24-hour party people?

Around this time each year, I run into a whole bunch of other people's Christmas parties. Literally, in some cases - I got caught up in some kind of festive pubcrawl today while trying to reach my tram, and almost got swept off down the street...

The last time I had an actual Christmas party at work was in 2005, when I was leaving CSIRO. While the all-staff affairs are generally dull regardless of workplace, I actually quite liked the small-group versions on the last day of work for the year: pack up early, potter around the office cleaning up a year's worth of odds and ends, and then head off for lunch and an early finish. It was a nice way of actually spending some non-work time with a bunch of people that I rarely saw outside of their offices.

This year, we had a fairly anti-climactic work lunch back at the start of November. Since then the group has unravelled, as one by one, people have vanished for holidays or conferences. I think we lost critical mass on Wednesday, and so the year has ended by default: another victim of entropy.

I guess my main festive season ritual over the last few years has been the Christmas Special game, originally started by miss_rynn, and continued by bishi_wannabe. The Wednesday night gaming group are more a part of my family than many of my blood relatives, and I'm glad of the chance to celebrate with them.

If anyone is in Melbourne over the Christmas period, aeliel and I will be home from late afternoon on Christmas day, until some time around New Year's Eve. The house will be open for visitors to drop by whenever we're at home - if you'd like to come and see us, send me an SMS to check whether we're home.