CHRISTMAS SHOPPING & CAROLS

EXCELLENT NEW ADDITION TO OUR TREE: candy canes! Classic American Christmas treat and in keeping with our red, white and blue theme. Mmm, tasty too.

Man, it's so annoying. I started my Christmas shopping weeks ago and had almost everything for everyone by early December, having spent months planning and scheming.

Max, however, hasn't given it any thought, hadn't bought anything until yesterday, then spent an hour in Macy's and got the whole lot! No fair.

After the express Christmas shopping spree (which I spent in the lobby of Macy's, on the phone to Mum), we went to see 'Milk', which we very much enjoyed, though didn't necessarily love. James Franco was terrific, as was Josh Brolin, who I thought was extraordinary, and we could see that Sean Penn was really good and natural as Harvey Milk, but are kind of used to seeing him transform himself for roles, so somehow the very fact that he was convincing kind of made his performance less amazing to us.

What was amazing, however, were the trailers for 'Sunshine Cleaning' and 'The Wrestler', which we saw before the movie. Man alive, the one for 'The Wrestler' reduced me to tears - it's just great. And it helps that it's set to an amazing new Bruce Springsteen song:

Last night, we tried again with another film by the guy who wrote and directed the awesome 'Role Models', but unfortunately 'Wet Hot American Summer' was every bit as bad as 'The Ten', despite yet another stellar cast. We're going to give up now and assume that 'Role Models' was just a happy aberration.

I helped out at Sunday School this morning, but no-one turned up! So I hung around until church and was excited to see that David Plouffe's wife and little boy were reading the lesson and lighting the final Advent candle. David Plouffe stayed hidden away behind the lectern, but from where I was sitting, I could see him and it was so sweet when his little boy ran back to him after the reading, because Plouffe gave him a mini-fistbump! So that's where Obama gets it from...

We had a lovely webchat with Matt and Jilly when I got home, then walked up to the National Cathedral with Maxy for their Carols by Candlelight service. I'd never seen the stained glass windows in daylight before, and they're amazing.

It was a really beautiful service and a treat to sing carols in such an amazing building. Two choirs sang, both of whom were excellent, and halfway through we were given candles to hold during the prayers, the choir singing 'O Holy Night' and the congregation singing 'Silent Night' and 'Hark the Herald'. It was beeeautiful. Unfortunately Maxy spilt some melted wax on the coat slung over the chair in front of him, but otherwise the whole candle thing went well!

Among the familiar carols were some gorgeous pieces of music I'd never heard before. There was a really cool African hymn called African Noel arranged by Andre Thomas, in which the choir processed to the back of the church, chanting 'sing Noel' rhythmically and swaying from side to side. It was really cool and the rhythms and harmonies intertwined in really interesting ways. You can see far faster, less good version of the same carol here. We also heard O magnum mysterium by Morten Lauridsen, which was goosebump-inducingly beautiful, with its close harmonies and dissonances.

After the service, we decided to head up to Chevy Chase, to an independent cinema called the Avalon which we hadn't been to before, to see 'Happy-Go-Lucky', the new Mike Leigh film. On our way to the metro, we passed the most excellent example of what I thought Christmas in the American suburbs looks like:

The movie was terrific, we abolutely loved it. It captures London life so exactly, from the way people interact with the main character, to the way her flat is decorated, to the fact that it was filmed in and around Finsbury Park, including the street Max lived on when we first got together! It made us really nostalgic for London and I felt a bit smug that I was picking up loads of quintessential Britishisms that will've passed most of the audience by.

Apart from its improvised energy, it's quite an atypical Mike Leigh film, but probably the one I've enjoyed the most. The protagonist is Poppy, a primary school teacher living in London with her best mate, hanging out with her sister and getting driving lessons from a psychotic Daily Mail reading BNP-type played brilliantly by Eddie Marsan. Sally Hawkins - who it turns out I was at Edinburgh with, but don't remember, despite her directing me in our Freshers' Play - is luminous as the irrepressibly happy Poppy. I was a bit dubious when I read that the film is about someone who's really happy all the time, assuming it'd be about someone who's a bit simple and oblivious to what's going on around her.

But the strength of the film lies in the fact that Poppy is only too aware of what's going on - how the world can be rubbish, that her driving instructor is a nutter and life can be hard - but what's interesting and uplifting is that she makes the decision to be happy and not let stuff get her down. She's not obliviously happy; there's real strength in her.

