Oh, my goodness. We're slated to head out to Ventura in a few hours; we are so not ready. I
did manage to compress a few weeks of holiday prep into one long day yesterday; the gifts are all made, packaged, wrapped, and ready to go. I did fail to make cookies, but i'm sure Allison and Daniel will help me out when i get to Ventura.

Russell and i exchanged our gifts yesterday - i'll leave you with a little reading material. My main gift was another story about Squamous and Eldritch (a follow-on to the story that accompanied them in 2000), cuminating in the promise of a date on January 4. I'll leave you for a few days to see if you can guess the show and dinner location; it took me about 10 minutes. ;)

I am falling down on the blogging job. So sad, truly. I'm going to refrain from making any New Year's Resolutions regarding journalling, as such a resolution generally spells the end of my writing. I will, however, remind you to check out my book reviews and gastronome, where i more regularly update.

Oh yes. Tree-trimming. Even though we (and many of our guests) were exhausted from Tom & Carol's Winter party, a good time was had by all. Russell hooked up his music gear and plug-ins downstairs; much lego was constructed into meaningful shapes and hung on the tree, and plenty of cider, whisky, and cheese was consumed. Oh, and cookies! You can check for recipes and menus at the afore-referenced gastronome. So many lovely friends warming our home and decorating our tree - i feel truly lucky. Photos are linked from thumbnail!

How very, very cool. I was gleefully verifying that gastronome had popped to the top of MT's recently updated list, and started poking about some of the other sites in the current list. I found one word - a site that gives you 60 seconds to write about a word - freeform, stream of consciousness, whatever comes out of your fingers. Neat!

I have the words "It's beginning to look a lot like GM" incessantly swimming through my head to the tune of "It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas". I guess it's just one of the occupational hazards of working at Apple, with MacWorld SF just around the corner from New Years. Over the last week or so, i've had an unusually large number of early morning (9am, 8am) meetings to attend - which means that at this time of year, i leave the house before dawn, and watch the sunrise as i drive down 280. The light has been fantastic - i've seen three very different sunrises, which cast such differing light on the gorgeous trees and hills and landscape alone the highway. It's always lovely to be shocked back into appreciating the astounding beauty that becomes part of your regular everyday background. I have the feeling that now is a good time for me to approach many other things in my life in the same way - remember just how many wonderful things i am surrounded by, every day.

And maybe that will be easier when this next version of our software is live. ;)