Tag: christmas

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A Little Christmas Story – Funny

When four of Santa’s elves got sick, the trainee elves did not produce toys as fast as the regular ones, and Santa began to feel the Pre-Christmas pressure.
Then Mrs. Claus told Santa her Mother was coming to visit, which stressed Santa even more.
When he went to harness the reindeer, he found that three of them were about to give birth and two others had jumped the fence and were out, Heaven knows where.
Then when he began to load the sleigh, one of the floorboards cracked, the toy bag fell to the ground and all the toys were scattered.
Frustrated, Santa went in the house for a cup of apple cider and a shot of rum. When he went to the cupboard, he discovered the elves had drunk all the cider and hidden the liquor.. In his frustration, he accidentally dropped the cider jug, and it broke into hundreds of little glass pieces all over the kitchen floor. He went to get the broom and found the mice had eaten all the straw off the end of the broom.
Just then the doorbell rang, and an irritated Santa marched to the door, yanked it open, and there stood a little angel with a great big Christmas tree. The angel said very cheerfully, ‘Merry Christmas, Santa. Isn’t this a lovely day? I have a beautiful tree for you. Where would you like me to stick it?’

And so began the tradition of the little angel on top of the Christmas tree.

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Waterproof camera cases – and my awesome sister!

For those that know me, know i do a little photography. I have always wanted to take it underwater, to the point of using Glad resealable bags with my cheap Fuji point n shoot camera (wouldn’t try that with my Canon 450D SLR camera!).

Yesterday i got home to a large parcel airmail. I opened it up and there was a pile of all sorts of waterproof gear from ipod pouches, waterproof earphones (now you can apparently listen to your iPod in the pool!), and a couple of waterproof camera cases all from Aquapec . It turns out it was an Xmas present from my totally awesome sister Angela

We promptly filled the bath and tested the point n shoot camera in the smaller camera bag. Results were interesting, the photos came out well but it was hard to try and get the camera sitting in the pouch in the right place as the bag was much larger than the camera. Also the lens protrudes when turned on and of course moves in and out which made life interesting. If pressure is put on the lens then it can push the lens off its rails or damage the camera. I was a little worried about this so i grabbed a toilet roll, cut it to size, then taped it onto the camera like this.

The bath isnt huge, so was a little hard to get good shots that were not ‘in your face’ too much. This is one of the resulting photos

Today we took the lot of it down to the swimming pools. We got a LOT of attention for taking so many cameras into the pool of course, but it was fun. The smaller camera is able to do video which was cool, though I havn’t watched ot downloaded from it (and wont until i can find its cable!).

I had trouble seeing through the viewfinder on the SLR a bit but that turned out to be my goggles, i switched through a few that we had including a face mask or two, and used the best snorkel gear for better underwater time. I had some trouble with floating and not sinking enough, next time I will make a point of squeezing excessive air out of the bag and using a deeper pool with a solar pool cover. The SLR waterproof case looked like this

This meant that if the lens was shorter than the tube it was baggy at the end and the resulting photos had a nice vinegette going on from it. Ill have to hold that in place in future. width wise my 72mm lens only just fit into it, i wouldnt try any larger thats for sure! Here are a few more photos I took today from in the pool.

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Have a Merry fucken Xmas

This xmas i planned, i wasnt gonna be caught out, i had my budget setup so i had PLENTY of money spare to cover xmas.

I was frugal with funds and only spent $50 on each kid (i have 4) and an extra $50 on the oldest whos birthday falls on Xmas day. Plans were a shared lunch with family in Rotorua, just an hours drive from where we live, not too expensive.

Then husbands car all of a sudden wouldn’t go into drive. No major deal that I can see, we have my car still and we can sort that out next year. On the weekend I drove up to auckland and just as I got there an engine light came on. I spent a fair portion of spare money on finding somebody with a computer connector to check it was going to get me home (it was still running fine) without blowing up.

So now I spent my ‘spare money’ that was set aside for emergancies. I still had the rest planned, and budgetted for.  I did my shopping 2 days ago, it was the last thing i did before i parked up my car because of the engine light. I made sure i had plenty of food to get us through till Xmas, i weedled the budget out and got only the cheapest food knowing that I wouldnt be able to get back to the shops without a car for some time.

Today i went into the garage to get meat out for dinner, i smelt a horrid stench, and realized that one of the kids helping take the food from the car 2 days ago, had left the entire bag on the floor next to the freezer and not put it in.

Great, so now we have no food, no way of getting any more, and no money to buy it if we did. As it is we’ve had to extend loans $2k just to get a single car going so we can see family at Xmas, at this point im really fucken just pissed off and gutted.

What a fucken crap week!


Update: Managed to extend one of our loans, which puts us back a year financially which really sucks, but at least we can get a car fixed . I sold my $100 Super liquor voucher to a friend to cover food.  I’m in awe of the great friends who offered help, i cant thank you enough.

to Ness: For the record, i wasn’t crying! i just had allergies! honest!