The most middle of 2012

After watching a video by the hilarious Wheezy Waiter:

I had a think, what would I rate as the most middle things of 2012?

Film

I quite liked 'The Watch' when I went to the cinema. It wasn't the greatest film I've ever seen, but the jokes were funny, the actors were alright, and I felt I got my moneys worth of jokes and story. Its not going to win awards, but its not going to win any razzies either

Photo from this guy

TV Show

This was a hard one to choose, I found Breaking Bad very average, but its not really from this year, so not sure if it should count. So I'll have to go with the new smegging season of Red Dwarf on Dave. It was OK, better than the latter series and the horrid Back to Earth majobby. But it was no-where near the quality of the original four series. 

Band

I'm undecided between Rita Ora and Fun. (I have no idea why they have a full stop after the name, thats silly, punctuation shouldn't be messed with). Rita Ora seems to be a 2012 Gwen Stefani. Her songs are ones I can put up with when they're blaring out at work, but I wouldn't go to see her if she played Sheffield. Unless it was free, it seems I have no limits to who I'll listen to if its free (Jedward, The Saturdays, Craig David, Joe  Mcelderry- please don't judge :/)

Fun (± the full stop) seem like very generic indie pop, the kind of thing I know I should like, but find it very...meh

Song

Gangnam style-Yeah, its funny I guess. oh look, someone miming to it in a hilarious way, thats quite funny. Oh look, its being played on the radio, most the humour is in the video, but I'll let it pass. Oh, its being played again, and again, and again, and again and again, and again, and again and again, and again, and again and again, and again, and again

"Play any song a billion times and its starts getting annoying. Apart from he-mans cover of 4 Non Blondes' song 'Whats Up', thats always funny"

-Me

Whats your most middle of 2012?

The 12 sofas of Christmas

We're in that confusing time of year, between Christmas and New Years Eve when:

-We all have absolutely no clue what day of the week it is (its Thursday, right?)

-According to adverts, we need to get a gazillion sofas because they're a bit cheaper

-According to my true love, I need two turtle doves and a partridge

-According to mum, I really really want to try the turkey cheesecake, or turkey smoothie, or other such turkey foodstuffs
-According to Wikipedia, its the feast of Stephen (which reminds me of a joke;
Q-How does Father Christmas like his pizzas?
A-Deep-pan, crisp and even

-According to the TV scheduling people, I need to watch a show about tap-dancing dogs, and Disney's Sword in the Stone (actually, both of those sound appealing)

-According to customers at work we all need to get so drunk we don't know what we're doing

-According to me, we should watch rubbish TV, do enough work that I feel I'm on top of it, but not enough that I work up a sweat, and 'help' the family with the tough task of eating all the sweets, drinking all the spirits/beers, and being merry (or Mary if I'm feeling in a panto theme)

Merry Christmas(plus or minus a couple of days)

The Holly and the Ivy, the Baubles and the Tree.

Our house seems to become a forest every Christmas, probably due to my mum being a pagan, and it being Yule or something, I don't really listen.

We have our spots to get holly, ivy, pine cones and fir twigs. It wasn't the best year for holly berries, so it took a while of searching the country roads for holly bushes. We got a few funny looks, and I got my foot run over by my mums car :(

But eventually, we got the following haul

Although we did cheat, and get the mistletoe from the market, it was too high up to reach :(

With the decorations down from the attic, and the tree brought in from the back garden, , it was time to  put the decorations up

And in the darkness:

With the Christmas plants in, and some apples, oranges and chillies bought, the rest of the house was soon just as chrismassy

Although, I always insist on some 'less grown up' decorations 

MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE

Driving home for christmas

With the amount of frost and mist that there has been throughout the week, I was hoping that the journey back home from uni across the peak district would look like this 

Photo from this guy

or this

Photo from this guy

Hell, even like this would have been nice!

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Photo from this guy

But no, the weather decided it would be fun to increase the fog, and replace the frost with rain, lots and lots and lots of rain.
So instead of being able to a)witness and b) photograph the fantastic scenes that my GF had told me she'd seen when crossing the moors, I got the following photos of the second most popular national park in the world:

Travelling through  the beautiful village of Castleton

Ah, the historic Derwent Dam & Reservoir  



The valleys around here just take your breath away, don't they?

Its beginning to look a lot like uni christmas

Because of the Christmas term coming early, the Christmas celebrations occur early.

