Oh, flist/circle, the plans I had....

Well, you know how it goes--things take longer than expected and new bits and pieces pop up (like, oh, say, a new implementation guide before the end of the year) and people don't feel well (not me, but guess who picks up the slack?) and before you know it, it's a 10 days and counting until the holiday and there's an ugly, ugly tree in your living room, no cards written out and a tiny fraction of the holiday gifts under control.

On the plus side, BabyBoy (all 6 feet of him) and I went to see the good Santa at Lenox Mall this weekend because he claims I never took him as a kid. Now, I feel certain this is untrue, but I also feel like he could have missed out on the last decade or so of visits. So. We went, we saw, we conquered the insane crowds. Plus points for bonding with a kid, even if it's accomplished while circling an urban mall at 2 mph because it's gridlocked, right?

Also on the plus side, we found a new, way less ugly tree and moved the disaster downstairs where it didn't matter that it was stunted and scalped on the bottom. Two trees! Yay! (I officially stopped decorating them this afternoon when I ran out of ornament hangers.)

Possibly on the plus side is that I went trolling on ebay and added more bits and pieces to my Christmas village collection: the Globe Theatre, to be exact. (What this has to do with the rest of the Victorian London/Dickens theme I know not, but somebody wanted to get rid of the thing and I was happy to take it off their hands at the ridiculously low price they were asking for it.) D will be less thrilled, I'm sure, but this is what happens when it's late and I'm frustrated with oh-so-MANY-things. I'm counting it as a win, if only because I haven't gone totally insane and gotten into a bidding war for the Twelfth Day of Christmas figurine, as that one is the one they set up for scarcity and people want/will pay stupid amounts of money for it.

wendy asked for pictures of the decorating, so this is your fair warning that that's coming, later in the week after I excavate the house from the storage boxes.

Definitely on the plus side is that I'm really not all that stressed about the holiday. It's nuts and I'm enjoying things and I'm not playing the this is all too much, you have to cut back game, because that's not any fun.

Getting the flu on December 6 (and only now feeling like almost normal again) is not optimal. Just sayin'.

I somehow managed to make it through picking up Oldest from his dorm, taking all three boys to the small museum with the amazing Egyptian collection on their free day; spent the next day in bed, calling in to assorted work-related meetings; spent the *next* day in Middle Earth (Fellowship started at 11:15 a.m. and we were walking out of the credits of RotK at 12:05, technically the following day); and then spent the rest of the week gradually working up to reality again.

As of this morning, I had 2 (of the 20 needed) gifts purchased. aieee.

I'd do the TV meme, except I can summarize it in 1 line: started watching Once Upon A Time. Didn't ditch anything old, though I'm behind on everything but Castle and Leverage (but only because BabyBoy watches them in the morning while he's waking up, so I see them as I'm running around doing my own morning routine), which means SPN and H50 are still taking up space on my DVR. Downton Abbey and the new Upstairs Downstairs also rotated through but I've watched all of them.

Good things:

I finally finished the curtain-fic epilogue for the Clint/Coulson I wrote during the summer, which is also known as the part I really wanted to write but couldn't make sense of for the longest time. It is very nice to have that out of my head!

I really couldn't believe how quickly the time passed while watching all three LOTR movies. I don't even know how many times we've seen them, so I thought we'd probably get bored in the middle, but no, not at all. Watching them all together on the big screen was really amazing, even if it did wipe out the entire weekend (and make me vaguely nauseated at the smell of popcorn now.)

There was a groupon or something (living social? maybe?) to have a Christmas tree delivered to the house -- $70 for an 8 ft Fraser fir, including delivery and I decided that after last year's Home Depot travesty of a tree, this couldn't be any worse, so I went ahead and did it. Not only was it not worse, it is quite possibly the best looking tree we've had in years and the nice man brought it right to my front door. This is good, because I doubt we'd have a tree yet if it hadn't just shown up at the beginning of the month. But! it did, and we do, and other than a slight mishap that resulted in a decapitated angel tree-topper, we have achieved Tree. ( See? )