![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
We got there first, of course; we're always too early for this kind of thing, when there's no time specified. We got to my aunt's house at around 2:30pm, because we were meant to be going for a walk before dinner at 5. Then we duitifully went for that walk, even though they only managed to get their youngest son (of three) out of the house for it. They have this pathetic little road-sweeper (off-)white dog called Holly, who's half-dead and completely blind (just before we went for the walk she ran full-tilt into a chest of drawers), but she really perked up at the prospect of going for a walk. We cheerfully discussed when they were going to put her down - probably in the summer, because nobody will take an old, smelly, incontinent dog for the summer when they go on holiday - as we were walking along with her darting about happily. It was very surreal. The walk was quite pleasent, though. I definitely was better at talking to relatives this holiday, both on Christmas Day itself and the Grandparent Visit of Christmas Eve.
We got back and everyone was there, and I perched on the arm of the sofa, but my uncle (the one whose house it wasn't) kindly offered me a seat right next to the nibbles. Since I hadn't had any lunch, I ate large quantities of 'almonds coated in sticky stuff', which were like honey roast almonds with caramelised sugar all over them in lumpy golden brown splatters of goodness. Very nice. There were some modelling balloons going around, so I made a thing. It was yellow, and if you held it by the long straight bit which I'd trapped too much of the air in to bend any more, you could charitably call it a flower, with two leaves (sections bent back on themselves) and a bud (the little pointy bit left at the end). It wouldn't balance on my head, although eventually I attached it to a red and white concoction dubbed 'the intestine hat' and wore that.
My little cousin Bethany made a red and pink hat for herself. She also played with the most annoying toy ever, a blonde-haired doll whose lips lighted up red when it spoke, and boy did it speak, like 'Do you want to go to the mall?' and 'Today's word is glam-a-licious, that means when something's really cool, like my shoes. Do you like my shoes?'. In this kind of weird mixture of French and American accents. Ugh. Her brother had a better toy, it was called 'RoboDoc' and it was one of these Operation-alikes where you have to retrieve some bits with metal tweezers, except the funny bit was that if you went wrong it spun around and the arms spun out and batted you away... yeah, okay, I was bored. Very bored.
Thankfully food was eventually announced, by a sudden lack of people in the room. Maybe I'd fallen asleep through the announcement. It was basically turkey and stuffing, but it was very well cooked turkey and strange but rather nice 'chesnut stuffing' with bits of liver in it, and there was also apricots and prunes wrapped up in bacon on sticks, and parsnips, and carrots (and sprouts, but I dislike sprouts), and a joint of ham (which I also didn't have much of at all, because while I like ham I liked the rest better), and nice crispy roast potatoes.
Near the start of the meal, my youngest cousin Samuel (who's somewhere around 5 years old) stuck his fingers in the candle flame trying to retrieve his cracker toy (which had fallen nearby and he was reaching for without looking), which occasioned much fuss and teariness, especially because he didn't get attention right away because only the 'kids' (including James, my oldest cousin who's been at Uni a year now) table saw him do it, and he didn't look like he was actually injured.
Naturally, we then proceeded to play with the candle a lot; I liked the way that cocktail sticks dipped in the melted wax would spark and fizz rather than actually burn for quite some time. As we began to set things on fire slightly more seriously, Ben (the cousin that's only 6months older than me, who was joining in the general burning of cocktail sticks) declared that someone was going to get hurt, and that it was going to be James. We went to get more food after James decided to burn the joke that he'd got from his cracker (placing it above the flame, out of the flame but in the heat, with a little tent of cocktail sticks) - when it began to smoulder it gave off such unpleasent acrid fumes (being a peculiar plasticky type of paper) we decided it would be best to leave the area for a while until the fumes had scattered a bit (after having quickly removed it from the candle flame, of course). The younger three - Bethany (7-8ish) and Samuel, whose house it wasn't, and Alex (14-ish), whose house it was - had disappeared by that time, having finished eating quicker (or in the latter case really just gone to play with the younger ones).
