a weekday. C’est impossible!

Yes, I’ve joined the Glee train, and this week’s song is Don’t Stop Believin’.

There’s a drumming video in the works but some of the intricacies are tripping me up, especially in the post-production, placing the song over the video. How I make them is relatively simple. Because the music is louder, I always drum to headphones rather than speakers. Using I movie on my MacBook, I record myself playing the piece through headphones, which leaves me with the drumming track, but no music. After that it’s a simple case of adding the song over the video and moving along the starting point of the song in iMovie until it’s at the same place as the starting point of the song through the headphones.

I’ll do a how-to video with screenshots and arrows and explanations of all processes involved soon. Stay tuned!

Well, Christmas is over. The next big thing we have to look forward to is the coming of the New Year. I think the days between Christmas Day and New Year’s Day perhaps my favourite days all year. No one is working, in fact, no one is doing anything at all really. I think it’s the one big advantage that Christmas holidays have over a summer holidays are any other holidays. And so we have a pretty laid-back lifestyle over these couple of days – seemingly endless games of Hearts (try not to let Mum shoot the moon…again) or scrabble succeeded by intense bouts of endurance reading. Yesterday, we went karting, and today we have some relatives visiting. The former was actually a bit out of place in this lethargic, easy-going lifestyle.

I think that this is why I enjoy Christmas. Being quite nonreligious, I instead enjoy the byproducts of the holiday season – the food, spending time with your family (everyone comes home for Christmas), the time off school. I’m not a Grinch, I don’t hate Christmas. What you believe is between you when your God, and being honest, it’s not so much that I’m a very tolerant, respectful person, it’s just that I don’t really give a huge amount of thought to what others believe.

Photo owned by rinkjustice (cc)

Patrick got the board game Diplomacy for Christmas, and we tried to play a game of this after Christmas dinner. Oh, and who would have thought that playing as 1910 countries could be so fun! I was France, and I attempted to make a crafty alliance with Mom, Britain to double-cross Dad, Germany, and steal his land. Meanwhile we had Patrick, Russia, coming down through Scandinavia to mount a northern attack on Germany. Finally, John went off and did his own thing, as Austro-Hungary, and captured the countries around the Black Sea. I feel sorry for the poor Yugoslavians…

However, in the end, negotiations broke down between countries and we all went off and played Hearts.

That’s totally how happened in 1910, right?

We are a family of precious few traditions, it has to be said. Well, tradition in the, erm, traditional sense of the word. You know, like going to midnight mass or having Grandma over for Christmas dinner, or everyone piling on the couch at 20:30 on a Christmas Eve to catch the Father Ted Christmas Special.

Then again, the word ‘tradition’ is actually defined by Google as an “inherited pattern of thought or action”. That, to me, seems a lot more lenient in that it says to me that it doesn’t have to be anything common, normal or usual.

And so, here’s a tradition. :)

Last year, around this time, I went Karting. I’ve always had a sordid relationship with karting to be honest. I was never a very tall child so when people went karting, I’d come out onto the track, into their self-titled ’smallest car’, sit in it and see if I could reach. Invariably, I couldn’t, so I’d wait in the main building while the others went karting. My annoyance as to not being able to varied, depending on whether there were books and TV wherever I was waiting, or if water was readily available, things like that. I was always one of those kids who could stare at the wall and entertain himself but you do kind of grow out of that.

So because this time last year was my very first time behind the wheel, I was a bit of a Granny, and the only way I would’ve won is if they’d been measuring from the bottom up, or by the number of overtakes. I wasn’t very experienced and wasn’t aware that you could go faster than I was going. In fairness, the kart makes a loud, guttural roar when you floor the accelerator and that probably put me off.

So, since I approach this with experience under my belt, this time will be different. I didn’t overtake anyone last year so that skill still escapes me. Once I get that sorted nothing stops me from coming first, right?

Check back here to see if my confidence is placed well or not…

There’s too much ritualistic, I-don’t-mean-it-but-it’s-what’s-done wishing of a Merry Christmas on blogs and Twitter I think. This isn’t one of those Merry Christmases, I assure you :)

Twitter had a gift for me too:

Abuse? I don’t tweet thaaat much. Certainly I know several people who do elephantine proportions much more accurately than I do :)

No matter, they let me back in. *changes password*

I’ll come out and say it: I’m not the world’s greatest fan of poetry. I’ll read it an appreciate it but I never enjoyed the autopsies that you do in school, spending many lessons agonizing to find hidden meanings behind the lines, between the lines and wherever else you care to look.

There are however a couple of poems which I really do quite enjoy. The Listeners by Walter de la Mare is one. Dulce et Decorum Est by Wilfred Owen is another. Seriously awesome.

