I'm not sure why, but whenever I hear or see someone saying or writing "Go The All Blacks!", I find myself thinking of the "The people called Romans, they go the house?!" scene from The Life of Brian.

Have been settling into the new flat well, though I still need to find time to unpack a few bits'n'pieces. I also met my flatmate Scott's family yesterday, which went decently - they seem like a nice bunch, and it hasn't taken long for them to start treating me as one of the tribe.

Speaking of the tribe, Christmas went relatively well too, despite me nodding off in inopportune places. A fairly low-stress Christmas was had by all. My nephew Alexander already seems to be investigating facial expressions and gaze tracking, and given another couple of months he'll probably be capable of what it would take a computer science PhD a few years to achieve. Humans are cool like that. As best I can tell, he's a relatively well-behaved young sprogling; he doesn't cry at the hideously painful pitch of some people's children, and he's already learning that he can vocalise a little bit without yelling continuously to get someone's attention.

To be fair, I think that my sister and her husband are doing a pretty decent job on the parenting side of things, too - a combination of geekily active involvement in understanding the parenting process, and perhaps a bit of support from my parents (who are pretty awesome and live just down the road). All things concerned, a child could have a heck of a lot worse a start in life than this one.

In other news, I have new pants and a random domestic hints book. Certainly, the idea of freezing parsley and/or chives so that you can just crumble them into whatever you're cooking without bothering to chop is a nifty idea.