I have the urge to start every entry with the word whew lately. Whew, the cards are done, even though I ran out before I got to a few people and so will have to get New Year's cards for them. (Did most of them while watching/listening to the Pirates of the Caribbean writers commentary track last night; highly recommended if you're a big fan of pirate movies and if you like to hear writers dissect every bit of minutae and structure.)

And, whew, the presents that have to be shipped are done, and will go out tomorrow. There's still wrapping and cleaning of house to do, but progress has been made.

I love buying stuff for people. If only it didn't cost so much money (!), it'd be my favorite thing of all.

Anywhee, yay! for goodies that have come in the mail. I'm still holding out for x-mas day to open my amazon giftie, but Christopher opened his and has been poring over the annotations pages for it during breaks all weekend. The wonderful, fantabulous Butner Gilly household sent Mr. Rowe a whole set of kitchen knives and other culinary goodies, much needed by our patchwork kitchen. Russ and Kelly sent a beautiful book of writer photographs, by a photog whose name escapes me.

And, of course, Joe and Melendra gave us the evil, evil cookies of holiday evil. They are the best cookies in the world, and the prettiest. And this year there was a brownie. And the thing about the cookies is that there are a bunch of different kinds, so you sorta haveta keep eating them because you have to try each kind. Oh well.

OH OH OH, and I forgot, we also got a box of fudge and cookies from Mr. Mouse Quiet Upstairs.

Some of you may be thinking: the South Beach diet sure sounds like it has a lot of cookies on it. Sadly, this is not the case. But we're doing the best we can during the holidays, and then will stay on the stricter phase for another two weeks come January. Big fan of this die with a T, though it involves a lot of advance prep and cooking -- the food is good and I do feel better since we've been on it.

And cookies!

Night.

earworm: "Cool Like Dat," Digable Planets

random rec: U.S. Postal Service

namecheck: Melendra "Cookie Queen" Sutliff Sanders