More birthdaying

[pne]

Yesterday evening, I had a little birthday party and invited some friends.

I don't know whether "a good time was had by all", but I certainly had one. Interesting conversation as well as decent food and enough of it.

Meike couldn't meet Sonja, though, because she had stayed home with the baby. So I joked that last year she met Sonja (Thomas was meeting a friend who was passing through Hamburg), this year she met Thomas, and maybe next year she'll meet Taya :)

I got some money as well as an O'Reilly pocket reference to LaTeX (which, I believe, is only available in German) and a Calvin and Hobbes book.

Interestingly enough, on the same day, I got two more birthday things: a postcard from gleffler (Thanks!) and another gift from my Secret Santa. Yay! (It should have come on Thursday but Stella was out, so they left a notice and she picked it up yesterday. So it all came together on the day of my birthday party.)

My Secret Santa sent me a clock that displays time in BCD format. Geeky!

So it has six columns, two each for hours, minutes, and seconds, and little LEDs which light up in binary to display each (decimal) place. For example, right now the columns are none, 8+1, 2, 4+2, 4, 8, spelling "09:26:48".

My Secret Santa even had enough foresight to make sure the clock would work over here by selecting one that could be switched to use 50Hz current and including a small transformer to convert from 230V to 120V. Thank you, Santa!

Update: I just noticed, while looking through my mailbox, that the paid account fairy visited me last night as well. Yet another birthday gift. Yay paid account fairy!

Comments

[sovereigna.livejournal.com]

Happy birthday for the 16th!
(don't ya love being a scorpio? :))

[pne.livejournal.com]

Thank you!

And I haven't noticed my sign making any difference so far :)

[sovereigna.livejournal.com]

You're missing out! :D

[n-true.livejournal.com]

I wonder... is a Secret Santa kind of the same as we call it here: "wichteln" (verb)? Being in a group, like a school class or a work team, everyone picks a sheet of paper with the name of a coworker/classmate and has to find a present for them secretly?

Julklapp

[pne.livejournal.com]

Yes! Something like that.

Here it's LiveJournal support volunteers; everyone who was willing to participate sent their email address to a coordinator, and a bit later they all got the postal address of someone else. Then you're supposed to send that person gifts (I think the plan was three gifts from the end of September, when they started this, to the end of the year).

And with the last gift, you can reveal your identity (I don't know whether you must do so), but before that, your secret bunny is left guessing who you are.

Up here, I've also heard that called "Julklapp", but I've heard that word used to refer to two schemes: in the first, you draw a piece of paper with someone's name, as you described, and in the second, you simply prepare a present that could fit anybody and then they're all left in a pile and people take turns picking out a random present.