After such a lovely day, we treated ourselves to supper out and went to a Greek restaurant down the road. It was alright, but overpriced. I miss the days when the exchange rate allowed us to eat out all the time and not worry about the cost. *sigh*

MULTIPLE CHRISTMAS DINNERS

WE MIGHT BE STAYING HERE LONGER: the author of last month's herogram to Maxy - head of World Online News - is recommending that Max's contract be extended when it expires in April. It'd be unprecedented for anyone to have that job longer than 12 months. Watch this space...

I've had a lovely Christmassy week and am getting very excited about next week.

I've mostly been trying to finish off once and for all the work I've been doing for Lib Dem man on the election online. The main thing he wants, in addition to articles about what online innovations the candidates harnessed to help them in the election, is videos made by the candidates and associated groups. I finally found a way to download videos from YouTube, thanks to Bambi's computer whizz brother, but our internet works so slow that each one has taken ages to download, robbing me of my will to live as it goes.

By November, I think I'd managed to download something like fifteen videos, then we FINALLY got our internet fixed and in the first day, downloaded about a hundred videos in a couple of hours!

So now the project is done, I've printed it out and got it all properly bound and I've sent it off! Yipppeee! It has taken many trips to Kinkos, but it's done. Phew.

On Tuesday, we had Anne and her Dad and Megan and Jonathan over for Christmas supper, which went really well. Anne is vegetarian and I made mushroom risotto for the first time. I must confess it was very tasty!

Then tonight, I made dinner for Alison, Emily and Brewster. This time I was able to cook meat and treated it as a dry run for Christmas Day lunch next week, so made roast chicken. I am thrilled to report that that too went really well and was deeeelicious. I'm a very nervous cook, so surprised whenever something tastes nice. I needed tonight's dry run because the year before last - mine and Max's first Christmas together - I painstakingly planned Christmas Day lunch and woke up Christmas morning to a clear schedule. Everything went in on time and was due to be done all at the same point.

With the potatoes going nicely golden, I noticed that the turkey wasn't cooking, despite having been in for ages, so took it out to check it, only to discover that I hadn't removed it from the plastic tray it came in! I'd taken off the clingfilm, but not the plastic from underneath! So of course it hadn't been cooking! The potatoes burned, we sat down to eat at about 4pm and at one point I threw a whisk at poor Max in frustration. Not a great scene. Hence tonight's practice! Here's hoping next week's turkey goes as well...

Emily and Alison spent Thanksgiving - and Alison's 30th - in Peru and were telling us terrible horror stories about all six of the girls in their gang got really really ill and spent long coach journeys in the loo and stuff. Ick.

We got really bad news from home on Wednesday - my friend Adrian and his girlfriend Rie, who have been living in our flat in Maida Vale, are moving out three months early. Adrian moved back from three years in Tokyo just as we moved over here, so the timing was perfect and it was good to know that someone nice was living in our flat. But Adrian has found it really hard to find work since being back (he's a hotshot lawyer, but wants to move from corporate law to media law and there isn't a big market for that in the UK), so is having to take the first job he's been offered in 8 months, which means moving up to Glasgow.

He's really sad about it, as he loves London, and although it leaves us in a massive bind, my eight years of freelancing and feeling between contracts like I'll never work again means I know just how he feels and we're just going to have to find someone else to move in until April, or maybe beyond. Oliver's going back to the UK in a month or so, and funnily enough used to live on our street, so he might be interested. And Max's friend has also shown interest, so all might not be lost, but it's not great.

Yesterday I treated myself to an afternoon DVD - something I dream of doing when in a full-time job in an office, but haven't really let myself do much over here. I watched 'Etre et Avoir', a fly-on-the-wall documentary about a one-room school in rural France, which I've been wanting to see for ages.

It's such a lovely film and really cleverly put together - there's no voiceover and hardly any interviews to link the scenes together. It's a series of really touching and funny vignettes from the classroom where ages range from teeny kindergarten age to 11 or 12.

The little children are soooo sweet, and there are some really funny cutaways, when the teacher is attending to the older children, like one little boy sticking a pen up his nose.

The teacher is amazingly patient and really traditional in his teaching. There's a sad scene where a mother is helping her son do his homework and illustrates a maths problem by means of how many hits he'd get if he got it wrong, but it was all part of the insight into rural French life.

