T w e n t y S i d e d
Merry Christmas, nerds. A couple of months ago we talked about Halloween vs. Christmas on the Diecast, and how it seems like Halloween is gradually moving to dethrone Christmas as the culturally dominant holiday. It hasn’t happened yet, but it could happen in the next 20 years. That’s pretty strange.
In any case: I hope you’re having a good one this year.
This has been a small Christmas for us. We used our Christmas money to arrange a visit with my oldest two kids over Thanksgiving. That was better than exchanging gifts. We were long overdue for a visit, even if it did leave us skint for a couple of months.
As an aside:
Some people balked at the idea that we were visiting with relatives in the age of COVID. To clear things up: They were tested before they made the trip, and we got tested after they left. We ONLY met with my kids, instead of having the usual gathering of the extended family. And since my kids live and work public service jobs in a tiny Texas town where nobody wears masks, the week-long visit represented a significant increase in safety for them. For one week they stopped being exposed to the reckless public.
It was a risk for us, but in a statistical sense this weeklong visit represented a very slight exposure risk – perhaps the same exposure risk my wife faces every time she goes to work – for a huge benefit. The only reason we could afford the visit was because COVID had made hotels and airfare so cheap. This was a pretty good tradeoff in terms of risk vs. reward.
So we’re having a small Christmas. That’s fine. We’ll end 2020 with a lowkey celebration. I can’t complain. I already got Something Unicorn – LED String Curtain Lights with Dimmer Switch for Teen Room, Girls Room, College Dorm, Nursery, Kids Room Décor. Perfect for Unicorn, Fairy & Rainbow Decoration. (Standard Version) for Christmas, and really that’s all anyone needs.
How about you? Having a good Christmas? Did Santa bring you anything cool?
Shamus Plays WOW
Ever wondered what's in all those quest boxes you've never bothered to read? Get ready: They're more insane than you might expect.
The Death of Half-Life
Valve still hasn't admitted it, but the Half-Life franchise is dead. So what made these games so popular anyway?
Artless in Alderaan
People were so worried about the boring gameplay of The Old Republic they overlooked just how boring and amateur the art is.
Civilization VI
I'm a very casual fan of the series, but I gave Civilization VI a look to see what was up with this nuclear war simulator.
Batman: Arkham Origins
A breakdown of how this game faltered when the franchise was given to a different studio.
Funny, I thought I was ahead of the dateline. It’s still the evening of the 24th here. Has Santa already been in your part of the world?
Mild sarcasm aside, I’m glad your kids’ visit was a safe one.
Also, those curtain lights do look good. It’d be cool to see a pic of your whole setup some time, if you’re open to sharing.
Merry Christmas Shamus!
It’s Christmas here (NZ) already so Merry Christmas!!! :-)
Frohe Weihnachten, Shamus! I hope you and your family remain healthy and safe.
I’m still trying to decide if I want to spend my money on Cyberpunk 2077 right now. I would enjoy any further analysis of the game that you want to provide!
God jul from Sweden!!
Nadolig llawen!
Merry Christmas Shamus! There’s no Christmas tree or gathering in my place but the light bulb, barbecue ribs, and city skyline at night make for a neat atmosphere!
Merry Christmas from Bulgaria! Hope you and your family have a good one!
Häid jõule from Estonia! It’s true – the older you get, the more you value those even short meetings with your loved ones. Maybe the pandemic has made it all the more obvious, which I hope is only a good thing.
I live in a not so tiny Texas town (Fort Worth), and it seems like people have gotten bad about wearing masks in the last few weeks, or at least they are whenever I visit Wal-Mart. More people just going without, taking it off to have cell phone conversations while in the store, or the large amount of “nose-free” masks. Meanwhile, my work is fairly strict about applying spacing restrictions. We’ve had several employees test positive, and several have had family members who have died from it or are severely ill.
Merry Christmas Everyone!
Vrolijk Kerstfeest from Belgium, Shamus and friends and family!
Our Christmas family festivities were entirely on line, on both sides, and all Christmas plans have been cancelled for us.
Outside of my therapist, the neighbors and my wife, the last time I saw someone in real life was…September, I think, when I went grocery shopping. Before that, my wedding in August.
