That Nervous Feeling Of Success

I'm suspicious.

Not only did I unofficially meet my unofficial November writing goal, but only six days into December and I technically already have at least one gift for everyone on my admittedly short list. There are a few more things to be ordered, shipped, or otherwise obtained, but if all else fails I have at least one item to give people.

We found a beautifully tacky fiber optic tree at a liquidation store for 20 bucks, and we got it up on the 2nd. It's small enough to sit on our holiday end table without having balance issues, like our other Xmas tree had. I've already wrapped stuff to go under said tree.

I also grabbed a tag off the Rite-Aid giving tree (which seems to have less pretentious requests than the Freddy's giving tree.) Since everyone always goes for the cutesy little kids, I make it a point to look for the older ones who probably know Santa isn't the one to count on to save their holiday. The first tag I saw was a pre-teen who wanted art supplies. I figured any pre-teen who still wanted art supplies deserved better than the 180-item "art set" crud someone would likely lob at them when their tag's still left on the tree just before Xmas. For under 30 bucks I got a fair bundle of art stuff together, and I've already wrapped and returned it to Rite-Aid.

I'm nearly a third of the way through the 2008 Xmas Ornament Blitz, as well. I still have some final design decisions to make, but the hard part's going unusually well thus far.

Today I saw a hummingbird. The Anna's hummers who overwinter at the lake have been nosing around here since the tail end of the Rufous season (before Labor Day.) Last year, the last one I saw was on Thanksgiving. This marks the first year I've seen a hummingbird in December. Judging by the feeders - since we still had hummers, and since the Anna's overwinter locally anyway, we figured we'd leave a couple feeders out until they stopped showing up - we have maybe two or three or so flitting about. I expect they'll head back down to the water when the weather turns colder, but for now it's fun watching the fall hummers in the yard.

I received my holiday gift to myself: The Tales of Beedle the Bard, J.K. Rowling's collection of Wizarding fairy tales from the Harry Potter universe, purchased on pre-order. Already read, much enjoyed.

So, all in all, thus far it's been a remarkably pleasant holiday season.

If the sun goes supernova tomorrow, I'm sorry.