I was interested to read afterwards that the teacher sued the filmmaker for a share of the multi-million euro profits the movie has earned, on the basis that he is the 'star' of the film and that his teaching methods are his intellectual property. But he lost his case because of the implications to future fly-on-the-wall documentaries that might be comprimised if the subjects are getting a cut of the film's success. I'm not sure what I think.

I totally understand the reasons for not granting the teacher the money he asked for, but am also aware that he absolutely is the driving force of the film which has unexpectedly made nearly £2million and he's earned very little money from teaching and is now retired, so could do with some extra cash.

In preparation for next week's overeating, I've been trying to get some last-minute workout time in at the gym and went to both yoga on Monday and butts, guts and guns yesterday. It was a really good class again, so I approached the instructor - Carlos - about getting a few personal training sessions with him, to kickstart my exercise regime and learn how to do things properly for the maximum effect.

So today I met with Carlos to get weighed and measured and for him to assess my fitness levels. Turns out, I have the body weight of an Olympic athlete!! I was stunned and am quite sure he did some calculations wrong. Besides, the body fat machine is just something you hold and it magically tells you how much body fat you have. Surely pinching an inch should be involved somewhere?

Anyway, I was thrilled and have high hopes for the three personal training sessions I've signed up for. Though I can't work out whether getting better results than expected gives me carte blanche to eat what I want next week, or whether it's something I should maintain by not pigging out on Christmas treats. Hmm...

PHOTOS: NYC AT CHRISTMAS

Click HERE for photos of our festive weekend in NYC

I ♥ NY

LAME BUT LEGITIMATE CELEBRITY SPOT: Colin [son of Tom] Hanks had brunch in the same place as us this morning!

I love New York. The city has a really visceral effect on me whenever I visit, as if however at home I feel in DC and however fond I am of the city, it can't match the deep love I have for New York or the excitement I feel when I'm there and the sheer feeling of being at home in a place.

We went up on the 'DC Deluxe' bus on Friday night, which mercifully didn't show movies, like the DC2NY bus we took last time. We were able to gobble up loads of episodes of 'Entourage' on our laptop, which passed the time spent in Friday night traffic just nicely.

As if the heavy traffic in DC wasn't trying enough, there was a chap on the bus who asked us where in Philadelphia we stopped. I wasn't aware we went via Philly and started to panic that the journey was going to be even longer than the 5 hours we were bracing ourselves for, before someone put the man straight and explained he was on the wrong bus. But then the bus driver drove all over DC, trying to find a coach that would take the mook to Philadelphia!

The subway was disrupted when we got to Penn Station, around 11pm, so we had to find a cab to take us to Williamsburg in Brooklyn, where we met Max's college friends (and, I'd like to think, my friends too) Mat, Grace and Mark.

Williamsburg is a hip suburb of Brooklyn that is a lot like East London - it used to be run down and industrial but is now its scuzziness is a badge of honour for the boho types who've moved in to make it a cool place to be. As befits the area, the bar we met everyone in had no name or sign outside. And it was really really cool inside - I loved it. And it was great to see Mat, Grace and Mark again - they always make New York so fun and it's nice to be around good friends.

It was really sad that Jo wasn't there, and we really felt her absence, but Grace was able to let us know how she's doing and we all drank to Jo and her Mum and brother.

We stayed in Mat's flat around the corner and managed to walk in on his flatmate sleeping, while Mat was giving us the tour!

Mat had loads of marking to do yesterday (he's a PhD student), so we took ourselves off for breakfast in a cool cafe around the corner, then wandered around Williamsburg. It was a beautiful day and I was in sensory overload with the cool buildings, graffiti and baths on the pavement, so poor Max had to stand by while I took a bajillion photos.

It was such a sunny day that we decided to walk into Manhattan, and headed to Soho to buy some trainers, because DC is inexplicably bereft of any decent sneaker stores. Much like in DC, the sales were crazy and I had to be physically restrained from buying a whole new wardrobe of shoes. I limited myself to two pairs of Converse and was distressed to find them cheaper at nearly every shop we subsequently visited, but they were still bargainous.

By the time we got to the north end of Broadway in Soho, we were pooped, having walked many many miles. So we got the subway up to Rockefeller Plaza to Radio City, where we watched the Christmas Spectacular that Anne's Dad had recommended to us months ago and which served as our pantomime this year.