I’m pretty much living like a hermit, my wife works in the medical service sector so has regular contact with a lot of people, all with masks and often in full body suit, but still. Everyone who can isolate, should. I can’t imagine living in an area where large parts of the population just ignore or disbelief. Even here, a fair amount of people don’t properly follow the rules…And those same people wonder why restrictions keep getting stricter and more prolonged. Stay the F indoors, stay away from people, and we probably COULD have actually had some sort of Christmas. It’s because of people who won’t follow the rules that everything takes longer than it should.
Yes, we had a Corona wedding with 30 people, in the open, with masks, and without food or drinks. We’ve had grandparents’ funerals completely on line, baby showers on line, etc etc. It’s lonely but it’s safe, and I’ll be remaining that way until the numbers are way, way down.
Spending Christmas on my own, away from my family (can’t go see them due to the COVID restrictions). We’ll see each other over a conference call, but that’s it.
Feels weird, because now it just feels like any other day of the year. It’s not the first time I spend a Christmas on my own, but it’s the first time it feels like it’s not Christmas at all.
Well, hope everyone has a nice time regardless.
We shall be alone together! I’ve got some relatives in the same city, but we’re all just dropping off minor gifts to each other, and otherwise isolating. Video-chat can share merriment, turkey, and fireplaces well enough anyways! :)
Merry Christmas to you and yours, Shamus. :) If I’m being totally honest, I’m still a bit hesitant over the idea of visiting over the holidays. While you’ve done your homework by making sure everybody’s tested negative, there’s always the minute chance the tests could be wrong, or somebody catches something in transit. For countries like New Zealand where community spread is nearly non-existent, it’s an acceptable risk, but things are pretty bad over in the US. Still, I can understand and sympathise with the need to simply have those you love close to you, in a year where everything else has seemed to go wrong. I hope my concerns stay unfounded. :)
Fröhliche Weihnachten aus Österreich!
It is a weird year this one.
I am happy to hear that there are people out being responsible while meeting with family. I so wish that would be the norm.
Eyeryone keep safe and stay healthy. An be excellent to each other!
Thank you Shamus for all your hard work.
Merry Christmas from Uruguay. For Christmas, I got myself something simple: an ocarina, modeled after the one from The Legend of Zelda, which I intend to learn how to use (it’s not just an ornament, it’s a 100% working instrument). I’m not much from musical instruments, but being a huge fan of the games I really want to be able to play its tunes.
Also, I got my goddaughter one of those animatronic Grogus and damn, it’s hard to let that thing go. It’s so tempting to just keep for myself but obviously I can’t do that.
What is a “Grogus” – Google can only seem to find a few metal bands named that, and wants to auto-correct it to “gorgeous”. :)
“Baby Yoda” from The Mandalorian. AKA Grogu
Give into your temptations! Search your heart, and you’ll know it to be true! Peace is a lie, there is only passion!!!!
O, y Feliz Navidad y prospero Nuevo Año! Mucho suerte y salud para Usted y toda su familia!
Merry Christmas from Argentina, Shamus!
And to all the cool people that visit this blog, Happy Holidays!
I’m a strong introvert, so I appreciate the wonderful justification COVID provides for not visiting relatives over the holidays. For once my vacation actually feels like a vacation instead of another job.
Can’t complain. It’s a “day off” of our standard Christmas this year which I’m counting as a gift… Our standard is a gathering with the neighbors and their family, and I “hate” kids (their grandkids are good kids, but they are loud, high pitched, and easily excited) and gatherings with people I really don’t know (meeting people twice a year on holidays doesn’t really do it for ‘getting to know them”) doing things I don’t enjoy (like watching movies I don’t want to watch). So not doing that this year, instead it’s a ‘quieter’, ‘smaller’, Christmas eve informal ‘snackables’ dinner with the neighbors and their immediate kids and grandkids (not the whole extended family). It’ll waaaaaaay less ‘difficult’.
And Santa is finally bringing me an upgraded computer. It’s a bout time too, I’ve only been hoarding gift cards and “birthday/christmas cash’ for the last 3 years for this purpose…
Chag Chanukah sameach, happy holidays Shamus!
While we can’t visit our loved ones, we can still let them know we’re thinking of them. Next year we’ll make up for lost time.
I just had a zoom call with family that I haven’t seen in 21 years. Some people were feeling quite alone this year which prompted them to organize a digital meetup with extended family. It was fun to talk to some family that I might never meet again(not in a morbid way, just distance. We are across Canada, US, and in Italy).
