writing: nope
exercise: well, technically it was after midnight…

We went to the post-mortem today, which dragged on longer than it should, but the BBQ was fun. Good people to hang out with.

On the way home, we picked up our Christmas tree. (No matter what religion I may be, childhood habits die hard. I’m not going to give it a cutesy name, even though its origins are pagan. It’ll always be a Christmas tree, and I have to open most of my presents on the 25th. So there.) We decortated it tonight, with lights and special ornaments and the silver tree topper that my family used for as long as I can remember. Then we sat and watched TV in the mostly dark, with the tree and the under-cabinet kitchen lights as our only illumination.

In between the tree-buying and tree-decortating, I got my day’s worth of work done on the editing job, so that was good. And I’m keeping up on e-mail. It’s strange how much my schedule gets skewed when Ken’s back home. I wouldn’t trade this, of course!

Tomorrow is a free and clear day: no meetings, no outside requirements. I need to copy edit, write, exercise, wrap presents, buy a few presents and some groceries, and finish up the GP. Ken’s going to see if the borrowed radial arm saw works. We’ll go from there.

Oh, and it’s the last night of the Parade of Lights in Newport Harbor (http://www.christmasboatparade.com/home.html), so we’re planning to go to that. I’ve never been, and I hear it’s stunning.

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Because I skipped a day, I didn’t talk about Thursday. Embarrassingly, I don’t remember most of the day; I know I caught up on computer stuff and house stuff, and Ken picked up his mom’s sewing machine and had a work conference call. In the evening, we got a new battery in the bike and then headed up to Meg & Matt’s, where we ate Baja Fresh, gave them their Yule presents, and sat around making fun of the bands on VH-1 Classics until far too late.

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Ken bought us a digital camera! A Nikon Coolpix 2100. He was in the duty-free shop on the way to Japan, see, and… It has all of the features I cared about (decent zoom, decent-sized screen, and, of course, Mac compatible), so that’s cool. I haven’t had a chance to play with it yet (I meant to take a picture of the banner we painted, but spaced on that).