Radio City is an amazing old-school building with gigantic chandeliers and sweeping staircases. I hurriedly changed into a dress and my kickass new green suede shoes in the loos, for the first time using the huge mirrored powder room, which one would usually dash through, and got back to Max in the theatre just in time for the start of the show.

It certainly was spectacular! It kicked off with a cool 3-D cartoon of Father Christmas whizzing over rooftops, for which we needed 3-D glasses, then there were lots of little song and dance numbers. Max says that the 12-year old him would've been really bored, but we both really enjoyed it and the Rockettes were an extraordinary feat of mathematics, if nothing else! The way they pivoted round in one long line of high-kicking legs was a sight to see and they did this cool Nutcracker skit, where they were standing in single file and then all slowly fell backwards one by one, like dominos.

For some reason, I expected the Rockettes to be old! Because I associate them with the 50s, I suppose I thought maybe they'd all be people who performed back then. But of course that would make them more like the Roly Polys than a troupe of dancers who perform five shows a day!

There was a very cute baby sitting next to me, who randomly grabbed my finger whilst jigging along to the music, which was sweet. Then the show ended with a live nativity, with a real life camel on stage and everything!

Feeling thoroughly festive, we hopped skipped and jumped up town to meet Max's second cousin once removed (or something), Rachel. Her Mum and Dad are Jim and Elaine, who we visited in Marblehead, Massachusetts and Jim is Max's Dad's cousin. So you work out how they're related.

Max and Rachel hung out quite a lot when they were younger, including going travelling together in Morocco, so it was really nice for them to see each other again and for us to meet Rachel's boyfriend. Rachel is an ER doctor in the toughest hospital in New York, which deals with lots of prisoners and uninsured people and sounds like the most full-on job you could possibly have - I was in awe of how she retains her sanity!

Handily - and coincidentally - enough, the restaurant was just a couple of blocks away from our next engagement, which was Anne's family's tree-trimming party. We were so touched to be invited to the annual tradition and the one-bed apartment was packed with people when we got there.

It seemed to be mostly friends of Anne's parents there, but there were some people our age and everyone was very friendly. I'm terrible with names - really awful - when I meet someone new, I tend to concentrate so hard on shaking their hand right that I don't register the name I'm being told. So I was thrilled to meet two nice people called Marina and Bambi, because there was no way I'd forget the names they shared with my sister and sister-in-law, so stuck with them all night!

Anne showed us around the tiny flat, including where she and her sister used to sleep as children, which was the minute study, which was just about as long as a single bed, but only just. Above the desk area, there was an L-shaped bed built in, just below the ceiling, which Anne and Susan shared, despite the fact that the person on the short end of the 'L' (Anne) no way would've been able to stretch out. They were still sleeping there as teenagers! It's crazy! Though Anne seemed a bit upset when I joked that it verged on abuse...

I was thrilled when the party turned to carol singing and we all huddled into the sitting room with songbooks and sang lots of traditional carols. Though many had the 'wrong' tune. But it created a lovely festive atmosphere and I'm so pleased we went.

We left the party really late, after getting chatting to Anne's sister-in-law and Dad. It took ages to get back to Mat's place on the subway, but I was struck that everyone on the subway platform at 1.30am was around our age. It's kind of cool, to feel part of an age-group. I can't really explain it.

Fortunately this morning was nice and slow and we just hung out with Mat, before heading to the Lower East Side to meet Grace and Mark for brunch (they always know the best brunch places). Mat told us about one of the papers he was marking yesterday, in which he detected plagiarism. But not only had the dude copied stuff directly out of a book without changing it, the book he'd copied from was by Mat's supervisor and had been proof-read by Mat before going to the printers!! I made Mat act out with me how he was going to deal with the culprit and I have to say, I pity the poor plagiariser - Mat's quiet and calm approach to discipline is frankly menacing! It's amazing though - the cheat will just lose a mark on that paper, he won't get disciplined or anything.

We mooched around the Lower East Side after brunch, making our way slowly up town to the cafe at the Neue Gallery, where we were meeting a friend of mine from school who I haven't seen since we left, 12 years ago. I didn't know the Lower East Side before, but really really like it - it's a very cool area.

I was a bit nervous about seeing Alex again, as she was always very cool at school, but also really friendly and super-clever, so all-in-all a bit intimidating. We had such nice chats, though, and it was really nice to see her. My account of what I've been up to since we last saw each other was painfully lame, compared to her tales of modelling, addiction, abandoned degrees and living in a rock star's mansion in LA. I joked that someone should make a film of her life, and she said that someone is! Her time in LA is being immortalised in a new movie called Freeloaders. She now lives in Manhattan and works as a costume designer on movies, which is very cool. She's currently working on a Natalie Portman film and next is working for Disney on the live-action Sorcerer's Apprentice.