On the second round I picked out the liver from the stuffing, and just took the liver, because I don't like chesnuts, but I do like liver. I also took a lot more of the little bacon and apricot things, because my mother had stopped me taking more than two to start with so that other people could have them if they wanted, but not a lot of people had taken them. I then disassembled one of the turkey legs and made the food only fill half a plate so it didn't look like I'd taken too much. On the way back my mother commented on not being able to stop me eating too much because she was trapped on the other end of the table. Meh, I can watch what I eat. I almost ate too much trifle when that and Baileys' icecream (which I like, I've decided) came out, but I didn't, and then I didn't eat hardly any chocolates. So. Anyway.
We spent most of the evening playing LoTR Risk, which was certainly absorbing. The main non-cosmetic difference was the size of the board/continents/armies; everything was on a much smaller scale, reflected in the unit progression (orc/elf to horserider(dark/Rohan) at three units, to cave troll/great eagle at five units). There were some other main gameplay additions. 'adventure cards', where if you captured a territory with a 'site of power' marked in gold you got a card which could give out some immediate event (like 'pick the top three territory (Risk) cards, give them all some extra troops / destroy half the troops on them'), or let you at some future time put extra troops on a certain territory/continent, or let you do something else like mess with the Ring (more on that later) or get another leader (that too) or a stronghold (although we never got any of these, so we're not sure what they're about). Leaders, which you get one of to start with and can get another one through adventure cards (one of us did), which give you +1 bonuses to any roll in the territory they're in, and move around like normal troops (i.e. if you use it in attacking you have to move it, you can move on conquering a territory from the one it's in and on moving troops from the territory it's in) but don't actually count as troops. And the Ring, which is just a game timer thing really, travels through the map and you can get cards to slow it down or speed it up, although they're not really anywhere near as useful as the other adventure cards that give you more troops.
The dog ran straight into the fireplace at one point and knocked the big wooden fireguard over towards Samuel, but luckily the uncle who is not Samuel's father managed to catch it before it hit Samuel. The dog is very blind indeed, and also deaf it appears. And smelly, because they're worried that he'll fall to bits if they try and give him a bath. So although he wasn't precisely threatening or scary, he still wasn't pleasent to be around either. There was also a game of Trivial Pursuit that hte Risk-players were supposedly involved in, but given that I was falling asleep I had trouble keeping up with both games, although I did answer a couple of questions the rest of the team couldn't get - not through any great knowledge, just through consistant guessing - 'what were the fuji islands called when the inhabitants ate people' - the cannibal islands, 'what was the island where Captain Cook spent Christmas Day on called' - Christmas Island. I also could name all of the Great Lakes, although I didn't know which one was entirely in the USA not Canada, although the answer was my first thought rather that what I guessed in the end.
We called the game of Risk a draw when I was about to fall asleep at around midnight; I was winning, there were three playing and I had well over half the territories, plus I'd been the only person to get a continent and I'd held it most of the game (although the turn before last somebody had taken it from me by sneaking in the port when I'd had to attack from there to stop the other player getting a continent) so I had quite a few extra troops hanging around, but I might have been in a bit of trouble in the next round because I had spread myself a little thin in places, and no longer had any single well-defended continent.
Anyway, then we went home and went to sleep. The end.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
Trivial Pursuit
Date: 2002-12-27 05:41 pm (UTC)From:I remember when i used to burn cocktail sticks on the candles, it was last year or maybe the year befor. But its thought childish now witch is a real pitty.
And your right, sprouts are one of the mose horrid veg's in the world, well i dont eat many greens and i would eat most things rather then sprouts except cabbage witch is...and colliflower, yes i think thats all. and they are all in the same nasty group of food.
back to the point. "Good call on not eating the sprouts"
And this is going to sound materialistic but what presents did you get????
No thats not what its about but i still want to know.
And sleep is good.
+Haylar was great.
Re: Trivial Pursuit
Date: 2002-12-28 03:28 am (UTC)From:I like cauliflower, but only when steamed or covered in a white cheesy sauce.
I personally only got three presents; most of my relatives have thankfully given up and just give me cash instead (although this year I didn't even get much of that, the cheapskates).
Re: Trivial Pursuit
Date: 2002-12-28 08:00 am (UTC)From:Chocolate is nice but i ate all of mine befor 9am on christmas day.
And i just fixed my mums work pc and made some money. YAY