Are we there yet?

As predicted, at 9:30am, my door gets knocked on "get up, we want to open presents". I crawl out of bed, get dressed, and drag myself in for the start of what's going to be a long day.

My 7 yo brother starts handing out the presents, with somewhat of a bias towards his own of course, but since he's got more than the rest of us, that probably works out in the end.

Surprisingly, I did actually get some good stuff this year, mainly a drill (only 'cause dad wants his back), a tool box and tools (cheesy, but I'll just replace the bits that break with proper bits, so it's a good start), a tool bag (might find a way to use it to carry my tools on the bike), Analyze This DVD, a clock, and chocolate, pretty useful all round, maybe Christmas isn't as useless as I thought (at least I didn't get a sombrero or a cooking book this year).

I wouldn't have minded the day, except that my parent's place is full of muck associated with animals (cats and a rabbit), to the air and all the furniture is loaded with fur/hair etc. After sitting in there for a few hours, my head started pounding, my eyes and nose would not stop running, and I got a sore throat. I hung in for as long as I could, eventually gave up and returned to my living area. I don't know what I looked like at this stage, bloodshot running eyes, running nose, must have been charming.

Oh, and the other small point, is that it was about 40C outside, I grabbed a cloth and lay down for a while, after an hour or so, I could feel that I was dehydrated, I was delirious, I thought I was going to die.

I got in my shower to cool down (which is still only cold, so that worked fairly well), after that, I felt ok for a few minutes, until the heat evaporated me dry and I was back to square one.

Shortly after escaping allergy central, 7 yo brother came to find what I was up to, and I told him I couldn't handle the allergens, so he went about evicting the cats and vaccuuming the furniture.

Shortly after my shower, he came to check on me again, I returned to allergy central, after consuming several antihistamines and paracetamol, here we go for round 2.

I sat in the slightly cooler air, which helped, but I could still feel the air attacking me. A short time into this, one of my mates popped round to wish Merry Christmas, and I had a chat to him, that was nice. I managed to handle a few more hours in allergy central, by this time, it was habitable outside, so I left again, to write this post, before watching some TiVo of the stuff I missed while suffering through my parent's taste in tv earlier in the day.

I'll be out and about tomorrow, wishing Merry Christmas' and Cr, er, happy New Years everywhere, that should be more fun than today, it couldn't be hard, I think even the other day when I stacked my bike was more enjoyable than today, on the whole.