Wheelistically @ Claire.NU

I am now the owner of about 200% more stuff than I have ever pre­vi­ously owned.

I have so much stuff that we had to throw away old stuff to make way for new stuff. Which, now of course leaves the new stuff and not-so-old stuff for us to house. Only, even with the old stuff gone, we still have far too much new stuff and not-so-old stuff and there­fore clearly, too much stuff in general.

Amongst said stuff, is a new white 30GB iPod that des­pite belong­ing to me, seems to boast K’s entire music col­lec­tion and only mere frag­ments of mine. (She has since par­tially redeemed her­self by pur­chas­ing Maceo Parker’s deli­cious inter­pret­a­tion of Prince’s “Greatest Romance Ever Sold” on iTunes for me.) The ‘Pod is also socked in ador­able knit­wear that I change in accord­ance to my out­fit, for the day. I had my reser­va­tions about ‘Pod, but it’s grown on me con­sid­er­ably. My only irk is the lack of AC adapter/mains char­ger. I’ve one ordered from eBay, but there’s no way I’ll see it this side of Christ­mas.

I am also the proud owner of my first ever Digital SLR cam­era; the much desired Nikon D70s!

I was given the kit that comes with the body, “stand­ard” lens, caps, straps and paraphernalia, though I’ve yet to mas­ter how the bloody thing works. I can snap away mer­rily in a “point-and-shoot” fash­ion, but have failed to pro­duce any­thing worth keep­ing, as I’ve not dis­covered how to con­fig­ure the flash away from the fact­ory set­ting of “tem­por­ar­ily blind all liv­ing creatures within a half-mile radius”.

It must be said how­ever, that I’ve been rel­ish­ing the return of the sat­is­fy­ing “Mir­ror Clack” afforded by the D70s (or in fact, any SLR for that mat­ter!), it’s now just so much more sat­is­fy­ing to press that shutter-release.

My mum gave me Christ­mas money, which she said she felt bad about as it looks like she hasn’t bothered, I dis­agree — it’ll be put towards some new gad­gets for my cam­era (I’ve already bought the offi­cial soft shell case for 20 quid (incl. P&P) off eBay, a bar­gain see­ings as it was about double that in high street shops).

My love for retro gam­ing can now be fully enjoyed since, K has replaced my ancient and dust-ravaged Sega Mega­D­rive II (Gen­esis, to you Amer­ic­ans) with one in near mint con­di­tion — it even had the ori­ginal poly­thene pack­aging inside the box, do you know how hard that is to find? I also got 20-odd games with it.

The theme was con­tin­ued in one of the gifts I bought K: a NES with games and a NES Zap­per (light gun), we’ve both been busy down memory lane, “admir­ing” the graph­ics and blow­ing the dust from the innards of the respect­ive 16 and 8-Bit cart­ridges, in order to make the games load.

I have about a squil­lion other gad­gets and cool things that light up, includ­ing: a rub­ber PC key­board that lights up blue and you can roll-up too! (for stor­age pur­poses etc), a mouse pad that lights up purple (and has a 4 USB hub built-in), a light-up (blue and pink) optical mouse, a Bin­ary Clock (my mood clock died earlier this year) and a “red to blue” Aduki ni (not to be con­fused with the sib­ling, Aduki) from Math­mos. I Math­mos — I already own an AstroBaby (ori­ginal 1963 lava lamp) and an Air­switch tc, so I’m build­ing quite a collection.

My sis­ter and her boy­friend gave me some fab­ulous The Night­mare Before Christ­mas good­ies that match and com­pli­ment the ones Bean bought for me.

As a final word on the pressies, I’d just like to thank Vixx again for the Clark­son book and Prince album (which, as she knows from my excited ram­blings con­tains a pic­ture of Prince’s naked arse cheeks! ).

I can’t wait to get stuck into the book, though it’ll no doubt have to wait until the new year as I’ve star­ted Vladi­mir Nabokov’s Lol­ita over this last week — I’ve wanted to read it for years, K man­aged to snag me a hard­back copy for Christmas.

As I said before, I shall be away over the hol­i­day sea­son, so if all falls quiet this end, you know why.

Lastly, Merry Christ­mas everyone!