there are only HOW many days until Christmas?

So yesterday it hit me...10 short days until Christmas and I had done almost no shopping. Between the visit from Ralph, a bunch of really crappy (but somewhat pretty if you don't have to go outside) weather, and being ridiculously behind in just about everything in my life, shopping was not even a faint blip on the radar screen.

As of noon today, I'm just about done. I expect my credit card will burst into a puff of smoke any minute. And holy moly, is Amazon fast!!! UPS just delivered a toy I ordered for Oliver yesterday. How'd they do that???

There's still a bunch left to do, like clean the house, decorate, and support CD's valiant efforts to finish the master bathroom remodel, but the bulk of the shopping is done. I had as much as I could shipped directly, as our post office lines are insane and the clerks in no way acquainted with "holiday spirit".

Not to bury the lead or anything but Santa visited our house today, in the form of a very nice job offer for CD, one that enables us to stay in Pittsburgh for at least a year. It will be a big change for him but he is genuinely excited about it and after the energy he poured into the Mulberry email client for 10 years, that is really saying something. More about all this after the New Year, except to say how lucky I am to be married to him.