Whole article’s on the front page, boss…! ;)
Merry Christmas!
Well, since I think adults have every right to assess their own level of acceptable risk and make decisions accordingly, I will say merry Christmas and I’m glad you got to visit!
(Incidentally, there was a recent study (published in Nature last month) of 100,000 people in Wuhan that showed no – not low, no, as in zero – cases of asymptomatic transmission. Also, masks are themselves a disgusting vector for disease, given that basically no one is following proper PPE protocols (change them every 30 minutes, don’t touch them once on except to remove and discard, and if you must wear them in the bathroom, do NOT touch them while in the bathroom and discard them immediately upon exit using gloves, or else wash your hands thoroughly after discarding (I’m not sure why the fecal-oral transmission route has been ignored in the media…the bathroom is the LAST place anyone should be wearing a mask!!!), etc.). So your kids are probably getting exposed to way less pathogens than those of us who are surrounded by people who can’t stop touching their visibly dirty, well-used masks both before and after their bathroom visits.)
I’m not sure what you’re trying to say with the Wuhan bit, but just so everyone else knows, the paper does not say that of the 100,000 people in Wuhan there were no cases of asymptomatic transmission. it says of the 300 people in Wuhan who were asymptomatic between 14th May and 1st of July, there was no evidence of transmission once they’d successfully put those people into isolation.
I.e. I think some people might have taken you to be saying that there’s not evidence of asymptomatic transmission in Covid in Wuhan. What the paper said was that isolating asymptomatic carriers works, which is very different.
If the sources you read said it was evidence of no asymptomatic transmission, then you’re sources are unreliable and I wouldn’t trust anything else they have told you. The stuff you’re saying about masks is also a bit dodgy, and I’ll be happy to dig into your sources with you, but I suspect there’s been some Chinese whispers going on. Shamus’ blog might also not be the place for it.
Here is the nature paper for people to read themselves:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-19802-w
Key part in the 4th paragraph:
” None of detected positive cases or their close contacts became symptomatic or newly confirmed with COVID-19 during the isolation period.”
The source for masks is common sense. If you wear the same mask for hours or days at a time without cleaning it, it’s a great place for germs to grow, especially with the hot, moist environment right under the mouth. (I should note that I live in a very humid area. A mask is damp within a few minutes of breathing through it. This is why I think that here, they need to be changed very frequently. In a dry area where evaporation actually occurs, it would be different.) I don’t believe for one second that the people I see at my local grocery store are sanitizing their (often visibly dirty) masks at *all*, much less as often as they should.
So, my opinion is that regardless of the benefits of masks in a laboratory setting (which is the setting for all the mask studies I’ve seen so far, which is why I can give only an opinion. I did look at that Danish study, but it’s too weak to support any conclusions either way), lack of compliance (I don’t mean deliberate noncompliance, I mean people unaware they are not complying) makes them useless in the real world.
Or at least, at my grocery store, which I suppose could be an outlier. If there is a grocery store out there where everyone is scrupulously clean and no one ever touches their face or mask, as a lifelong germophobe, I would very gladly go there!
You can’t use common sense anymore without at least three different sources saying you’re allowed to. I’m only half kidding.
Anyway here are a group of scientists who found Covid in a kiwi. So I say do whatever the hell you like.
https://mobile.twitter.com/robinmonotti/status/1342058311986905088
(lol I love how twitter labels it as ‘potentially sensitive’)
Well to be fair, masks are more to prevent someone who is infectious from spreading it around. “It” being anything and everything. Keeping general biologic material confined to themselves. When trying to prevent bad things getting to you, then you need hazmat suits etc. IE a doctor performing surgery wears a mask and gloves. Their entire ‘scrub in’ procedure is all about the patient. A doctor treating an infectious person wears a full suit, multiple gloves and possibly an isolated air source.
IE A random person’s dirty mask is to help you. Your dirty mask is to help them. You are correct though.
Perhaps I read too much into what Kathryn was saying. I read it as suggesting that the idea that masks are a bigger vector than getting a faceful of Covid particles.
It is true that no-one is following good Covid protocol and people should be washing their masks much more often, but touching your mask too much is probably still less worse than wearing no mask at all even without the effect of being protected by other people, and that generally lines up with what we see in the real world.
If thats not what you were suggesting Kathryn than I do apologise.