Feeling a little inadequate, we left and made our way to Anne's flat (again, handily up the road), where we got a lift back to DC with her and her Dad. It was really late and we'd had a packed weekend, so I mostly slept. Zzzzzzzzz.

HAIRCUT FROM HELL

I LOVE THE SMELL OF CHRISTMAS TREE IN THE MORNING: it's right by my desk, so I get lovely wafts of pine needles while I'm working

Kate left today and I'm bereft. It was so lovely having one of my best friends here, with whom lark around DC and both Max and I had got really used to having her here and enjoyed having a fun buddy living with us.

With Kate jetting over to LA to stay with Tom and Bambi with a suitcase groaning with funky new threads, I caught up on emails and accounts and stuff that I haven't done for a week and then went to get my hair cut by the lady with the gigantic Vidal Sassoon bob tattoos who's cut my hair twice since we got here.

The first time she (Barbara is her somewhat incongruous name) cut it, it was the best haircut I've ever had and I LOVED it. The second time was so-so and this time was a disaster!

I wanted to go really for a really short crop (a la the Swedish pixie we saw in Bourbon), but Barbara's mind didn't seem to be on the job, or something, because she was taking forever to cut my hair, then her next client arrived and she panicked and basically started again, wetting my hair all over again and going for something different.

I'm not sure what her vision was, but I'm quite sure it wasn't the weird fringe she's given me that has gigantic, dramatic steps in it halfway across my forehead.

I also chickened out of going blonde, but instead dyed my hair dark chocolate brown when I got home, in an attempt to make something good come out of the crime to hairdressing that Barbara left me with. Ah well, I take comfort from a real life hair salon in Ladbroke Grove, called 'It'll Grow Back'...

We go to New York tomorrow for a weekend of Christmassy fun, including the Radio City Christmas Spectacular, featuring the Rockettes, and Anne's family tree-trimming party at her parents' apartment on the Upper East Side.

We were due to stay with Max's friend Jo but found out today the terrible news that her father has died suddenly and she's had to rush back to Britain. I'm so so sad for Jo and her family - it must be particularly hard for Jo, having it be both a shock and living so far away when it happened. It prompted me to call Mum and Dad because sometimes being over here feels like a waste of time I could be spending with my nearest and dearest, which I'll regret when they're gone.

My fiendish plan is to die before anyone I love, so I won't have to face such things. You have been warned.

LADIES WHO LUNCH. AND SHOP

FINALLY! spotted outside the Capitol. Now we have pictures of numberplates from every state in the US! Erm, as thrilled as I am to have finished, I'm not quite sure what to do with the photos now...

It's so much fun having Kate here - I'm getting to do all the things I thought I'd do when we moved here and I didn't have a job, but haven't done because they're not so much fun without a buddy.

Yesterday, we spent the whole day in Georgetown in the sunny warm sunshine, shopping til we dropped. Fortunately Kate - unlike Maxy on similar expeditions - was very much in the mood for buying and we had great fun, making her try on clothes she wouldn't normally wear (ie: colourful and tight) and she ended up buying loads of really gorgeous things.

At one point, I burst into tears like at the end of a style makeover show, when Kate emerged from a dressing room in a killer black dress and high heels that totally complimented everything about her amazing height and extreme skinniness, but that we never get to see in the clothes she normally wears. Eat your heart out, Trinny and Susannah!

As befits ladies cruising the shops of Georgetown, we had lunch at Cafe Leopold's, my favourite daytime Georgetown haunt. Afterwards, we planned to do a bit more shopping (the sales are CRAZY!! I got three cashmere jumpers from Gap for £100! And some AWESOME green suede wedge shoes - Kate wasn't the only person branching out from her comfort zone! - for £22!) then go to the movies again. However, Anthropologie sucked us in and wouldn't let us go.

We were in there for aaaaages! And we tried on loads of stuff. I decided to try to follow the advice of my friend Jilly and invest in a couple of expensive but well made things that would make my wardrobe a bit more grown up and sophisticated than the extensive array of jeans and t-shirts in which I parade around DC. I bought a gorgeous skirt that I can't really describe, but it was amazing and made me look like the grown up I'd like to be. But when Max's reaction was a little luke-warm last night, I panicked and took it back today, because it was mondo-expensive and there were some stripey cashmere jumpers with buttons on the shoulder (MUCH more me!) on sale in Banana Republic, so I snapped them up instead.