There's christmas trees

There's Christmas Jumpers

There's christmas socks

CHRISTMAS PRESENTS!!!!!!!

Christmas Dinner

Christmas Lights

And, erm, dinosaurs wearing santa hats

Rich Makes:A Budget Christmas Dinner

Ingredients: 

All in, around £5 (athough the turkey was reduced)

1)Chop the veg till it looks like this

2)Boil the potatoes for half an hour,and cover the turkey, before putting it in for an hour and 15(ish, unless you forget to check the time, and also need it in for longer because you're bad at timing food)

3)Put the parsnips in the oven for 30 mins with some honey covering it. Also put the potatoes in the oven in oil for the same amount of time

4) Fry the sprouts because your housemate whines she doesn't like sprouts, so you make a new way to do it, and they still don't try it :(

5)Get everything out in the wrong order, so the veg goes cold :(

And get M to carve the turkey breast because it sounds similar to Tukey Test, and you've had enough of that today

6) EAT IT

NOTE: Possible add-on to the whole process

Have a cat that pesters you the whole time!

Wheat, Meat and no more Stinky Feet

Its getting to the business end of the university term, so my life has mainly consisted of turning these little guys:

into something I can write 4,500 words about.

Its hard, oh so very hard to do.

Because we're leaving for Christmas soon, its time to use up the freezer stuff. Luckily quite a lot of the stuff we have in our freezer are sausages and burgers my GF's mum gave us. So most meals have contained sausages/burgers:sausage pasta, sausage cassarole, sausage and leek hash (not as good as I hoped) and pork burgers with caramelized apple and onion (slow fried for half an hour with sugar and apple juice- frickin amazing).

I also got my first Christmas presents of the year :D

H is going home early, so she gave our presents early, I got:

Some ski gloves (which just 'happened' to have Everton written on them)- Will come in useful in Iceland!

And some foot spray, because its a well known fact to my friends that my feet are the second worst smell in the world, after forgotten things in the fridge.

I highly recommend it, pretty sure one of the ingredients must be magic powder

The 12 ways of christmas

Its December now, which means I've been been in a christmassy mood for about two months now. But about now the rest of the world is starting to catch up. There are a million different things I love about Christmas  but the best 12 are as follows:

1)Raymond Briggs- Father Christmas: My favourite Christmas book growing up, and favourite cartoon too, there's something great about the idea of Father Christmas being a grumpy northerner!

2) Warm mince pies and ice-cream- the best team since bacon and egg

3)The Salvation Army Christmas band- Nothing makes me feel more like its Christmas than the Salvation Army playing carols in the snow
4)Christmas tree lights in the dark-Its like actual magic

Photo from this guy

5)Present shopping- Not as much the busy city centre panic-sesh, but I love the picking up of casual hints, the trawling through all the possible things they might like, before finding the perfect gift for them
6)Christmas day walks- Its a tradition in my house to go for a walk on Christmas day, to the park, into the Peak District, or anywhere else, its a nice way to spend a couple of hours.

7)Frost- Nothing is better than walking on crisp, frozen leaves, or breaking frozen puddles by treading on them.
8)Snow- its still magical to me seeing as I don't drive yet! Sledging, snowball fights, walking in crisp snow, watching it fall. I frickin love snow.

9)Christmas songs- Put on Shakin Stevens, WHAM, Bing Crosby or Dean Martin, and its an instant good mood.
10)Christmas dinner- I love food. And Christmas dinner is the superbowl of  food. Turkey, Brussels sprouts, red cabbage, chicken gravy. I'm drooling just thinking about it!

Or the student, low budget version.....

11)Unwrapping presents-I'm not going to pretend that I don't like getting presents. Its great. He have a rule in our house where only one  person can open a present at a time, so there's a lot of eyeing up your next victim to unwrap.
12)Spending time with family- Being away from home when at university has made me appreciate how great my family is. They are annoying, but that's part of their greatness.

I taught I taw a puddy-tat

Apparently our house is like catnip for errr...cats. They just seem to  love the place, and will take any chance they can get to chill out in the living room. First came the Dude/Slytherin Cat/Tybalt/Minion. He was pretty awesome, and a return visitor, but wasn't much for fussing. 

Next came Geri/Jerry (couldn't decide if it was male or female). S/He came over one evening, did a bit of wandering, bit of chilling, and (apparently) a bit of taking photos of him/herself

And then  came the newest one. Hasn't a name yet, but she really didn't want to leave us, V had to actually pick her up and carry her outside