‘Twas the Night Before Christmas is also one I enjoy:

‘Twas the night before Christmas, when all thro’ the house
Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse;
The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,
In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there;
The children were nestled all snug in their beds,
While visions of sugar plums danc’d in their heads,
And Mama in her ‘kerchief, and I in my cap,
Had just settled our brains for a long winter’s nap —
When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter,
I sprang from the bed to see what was the matter.
Away to the window I flew like a flash,
Tore open the shutters, and threw up the sash.
The moon on the breast of the new fallen snow,
Gave the lustre of mid-day to objects below;
When, what to my wondering eyes should appear,
But a minature sleigh, and eight tiny rein-deer,
With a little old driver, so lively and quick,
I knew in a moment it must be St. Nick.
More rapid than eagles his coursers they came,
And he whistled, and shouted, and call’d them by name:
“Now! Dasher, now! Dancer, now! Prancer and Vixen,
“On! Comet, on! Cupid, on! Dunder and Blixem;
“To the top of the porch! To the top of the wall!
“Now dash away! Dash away! Dash away all!”
As dry leaves before the wild hurricane fly,
When they meet with an obstacle, mount to the sky;
So up to the house-top the coursers they flew,
With the sleigh full of toys — and St. Nicholas too:
And then in a twinkling, I heard on the roof
The prancing and pawing of each little hoof.
As I drew in my head, and was turning around,
Down the chimney St. Nicholas came with a bound:
He was dress’d all in fur, from his head to his foot,
And his clothes were all tarnish’d with ashes and soot;
A bundle of toys was flung on his back,
And he look’d like a peddler just opening his pack:
His eyes — how they twinkled! His dimples: how merry,
His cheeks were like roses, his nose like a cherry;
His droll little mouth was drawn up like a bow,
And the beard of his chin was as white as the snow;
The stump of a pipe he held tight in his teeth,
And the smoke it encircled his head like a wreath.
He had a broad face, and a little round belly
That shook when he laugh’d, like a bowl full of jelly:
He was chubby and plump, a right jolly old elf,
And I laugh’d when I saw him in spite of myself;
A wink of his eye and a twist of his head
Soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread.
He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work,
And fill’d all the stockings; then turn’d with a jerk,
And laying his finger aside of his nose
And giving a nod, up the chimney he rose.
He sprung to his sleigh, to his team gave a whistle,
And away they all flew, like the down of a thistle:
But I heard him exclaim, ere he drove out of sight —
Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good night.

For all my talk of ‘need to be doing things all the time’, I somehow find time to procrastinate buying Christmas presents later and later each year.

Maybe it’s because I don’t like them. Not the actual presents, just the buying. I’m not one of those insufferable cynics who goes around posting leaflets with ‘happy commercialized Jesus day!’ in big writing – quite the opposite: I love Christmas. I’m just not a fan of having to buy stuff, because you risk putting people in the wrong box with what you buy, and nothing ticks people off more than being pigeon-holed in the wrong fashion.

Like many things, Christmas was a whole lot simpler when I was younger. You made sure you were in bed on time and when you got up there were presents. Being 5 rocked. I also distinctly remember not being one of those children who stayed awake in bed all night or worse, kept a silent vigil at the top of the stairs.

I totally had aspirations to be the former – but the events always happened in the same sequence: I hop into bed, and go ‘ooh, I should stay up to see if I can just hear h- ZZZZzzzzzzz’, and the next thing I knew, it was morning.

I never crept downstairs to catch a sight of the man in red purely because (I like to think) I was a logical boy at 6 or 7 years old – I went to bed, he came in and left gifts – it made good business sense and I wasn’t going to question that.

Nah, Santa wasn’t the one you had to look out for on December 24th; it was Mom. If this was Harry Potter, it’d be She Whose Curfew Must Be Obeyed. Dire retribution would follow for those who got up before 7am. Many a Christmas mornings would sometimes find me at 6am counting down the 3,600 seconds until I could get up.

Nowadays, the boot’s on the other food when it comes to Christmas. Not being a kid any more, I’m expected to give gifts as well as receive them. I like to think of it as another business proposition. Indeed Friday night found me working on a certain someone’s Christmas present, and as I was doing it the thought struck me that this could very well be how it is in 20 year’s time, when my kids are gone to bed and I’m silently working away in the kitchen alone desperately trying to get everything fixed in time.

Where do the goddamned batteries go?!

is a phrase I’m sure many nocturnal gift-givers such as myself can relate to.

Yesterday, we got our Christmas Tree, all 12 feet of it.

Next in the process is the star…

Before John gets disgruntled all over my blog, let the record show that the star was made by him, and he utilized his Technical Graphics knowhow to make a *mathematically correct* star.

And now the decorations:

These decorations have been have been in storage; this is their first sight of day since January, poor things.

The ones at the top were made by yours truly (the right one) and John (the two on the left) while the ones on the bottom were made by Dad’s mother (my grandmother)

Train tracks that eventually met further down, leading to a tangled mess and a crash where there great loss of life. Dies Irae, Kyrie Eleison,

I wasn’t trying to be artsy – I turned off the flash by accident :-[

Then all there was left was to decorate the tree!

I’m not short, it’s a 12 foot tree!

And that’s the finished product – no lights on because the flash of the camera messes with them..

Since it’s the 9th of November, I decree it fair game to now play Christmas music! I even left Dad with 2 CDs of it in the car up to Dublin this morning.

That kid has an insanely high voice – I mean… wow!

Some of you might take issue with my mentioning Christmas all the way back in November.. I know loads of you have taken issue with the decorations going up as soon as Halloween’s over, but I’ve waited 9 days which is unusually good self restraint on my part :)

The thing is though – Christmas is only fun before the actual day. After Christmas, no one wants to look at the little Santa that John made in Junior Infants any more – the Christmas Tree (expertly decorated by yours truly) only barely manages to last until January 6th. Seriously though, come December 26th, nobody cares about Christmas – all eyes are set firmly on New Year’s Rockin’ Eve. After that, it’s the Young Scientist (anyone notice it’s later this year than previous years? 12-16th instead of 6th-10th it was last year). Once that’s over, it’s back to school!

And look forward to Midterm! :)

Created a new category and all for the occasion :)