While we were single-handedly propping up the US economy, Max was working on the hilarious story of Rob Blagojevich, Governor of Illinois, who's been trying to sell Obama's senate seat to the highest bidder! The funniest thing about the story is how defiant he is, despite there being actual wiretap evidence of him trying to make the deal with Jesse Jackson Jr! Apparently there's a rich heritage of the Governors of Illinois being crooked. In fact, so many have gone to jail for corruption (including Blagojevich's predecessor) that you're now statistically more likely to end up in prison as a disgraced Governor in Illinois than you are a murderer!

This morning, Kate and I went on a tour of the Capitol. On arrival at the just-opened new visitor centre, a greeter detected that we're British and said we were allowed to go and watch the Senate in session! If we were American, we'd have to get tickets from our Senator's office, but because we're foreign, we could walk right in! So we excitedly made our way to the Senate, through miles of corridors and security checks and took up our seats, just in time for a handful of senators and pages to come in and take their seats.

We were given a seating plan of the floor, so we could see where people like Obama and Hillary would sit if they were present and were interested to see that there was a lady there who's a parliamentarian, so just an expert on the political process, who I guess is deferred to in matters of procedure.

There was very little exciting happening in the Senate this morning - we heard the Senate majority leader through something about the auto bailout, and then his Republican counterpart articulately reply, then Liddy Dole started delivering her farewell speech having lost her seat in North Carolina after running an EVIL campaign, accusing her Christian opponent of being 'godless' because she attended a fundraiser at the house of two atheists.

When Liddy started paying tribute to her high school teachers, we knew it was going to be a long speech, so decided to leave. Probably the coolest thing we saw were the stenographers, who were wearing their stenographing machines around their necks, like they were selling ice creams in a theatre, and would go and stand right in front of the person speaking and watch their lips as they tapped away.

Although what was actually happening in the Senate was quite boring, it was really fun to be there and see what's what and the tour of the Capitol was a bit of a let-down by comparison. We saw some nice artwork and the statuary room, where each state has sent two statues of local dignitaries (Mississippi inexplicably saw fit to send one of massive racist and President of the Confederate States of America, Jefferson Davis) and we also saw the first ever Supreme Court (left), where cases like Amistad and Dred Scott were tried, which was pretty powerful.

Perhaps to make up for the slightly boring tour, or perhaps because she lives by herself with only cats for company, our tour guide was SO enthusiastic, to the point of breaking my heart! She was really cheery and energetic, kind of willing us to enjoy ourselves and desperate that we have a good time. She'd even say, 'good job!' when we all managed to get up the escalator.

One quite cool thing she showed us was how, when John Adams was sitting at his desk in the old Senate chamber, a quirk of architecture allowed him to hear his opponents on the other side, whispering about him. Our over-enthusiastic tour guide demonstrated this very excitedly (right) and it was indeed pretty cool.

Kate and I did our very best to listen extra-attentively and make her feel appreciated in the face of fairly non-plussed tourists.

After our tour, I took Kate around the boutiques of U St, 14th St and the mighty Shake Your Booty on 18th St, but they were all a bit disappointing and certainly couldn't top our Georgetown triumphs of shopping. After a quick bite at Love Cafe, complete with its amazing cupcake bar, we hot-footed it into Georgetown, in time to see 'Australia'.

We had to walk really quickly and were knackered by the time we got to the cinema, just in time to relax in front of a 3 hour movie! As we were going into the cinema, I noticed that the Potomac looked like it had evaporated and been replaced by enough dry ice to service a Jean Michel Jarre concert! It was really eery...

Despite terrible reviews, Kate and I both loooooved 'Australia'. I suspect that the generous number of shots of the gorgeous Hugh Jackman emerging from smoke helped get us on side! I just loved how it's a throwback to the great epic Saturday afternoon movies that you don't see anymore. Sure, the effects are dodgy, the plot is predictable and Nicole Kidman looks like a toothpick, but it's sweeping and epic and romantic and Hugh Jackman walks through smoke a lot. AND rides a horse a lot - turns out that's an extremely sexy quality in a man. The little boy at the heart of the movie is gorgeous, too. Apparently, Baz Luhrmann cast him after sitting opposite him on a bus. Yeah, like Baz rides the bus.

