Status report after Christmas

Movie

My three years old son had never been in cinema, but last week we went to watch a movie, The Rise of the Guardians. He and my daughter enjoyed very much the show, however I had small problems with it.

1. The Rise of the Guardians is for Americans. Some of the 'heroes' are mostly unknown or uncommon (Jack Frost, Sandman, Tooth fairy) for the Hungarians. Santa Claus visit the children in 6th of December, not Chrismas Eve (then a baby Christ coming with the presents).

2. The story was in the usual frame/template. We got almost nothing new, we got the well-know storyline with supriseless twists.

In spite of these this movie was fun, not just the kids, but for me as well.

Film

During my long winter holiday (I have been home from 14th December... with the children.) I have time to watching films. I deceided to rewatch a great classic from my childhood, The Masters of the Universe. I had good memories when I first saw the adventures of He-Man. That was the day when I got my first Kinder Suprise! I remember how angry I was when the guests arrived and I had to cancel to watch that film...

The rewatch of The Masters of the Universe was shocking. The storyline, the costumes, the acting were ridiculus, but I still loved it. It was a little bit strange with complete dubbing, because first I watched one-man-dubbing on terrible monoton tune, with many missed or untranslated sentences.

I watched other films too (Mirror Mirror, The Dictator, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, etc) , but I don't want to blogging about them.

Series

I finished with the 4th season of Fringe, and I started to watch Farscape (with the children) and Lost (with my wife). Fortunatelly my wife and me both hate the Christmast movies on tv, so we quickly finished the first season of Lost.

Books

I won a short-story/novel collection with 10 writtings from a Hungarian publisher. It wasn't bad, but I wasn't fully satisfied with it. Somehow my favourite writtings from the 10 haven't won any awards, while the others yes.

I loved the story about the local superheroes in the Budapest's city steampunk version. The sour end of the novel - unfortunatelly - trully reflect the real Hungarian people.

Boardgames

Luckily the baby Christ was very generous this Christmas. We received a ton of games: Tales of the Arabian Nights, Arkham Horror.

And children got the followings:  Zooloretto, Piranhas, Buckaroo, Jack der Krähenschreck, Château Roquefort

Busy and exhausting December

November was simply busy, but December is exhausting also...

In Hungary the national (annual of the revolution) and religious (Christmas) holidays have a special national treatment. If a holiday day in Tuesday or Thursday than we get the Monday or Friday for "free day", so it expand a little bit the weekends. But it have a negative effect of it also: there are some Saturday when we have to work these mentioned "free days".

Let see the modified agenda of December:

1st December was a workday (for exchange of the free 31 December)

15th December was a workday (for exchange of the free 24 December)

Is this common in your country too?

I was at home these Saturdays but it didn't mean any relaxing, because I was so bold to ask out the little ones from nursery and kindergarden. Moreover 8th December we were at a Christmas party held by the company where I work.

6th December was the Santa Claus day, when we put candies, nuts, chocolate Santa Clauses and toys to the boots of kids. Then we started to buy gifts for Christmas and to my daughter birthday.

I left 8 days off to end of December which means I have been at home from 15th December. Yes... I was also too bold to ask out the children from nursery and kindergarden, so I have been at home alone with them. It's exhausting...

I had a plan to pay computer games, reading books, watching series and films, but some of these plans go to the trash.

Busy November

As you saw I was totally inactive at last month. Lot of things happened with me and my family.

Lets start with the most important: my wife is pregnant. Again. The doctors predicted the "Third One" to the end of May. Our small flat will be really crowded. Not just only with baby cry, but with 3 children.

I finished my short short story for the contest, but I was not entirelly happy with it. I think I had a very good core idea, but the 22,000 characters were too less. Unfortunatelly I left the spice from it because of the thickening the story. I had too much expectation about it, but it was good for start. Maybe next time.

I don't statisfied with my other running projects as well. I won't finish the translation of Sacred 2 this year. My boardgame designing project also stranded. Borned new ideas, but nothing serious.

Last week I bought a boardgame, which was on my wishlist for a while: Tales of the Arabian Nights.

My colleauges invited me to a Basketball Business League, so I has been playing to basketball championship this year. Due to the late night match schedules it doesn't cause any problem to my family. (My daughter has 2-2 ballet-dancing and swimming course a week, which is also modified our family calendar.)

I hope December will be much untroubled and not so busy.