Xmas started...not very early!

I woke up at appx. 11:00, started the day off in very lazy fashion. The day before I bought almost all of my xmas gifts, and I found them all basically on the same street. The only thing I had actually planned in advance was a kitchen utensil I wanted to get Mikaela, but I couldn't find it in the proper colour.

So, we got ourselves in order, stuffed the xmas gifts into the car and headed off to my parents' place, where my sister, her man and their two adorable children were, plus grandma. It was really nice to see them all again, especially grandma, who's been in and out of hospitals since this summer. She's 93 years old, very positive and always fun to speak with.

Everybody were handed saffron buns and gingerbread cookies that we'd made, and we had dinner. First up, dad gave me a shot of rakija that's made from grapes off my grandma's lands. You bet that was hard-core; I couldn't even begin to explain the taste to you. Imagine home-made (by somebody who knows how to make it) vodka with a distinct taste of plums, a lot stronger than your ordinary vodka, though. When I was seven years old and visited Yugoslavia for the first time, I remember that I started crying when I tasted rakija for the first time, just touching the stuff with my tongue. That reaction still lives me, but in another way - it's good badness.

The kids liked their xmas gifts; Amanda, the little one, was given a shirt reading "Respectless" and Emelie, the older, got this anti-Starbucks t-shirt. Lovely.

I gave mom and dad a copy of "A Bronx Tale". When I bought it, at Pet Sounds, one of the old schoolers asked me what I thought of it. I said I loved it and that one couldn't believe it was De Niro's debut as a director. The guy told me that the boy who played De Niro's son in the film, went criminal and got shot last week. And whut! Nothing. I went on and got a load of other stuffs for people, like the new single by The Strokes (that's incidentally turned out to become their first #1 single for the USA), a psych WEA compilation and Brian Eno's one-year-diary, "A Year With Swollen Appendices", and "Saint Morrissey" which will be nice for Mikaela.

I skulked around a bit more, going to Badlands, finding basically nothing but over-prices, opened films, but got McSweeney's first anthology and Benrik's calendar for 2006.

We left mom & dad's at 19:00 appx, and went to Mikaela's parents' house where we met up with Frederic, Micke, Karin, Alex, Mariette, Eve...have I forgotten anyone? Sebastian, one of Mikaela's brothers, wasn't there as he's in Australia, back-packing it with his pals (who love crap food). He would most certainly have loved the food on display at Mikaela's parents house, and if he'd been there he'd most probably also been involved with cooking. Anyway, we had a fun time, petting the kitties, talking about, eating a lot, exchanging gifts. Mikaela's family are nuts (well, some of them) on placing notes with rhymes on their gifts, so I tried hard and came up with one single rhyme, but fuck it, I left it alone at that. Micke got a hard guess on what "axeman and fast" could combine and amount to, which he, of course, couldn't deduce anything from as he'd been given a t-shirt sporting Jimi Hendrix on a snowboard. When I saw it, I knew he had to get it, loving both the axe-wielding dead guy and snowboarding. I also found a shirt sporting Bruce Lee on a BMX bike, but naah, Hendrix was it.

Mikaela and I went home at 01:15, after we drove Frederic home. He got a Criterion box from me and a bunch of printed, framed photos by Mikaela. Very nice! Mikaela gave me Susan Bright's "Art Photography Now"; I strongly recommend it, as it's filled with great photos by loads of very talented, contemporary photographers and victims - and Frederic gave me the Beastie Boys' "Sounds of Science"-book, which contains their double-CD collection of the same name.

Speaking of gifts, my Amurkan friend Kristin gave Mikaela and me two very special gifts, and I promise, I will publish pictures of us wearing them soon enough. You'll see.

Today we've been eating left-overs and I've been lifting weights I got from Mikaela's mom, and wearing a great sweater I got from my parents, wee! Now it's time to go see a film or eat more. Or both! I feel incredibly sluggish. I just played Kalaha with Mikaela, a fierce battle that ended 1-1. Must...eat...brains...now. Ciao.