If this is the wrong place for this discussion, I apologise to Shamus but… I just can’t see how you’ve possibly concluded that this study does not support the hypothesis that asymptomatic spread is very rare, if it exists at all.
In the very paper you quote, in the discussion section, it states: “Compared with symptomatic patients, asymptomatic persons generally have low quantity of viral loads and a short duration of viral shedding, which decreases the transmission risk… All close contacts of the asymptomatic positive cases tested negative, indicating that the asymptomatic positive cases identified in this study were unlikely to be infectious “.
Obviously, you can’t prove a negative but characterising this paper as evidence against asymptomatic transmission is entirely reasonable, given there were 300 asymptomatic positives and over 1000 close contacts traced, with no evidence of infection. The paper neither says nor implies anything about the efficacy of isolating asymptomatic cases (given the paper’s conclusions, it doesn’t even appear to be necessary) so I don’t understand how you’re reaching this conclusion. Clearly they couldn’t spread it after being isolated, that’s just common sense, the question is whether they spread it in the period between infection and detection: that is the focus of the paper, and the answer seems to be no.
It seems to me to be bad form to be casting aspersions on other people’s sources, when it appears you haven’t read or understood the entirety of the source you’re quoting.
I’m sure the paper supports the idea that asymptomatic people have significantly lower transmission risk, but that’s not proof that they can’t transmit it, and it doesn’t mean we can safely not worry about it.
Thousands of people are dying every day of Covid. Most of them must have known it’s not a good idea to hang out with people with nasty coughs but somehow, they got infected anyway. There’s a new mutant strain appearing that seems to be more transmissible – maybe it becomes infectious before symptoms appear?
That’s not even close to ‘100,000 people in Wuhan that showed no – not low, no, as in zero – cases of asymptomatic transmission’ of course I can cast aspersion on whatever source came up with such nonsense.
If the source had just been claiming that asymptomatic transmission was lower, I wouldn’t even have blinked.
What I’m trying to say is, the reason I didn’t address that part of the paper is, I don’t care if people believe asymptomatic transmission is lower, because that’s true. Even if viral load were exactly the same, it’d still be true that someone who is not coughing is less likely to give you Covid than someone who is not coughing.
The only bit I take issue with is representing that paper as if it were evidence of 0 asymptomatic transmission, when asymptomatic transmission is a well established fact, which has been observed in in environments throughout the world and reported in numerous papers.
Any source that is trying to present this paper as counter-evidence to that is either malicious or letting their beliefs drive them to such an extent that they’re misreading any source of information they can get their hands on.
You stated that the source you provided (the nature paper) did not show zero cases of asymptomatic transmission, I quoted you the section where it did. I don’t have a clue what these “sources” from the OP are that you are referring to, the claim made in the original post was substantially correct, the study did not find any cases. It had nothing to do with the efficacy of isolation of asymptomatic cases, which was your claim. You’re now moving the goalposts, and addressing a different claim that was never made in the conversation – that this study is 100% proof that asymptomatic transmission is impossible. I’ll let you take that up with whoever wants to actually make that claim.
Merry Christmas from North Carolina, U.S.A., all!
Our present this year is . . . a condo. Like Shamus, we moved in a bid to pin down our housing costs. In other news, being a grown-up sucks.
Congratulations on your new condo!
There’s an old joke that “anybody driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac”, and this whole pandemic has absolutely weaponized the sentiment. The truth is that risk management is a hard task, with no right answers – (admittedly, there are some pretty clearly wrong answers).
It’s a shame more people aren’t willing to have patience with other people making hard decisions (and maybe coming with different answers) but instead are so quick to judgement of both friends and strangers alike, with so little benefit of the doubt or empathy.
One of the reasons I don’t really like regulation for certain things — doing things with law — is that I don’t want to get into situations of “Easy for me to say”. It’s easy to say that everyone should give up things that are easy for you to give up but are more difficult for them. For Christmas, I don’t actually do anything with anyone anyway (I talk to my parents, but we don’t exchange gifts or have a big visit), so it’s easy for me to say that everyone should just stay home, when it’s clearly going to be more difficult for others. I feel some sympathy, then, for people who want to do something, even though I do still think they should stay home. I do hope that they take precautions, though.
That being said, I do feel that if someone can’t skip a big party on New Year’s Eve/New Year’s Day, that’s a problem with them. Except in rare cases, it’s just not that important to have a big in-person gathering that it can’t be skipped and reduced to a personal party for one year.
