Merry Christmas Everyone!

Just had a really nice, relaxing (by my family's standards anyway) Christmas day. Got some very cool gifts including:

• A watch (thanks Mum and Tati)
  
• A new desk for Matt (some contribution from my parents)
  
• A little outdoor setting for our little duck out (pressie for us from us)
• A blender and a baking dish (thanks ZiiZii)
• A cute bath mat and some Nandos sauces (thanks Elissa)
• Tea towels and salad tongs (thanks James and Chloe)
• Door bell and a vacuum cleaner (thanks Matt's parents

I bought Matt a big CD wallet, a desk protector mat thingo, a draw tidy, and Corpse Bride, Night Before Christmas, and a Labyrinth and Dark Crystal double DVD. Matt got me 3 full length mirrors (for when my pole finally gets here), Xenocide (an Ender's Game novel), and one more surprise coming in the mail!

We're having a boxing day family thing tomorrow, but it's going to have to be indoors since it's going to hit 41 degrees tomorrow eek! Get a chance to see how that water cooler air con works in high humidity...

In other news, work is going well! After the break I'll be entering my CEED student on site period during which I'll be gathering info for my final year project. It's starting to look very exciting (and scary!) but it's very promising and I can't wait to work on it. The project itself is to investigate a noise canceling system for the receiver end of an underwater acoustic communication system, but I'll save the details for a later time (and for those who care!).

Work went really well over the summer break. I finally got to solder something! Reaching the end of my engineering degree without having soldered anything was getting embarrassing so I'm glad I finally crossed that bridge. My test box works well and is currently being used a lot, so that's very fun to see. I quite enjoyed making the box from scratch (which involved wiring diagrams, drawings, ordering the parts, drilling the box, soldering stuff, crimping, heat shrinking, and many more very fun things), even though that sort of thing isn't really what the engineers do every day.

We had the office Christmas party at Social on Station St (which is where I had my 19th birthday) and I was disappointed to find out that the adjoining restaurant was not of the same high caliber as the cocktail bar. Also I was looking forward to trying my first cigar but they no longer sell them at the bar, probably due to the new indoor smoking rules. I ended up enjoying the night a little TOO much (engineering student + free wine = mayhem mayhem mayhem!), but on the upside I won a greatly needed cookbook in the raffle, which will hopefully help expand our diet of frittatas and toasted sandwiches.

Hope everyone has/had a great Christmas and an exciting new year!