Christmas is one of those times when I am seriously annoyed.
Shops are closed. I am not working for four days in a row. I don't know what to do all day.
So every year I come up with a few things to do for Christmas day, the holidays, and the week between Christmas and New Year's.
This year I bought two netbooks.
The first is a 10" screen HP Mini (Intel Atom N270, 1.6 GHz, 1 GB, 160 GB hard disk) which came with Windows 7 Starter and which I have already installed Windows 7 Ultimate on. It's black.
The second is a 7" screen Letux 400 (XBurst MIPS, 336 MHz, 128 MB, 2 GB flash) which comes with a version of Debian GNU/Linux and hopefully will arrive just after Christmas ready for New Year's.
So I have something to play with over the holidays.
I also bought this excellent book about Biblial Hebrew and Biblical Aramaic (surprisingly enough it is my first book about Aramaic, although I have many books about Hebrew, Arabic, and Akkadian).
It's a two-in-one volume named "Fundamental Biblical Hebrew/Fundamental Biblical Aramaic" by Pastors Andrew H. Bartelt and Andrew E. Steinmann. Andrew Bartelt is Professor of Exegetical Theology at Concordia Seminary in St. Louis where he teaches Biblical Hebrew. (His excellent lectures can be downloaded and watched.)
Christmas Day itself I will spent listening to Professor Bob's excellent podcast "History According to Bob". Professor Bob published several episodes about the history of Christmas (and Santa Claus and the Christmas tree and so on) and I will listen to them in order (before going to synagogue in the evening because Christmas Day this year is also the day before shabbes).
Because it's Christmas Day the pubs will be closed and I thus cannot play Chess in the pub before going to shul. This has been a problem last year too if I remember correctly when St. Stephen's Day fell on a Friday.
And for all those out there who like me find calendars confusing: Christmas this year falls on the 8th of Teveth. (They really ought to fix this. The Christian calendar keeps moving up and down the year.)
Merry Christmas, everyone affected! 