There’s also the problem of just how long this has been going on. There are people who were okay with weeks or months of restrictions but things start to chafe now that this pandemic has been around for about a year. Even people who would admit they don’t need one particular gathering are getting restless after nine-plus months of skipped gatherings.
Don’t apologize to these creeps for visiting family.
What? How do you know I’m a creep! I thought I hid it better on this site. O well since the cat’s out of the bag time to scurry on over to my creep cave to partake of some Christmas Creep Casserole. A Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good creep fright!
Will you make us crepes?
You know it! I’ll even provide some of my uncle’s homemade maple syrup. All I ask in return is that you sing a creepmas carol for the crepes. Help spread some good ol’ cheer.
“Creeping through the snow, in a one-horse open sleigh…”
Merry Christmas, Shamus. I’m glad that you and your family are all well.
It’ll be just my wife, my daughter, and I this Christmas, but that’s fairly normal for us. We live about 700 miles from my wife’s nearest immediate family member and over 1,700 miles from mine. Sometimes one of my parents or my mother in law will come here for Christmas, but that’s obviously off the table for this year. I’m a little sad about it, but not too much so. It’s such a long way that when they do come to visit they tend to stay for a week or two. Unfortunately, I tend to run out of things to say and ways to entertain them after just a few days.
It’s been a bad year but it has so far been a perversely good Christmas season. Because I’ve stayed home so much, I haven’t been subjected to nearly as much seasonal advertising, music, and whatnot as I usually am. What a mercy. Most years, I’m all Christmas-ed out by early December. This December, there were days where I actually forgot Christmas was imminent. (It helped that we got all the gifts and Christmas cards shipped and in the mail early in the month.) It’s been nice. I’m looking forward to tomorrow morning in a way that I haven’t in years.
We don’t really celebrate Christmas where I live because it is considered a religious holiday as opposed to the secular New Year, and even if we did, it’s celebrated on January 6th in the Orthodox Christianity. So yeah, we’re still prepping for our celebrations.
My wife bought me a Mario Kart Live set, basically an AR game with a real RC cart model. Can’t wait to try it out but she says I can’t open it before the New Year…
Merry christmas to you too my friend. We’re still meeting up as a family on Saturday, but I guess since we’re in a small town it’s a little bit less problematic. I still don’t like it and will be keeping as much distance as possible, but I’m already the introvert of the family….it would cause major drama if I decided to not go. On the bright side, there will be like…maybe 15 of us tops, most of whom already see each other on a regular basis.
I got some enameled cast iron frying pans tonight, which are the best thing since sliced bread if you’ve never used one. Most of the benefits of cast iron with a fraction of the care requirements. I already had a dutch oven of the same variety, and I use it for *everything*. So having actual frying pans like that will be nice.
I also ordered myself a Hydrasynth that was to be delivered today, but yesterday’s blizzard put a damper on that one. That is, if you can consider buying yourself expensive toys a “christmas gift”.
Happy Yule Shamus! We got snow flurries here in Atlanta, which was very pretty. My present thus far has been lousy (totally fits with the year theme), and I’m stuck in a house with a bunch of people I don’t like and I can’t leave. Here’s to a better New Year, and if no one builds a coronavirus model and Guy Fawkes the crap out of it I will be most disappointed…
“In related news, uncontrolled wildfires have broken out in the following locations… everywhere.”
“So you’re saying it’s a…boy? Girl? Help me out here.”
Merry Christmas!
My first vr headset got in this week. Tetris Effect has never looked so good.
Merry Christmas everyone! It’s not actually a holiday where I live, but luckily it happens to be the weekend. Looking forward to spoiling the kids a bit. Okay, a lot.
Santa brought me a smartphone holder, a tiny drone, and a mini shovel. Not sure what the messaging is here, but I’m onboard for it.
Merry Christmas, Shamus! Your post was appropriately timed for those us in the Federated States of Micronesia, where we have been celebrating by cooking pigs, eating breadfruit, and drinking sakau. Your site is my favorite corner of the internet, and I hope that you continue writing about video games until long beyond the day you become formally old and gray.
Merry Christmas from Melbourne, where the Christmas weather has actually—amazingly—been just about perfect for once, a warm sun with a cool breeze and partly cloudy to keep it from getting either too hot or too cold. With the elimination of SARS-CoV-2 from Victoria after our grueling lockdown earlier this year I was able to visit my housemate’s family get-together* this year with pretty much zero risk, which was nice.
