Had a very quiet and subdued New Year's Eve - Aimee in bed around 7pm, and just me, our lass and the dog watching the telly and catching the bells at midnight. Stayed up til around 2am watching Jools' Hootenanny. Pleased to see Seasick Steve and his famous 'Three Stringed Trance Wonder' guitar again - Jools gave him his TV debut _last_ New Year's eve. Kaiser Chiefs and Kate Nash good, Macca looked a bit tired, Kylie had an awful dress on and looked like she was there for the money. Madness were very good, but there's no escaping that they're old men now.

We agreed that I'd give Emma a lie-in in the morning, and deal with Aimee when she woke, which I did, but because I'm working on-call today I got dragged to my laptop at about 9am when Nagios told me that something was broken at work, so I had to disturb Emma for her to look after Aimee.

Aimee is such a handful now. She's walking, and by God does she want to use those legs. She runs round the house like crazy, and being on her feet - it brings a _lot_ more into her reach than ever before. She got an absolute shedload of toys for Christmas, but does she want to play with them? No. No, She wants to paddle in the dog's water bowl, or swing on the tv unit door, or repeatedly switch the damn tv off!

As it turned out, the work issue was a non-issue, so I resumed parenting duties and let Emma have a relax until 11-ish, when I got called out once more. A real issue this time, at least!

Emma prepared a gorgeous lamb dinner, and we had cheesecake for pud. The Jersey gold double cream dolloped onto the cheesecake was nothing short of amazing.

When we returned from my mam's yesterday, the boot of the RX8 was chock-full of presents, clothes and all of Aimee's paraphernalia. _Too_ chock-full, as it happens, as I discovered when I unloaded yesterday to find that a virtually full tin of SMA Progress powdered milk had popped open all over the contents of the boot. Cue twenty minutes today spent hoovering it all out. Bah.

Also fitted Emma's new stereo to her car. She's been missing a CD player in her car for ages, so I picked up on her (unsubtle!) hints and bought her a Sony MEX-BT2500 CD player for Christmas. It's quite a nifty toy - having Bluetooth as well, making it an excellent hands-free phone system in the car, as well as a CD player!

I'm a bit annoyed about the Halfords fascia that I had to buy for the CD player - Skoda, like nearly every other car manufacturer, like their head-units to be uniquely shaped. So when one buys an after-market unit, one has to buy the associated piece of plastic to fill the gap left by the old stereo. This piece of plastic Halfrauds manage to get away with selling for FIFTEEN QUID. Madness.

Had the last of my Christmas beers - an ESB and an ever-dependable Old Peculiar whilst watching the depressing mess that was Spurs' 2-1 away defeat at Villa. Berbatov looked totally disinterested, as he has done virtually all season, and I feel resigned to the fact that the stories about him being off to the Chavs or to United might bear some truth. I'll be fucking pissed off if we sell him to another English team. It's one thing to sell off your star players, but selling them to another team in your league is something that only 'selling clubs' do. Being a 'selling club' is something Spurs have tried desperately hard to escape from - refusing to sell Berbatov in the summer, and holding United to ransom over Carrick until they coughed up an extortionate fee. I'd rather we sold him to Real for £25m, than to the fucking chavs for £35m. Well, we'll see. All I ask in the mid-season transfer window is; Juande, Daniel, Damien, whoever is in charge of buying players these days - for Christ's sake buy us an EXPERIENCED centre-back and someone, anyone, anywhere, with a left foot. A creative midfielder wouldn't half be good too. Thanks.

I bought myself an Xbox 360 over the Christmas period - it wasn't a Christmas present, well, other than to myself, but I found myself quite taken with some of the games found on this platform. The PS3 is just too damned expensive, and I already have a Wii - which Emma enjoys, but I find the games a little _too_ cartoony and lacking in depth. Sure, flinging the Wiimote around is fun, for a while, but playing something like Medal of Honor with a Wiimote and Nunchuck is more than a little frustrating. Plus, we've got this nice HD plasma TV, and it'd be nice to have something that took advantage of the HD part of the TV. ;) So, I plumped for an Xbox 360 'Arcade', which was _way_ cheaper than a PS3, and does omit a hard drive, but these are readily and cheaply available on eBay. The money 'saved' on buying the cheap version was quickly spanked on games - the bundle I bought had Forza Motorsport 2, Viva Pinata and an extra wireless controller - and to that I added FIFA 2008, and pre-owned versions of Halo 3, Elder Scrolls: Oblivion and Dead or Alive 4. Emma thinks I'm mad, and it's a waste - which is possibly true, but, hey, you're only young once. Eh?

TTFN.