Kate and I emerged from the cinema all a-quiver, and I felt a bit sorry for Max meeting us for dinner at Nathans, because unless he happened upon a big bit of smoke and was able to suddenly look a bit grubby, like he'd been wrangling cattle in the outback for a month, he didn't stand a chance of making us forget about gorgeous Hugh!

Fortunately I snapped myself out of it and we had a lovely meal at Nathans before going home and decorating our Christmas tree. Yeay! We got it yesterday and brought it home on the bike, attracting lots of admiring comments from passers-by! Usually we teeter home with it across Max's lap on the back of the scooter, so this was definitely our safest transfer of Christmas tree to home.

It was like something out of a Nancy Meyers romcom, as we had old-school Christmas tunes on the stereo (which will now be the only thing we listen to until 2009) as Kate 'helped' us decorate (see below) with decorations I got from Ikea (for less than $20, all-in!). We colour code our tree each year - last year was red and white - and this year we decided to go patriotic, with a red, white and blue theme and the tree looks fabulous - regardez!

VAMPIRES & EXORCISTS

GROSSEST THING ABOUT THIS TIME OF YEAR: the ground is littered with really pretty-looking pink berries. But beware! Their prettiness is at odds with the foul smell they give off, especially when burst. They're called ginkgo berries, but I call them stinko berries, because they make the pavements smell of sick and poo and sweat and death all rolled into one, pretty pink berry. A very embarrassing smell to carry around if you step in them (which is tricky to avoid, as they're EVERYWHERE!)

Today was my final day the pesky exorcism job!! I'm so relieved and am not sad to see the back of the project. I got kind of into it by the end, as I very rarely got hold of anyone, so mostly just spent my time leaving messages on countless answerphones, which is easy enough. I didn't actually find anyone in the end, but have put out lots of feelers, so hopefully someone will want to do the documentary and get in touch with the producer.

Not only was the work horrid (as well as yet more re-mortgaging shenanigans), but now it's over, there's nothing between me and Christmas! Yippeeeee! I can't wait and am so enjoying the fact that Christmas started here about a month ago, with twinkly lights, Christmas music everywhere and dark, cosy nights. And of course many houses and front yards have been decked out with seasonal goodies. I've yet to encounter that real hardcore suburban frenzy of lights that films like 'Home Alone' would have you believe exists, but hopefully it's just a matter of time.

Because I had to work my final half day today, Kate took herself off to Mount Vernon this morning and then we went to see 'Twilight' together, to celebrate my finishing work and finally being a free woman.

We knew the film was going to suck, but are both big Buffy fans, so figured we'd give it a go. Kate has read a couple of the books in the series, but had to give up after the second one and resort to reading plot summaries on Wikipedia, so despairing was she of the terrible writing and characterisation of the teen protagonist Bella, who keeps melodramatically declaring that she will DIE if not allowed to be with her true love - a vampire called Edward.

Sure enough, the film did suck. Robert Pattinson as Edwards was pretty charismatic and handsome, but his makeup was really inconsistent and I found Kristen Stewart's 'naturalistic' umming and erring before every sentence really annoying.

More annoying, however, were the other people in the cinema. Loads of people were just openly talking throughout the film and the guy in front of us spent the whole time sending texts from his phone. I was just annoyed by the glowing white screen in the darkness, but Kate had the misfortune of being actually able to read the texts and see that they were gross and pornographic. What was he doing in a cinema?!

We had a really nice time tonight at a bar on 18th St called Bourbon, which we've never been to before, but which looks nice from the outside and is part of my determination to try new places, having fallen into something of a rutt of where we hang out.

We met up with Oliver and his friend/Max's colleague Zoe, who's really fun. It was a great night; Kate got on well with Zoe and Oliver and we had really tasty, quite cheap food and the bar is just like my perfect bar - dark and modern with a nice laid-back atmosphere. I'm so pleased we branched out!

There was a girl at the bar in Bourbon who had the coolest hair and I've decided that's what I want to look like. Though she may've got a bit disconcerted by everyone looking around to check out her hair, so I could get a second (and third, fourth, fifth) opinion. It was short and choppy and blonde and she looked like a cool Swedish pixie. I'm not sure I could carry off blonde, but I reckon I might give it a go. With no job to have to look professional for, I figure why not?!