What Santa brought me

I hope everyone had a lovely Christmas. This was probably the most relaxed I've been at a Christmas here; in past years, I was either feeling bum for not being able to understand the Dutch being spoken around me, or feeling choked out by all of the smoke from my in-laws. Now O's brother and his girlfriend have quit smoking, so spending time with them is so much more pleasant than it used to be.

Anyway, O and I got a lot of nice presents... We got quite a few books between us. Two of mine were actually belated birthday presents: Geert Mak's History of Amsterdam and a strange erotic cookbook that actually falls more on the side of porn than eroticism. It's by a French guy, which I think explains a lot. (The French guy is François Gervais, who designed the Durex room at the Hotel Winston in Amsterdam.) I gave O a book, and he gave me a book, and we eerily had wrapped the two similarly-sized hardbacks in similar ways, trying to pad them so they weren't so obviously books (which didn't work in either case). So when O's brother handed O the book from me, he thought his brother had looked at the name wrong and was confused when the tag indeed said it was for him.

I got some other small things like a small leather organizer, a candleholder and retro bakelite salt and pepper shakers. O was very happy with the antquarium and the 'jama bottoms I got him. He also got a couple of big bottles of Belgian abby-brewed beer with glasses, a silly keyboard brush and an artsy piggy bank. We jointly got some magnetic poetry. All in all some funky gifts that I look forward to using/reading.

For Christmas dinner, O's mom made what's become her traditional Christmas dinner: roasted chicken in a herb and onion sauce. Very yummy. And O's brother got his girlfriend an ice cream maker for Chirstmas, so they made a rich mocha ice cream for dessert. Even more yumminess. We got home around midnight and I called home and talked to my family for a bit. It was a good Christmas, though I'm happy to be done with it for another year.