*COVID-19 provides a perfect excuse to avoid another interminable trans-Pacific flight to visit family in California this year, though I’m glad I got to see them last year at least.
It’s always been weird to me how some parts of the world don’t have snow for Christmas and New Year. The closest I’ve come to that was when I was in Cebu in the late autumn, where people were starting their celebrations in mid October.
It was a really strange feeling, hearing Christmas carols in the scorching heat. But I guess for people living in hotter climates, that’s normal :D
This year, in Canada, where we normally have a white Christmas, we didn’t get it this year. Instead, it rained all Christmas Eve and into this morning, and so everything is quite green.
I should be clear: some people in Canada do have a white Christmas, and likely more of a white Christmas than they wanted. In fact, where my parents live which is about 200 kms away they said they were likely to have a white Christmas. It’s just not going to be one here.
It’s the same here in Bulgaria. This has been a very snow-less winter. But at least it’s not as bad as a few years ago, when I met a couple from Singapore. They had come to Bulgaria in order to have a snowy Christmas and New Year – something they’d never seen before.
Unfortunately for them, this was one of the rare years when we didn’t have snow for the winter holidays!
On the bright side, my city is right next to a mountain, so at least they got to see some snow…
Weater is getting all kinds of funny. We used to get really cold and snowy winters here in Poland (I remember it being almost -30 degrees Celsius in March around 10 years ago) but it’s been getting progressively warmer each year. We don’t really get hotter summers, but winters are definitely getting warmer and warmer.
Ya here in Alberta we got massive snowfall in the beginning of October, then it was pretty clear all the way up until the 23rd where we woke up to 27cm of snow. So we did get a white Christmas. I did hear from my relatives near Toronto that they’re under a snowfall warning of 15cm. Not sure if it happened or not though.
Oddly enough, our rain shifted to snow last night, and we’re having our white Christmas in several years. The weather is supposed to spike warmer over the weekend, so the snow should be gone by Monday.
Funnily enough, despite living in five US states and four other countries across three continents, I’ve only lived in places where it got snow in the winter when I was too young to remember so to me snow is something you visit every few years on a day trip to a nearby mountain, then hurry home to thaw out and wonder how anyone could possibly deal with living somewhere it just falls out of the sky each year. :D (Though I only moved to the Southern Hemisphere a few years ago, so Christmas in the summer (as opposed to the cold-but-snowless winter) is still fairly new to me, too.)
Merry Christmas.
I in general don’t do anything special or with others for Christmas, and don’t even get or give gifts (technically, a friend gave me “The Technomancer” from GOG this year, but that might just be revenge for me getting him Wizardry 8 at some point when it was equally on sale). So staying in and home is not at all a problem for me. And as it turns out, after dropping almost all of my traditions — no freezer space to buy the squares I always buy, having already watched Star Wars movies and the Lord of the Rings movies as part of my weekend lunch hours and so didn’t want to do the marathons, no time to watch Babylon 5 again, and so on — I ended up turning Japanese and am going to have fried chicken for Christmas dinner this year (I wanted something different, and yet didn’t want to actually cook anything, and didn’t have the freezer space to store a roast anyway).
Merry Christmas Nerds. (said with love)
Merry Christmas Shamus and family.
And same to you fellow visitors in this community!
Merry Christmas Shamus. I dunno if it’s the year or what, but it seems “small Christmas” is pretty par for the course. May the final days of the year be merry and bright.
Wesolych Swiat from Poland! Pandemic is working surprisingly well for me and my family – my daughter was born in September, being able to work remotely and being cut off from friends and city life makes caring for her 24/7 much more bearable. As for Christmas presents, I specifically requested everyone to buy me comfy sweatpants, so I can dress to work comfortably ;) Stay safe everyone!
Merry Christmas from (temporarily) Germany!
I got a magnetic knife holder from my brother. It looks like a slab of wood that knives just magically stick to. (Magnets, how do they work?) And the novel Solaris by Stanislaw Lem from my parents.
Happy Holidays, Shamus, and readers! :)
I spent my holidays so far with my Steam catalogue. Going to see GF in about 3 days or so, and spend New Year’s eve with her, and a couple of friends. I have not seen my present yet, but I know it’s gonna be a pair of track pants for wearing everywhere :D