Christmas was very good and fun. It started with opening presents with the family (though it was really more like "handing out" presents since none of us bother with wrapping), then breakfast with same. Then we watched Up and all of us cried and I felt really out of sorts after that.

Crying always does that to me, really. I feel just icky both physically and mentally afterwards and I really dislike it. I totally do not understand those people who can have a nice cathartic cry and feel so much better afterwards because I feel like shit.

And because I felt like shit I started to torture myself. See, my parents got me a new iPod for Christmas, which was more expensive than I thought it should be, and it's one of the 160GB ones that I can't even fill up with my entire music collection (though I think Criminal Minds on it would do it...). But I already have a perfectly serviceable iPod Nano, and they forgot that I had it which is why they got me the new one.

And I was torturing myself because I didn't want to appear ungrateful but I really didn't need it because my old one works just fine. And then I talked to my mom about it and she suggested I get rid of the old one. So I'm going to clear out Magellan Jr. and give it to my sister as an early birthday present for her. Yay! Easy solution and I need to stop torturing myself like that, which basically comes down to "I'm not worthy". But I'm working on it!

My family liked their presents from me, and we had a great day that was mostly spent together, but without the usual bickering that happens when we all spend too much time together. So yay!

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After reading "The Straight Dope" (specifically the second book thereof), I betook me to Google, and hence Wikipedia, to see the following:

"The wording that had to be read out to the assembled gathering was as follows:

Our Sovereign Lord the King chargeth and commandeth all persons, being assembled, immediately to disperse themselves, and peaceably to depart to their habitations, or to their lawful business, upon the pains contained in the act made in the first year of King George, for preventing tumults and riotous assemblies. God Save the King!"

Also from Wikipedia:

The act created a mechanism for certain local officials to make a proclamation ordering the dispersal of any group of more than twelve people who were "unlawfully, riotously, and tumultuously assembled together". If the group failed to disperse within one hour, then anyone remaining gathered was guilty of a felony without benefit of clergy, punishable by death.

The proclamation could be made in an incorporated town or city by the Mayor, Bailiff or "other head officer", or a Justice of the Peace. Elsewhere it could be made by a Justice of the Peace or the Sheriff or Under-Sheriff. It had to be read out to the gathering concerned, and had to follow precise wording detailed in the act; several convictions were overturned because parts of the proclamation had been omitted, in particular "God save the King".

The full text of the Riot Act of 1714 itself was a bit longer. Reading the whole thing to an unruly crowd might have had a rather soporific effect. Then again, they were used to listening to long blocks of text in those days.
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