Happy Boxing Day, pets! Or, according to the Froudian Goblins, Happy Ear Boxing Day! (Tomorrow, for those who are following this, is Poxing Day.)

I hope your holidays have been festive. We’ve had a wonderful, relaxing couple of days.

On the 24th, I talked to Teresa again, and we re-brainstormed one of our collab stories (the first one, we realized, had a boring setting and cardboard characters—which was why the plot was boooring). I then sat down to start the new version, and hit a wall. I kept re-starting it, trying to find the right place. I had lots of bits to keep, but had a devil of a time pulling it together. Eventually I walked away.

As usual, we stayed up until midnight on Christmas Eve so we could open all our presents. We had presents from each other, from my parents, and from Teresa and Jeff. Seeing that all of our presents to other people will start going out in the mail tomorrow, I didn’t begrudge late presents at all. After all, Christmas Day is the _first_ of the Twelve Days of Christmas!

I got Ken the Da Vinci flying machine, a t-shirt that says “You never see a motorcycle parked outside of a psychiatrist’s office” (too true!), and a solo CD by Geddy Lee of Rush.

My own holiday was an embarrassment of media. From Ken I got:
• the three Charles de Lint dark fantasies, along with a note that said “I hope to see your books near this illustrious one.” The note, in fact, was my best present of all. I think I’m going to have it framed!
• Marillion’s “Marbles” CD
• Eddie Izzard’s “Circle” DVD (the only one we didn’t have)
• a promissory for a Craftsman mailbox, to be made out of the original front part of the built-in secretary in my study (which can’t be fixed as a desk lid) (Yes, he’s already working on a new desk lid.)
• the complete series of “Firefly” on DVD

Teresa and Jeff sent the Datlow/Windling anthology _Sirens and Other Dæmon Lovers_” an erotic Tarot deck (looks like it’s going to be fun!), and an illuminated Pan. (Hey, Teresa—is the letter an H for House, a B for Brenneis, or it was just a pretty picture and the letter is inconsequential?)

So, in honor of all that, and as was planned, we spent most of the two days gorging on TV and movies, including…

• three Rankin/Bass specials: “Rudolph, the Red-Nose Reindeer”,* “The Year Without a Santa Claus”, “The Town Without Christmas”
• Bell, Book, & Candle (which I’d never seen before!)
• most of the “Inside the Actor’s Studio” with Robin Williams (we taped the rest)
• the “Charlie Brown Christmas Special” (but what was the second half of that? Some lame later show. We abandoned it to go sit in the hot tub.)
• a few eps of season three of “Angel”
• A Christmas Story (which I’d also never seen! Next year, maybe I’ll actually finally see It’s a Wonderful Life or Miracle on 34th Street! I know, I’m pathetic. But to balance it, I amused Ken by quoting large chunks of the “Charlie Brown Christmas Special”.)

I know there was more, but I’m blanking on it now.

The rest of the time, we lay in the living room under the light of the tree and read. I’m reading Robin McKinley’s _Sunshine_, a truly creepy book. I found it in the YA section of the library. (I can see I’m going to be spending a fair amount of time in that section.)

I finished the potpourri bags and made good headway into one of the holiday cross stitch patterns. Go me.

We made pizza (pesto, garlic, mozzarella, feta, and fresh tomato) for breakfast on Saturday and ate junk food (wings, mozzarella sticks, and jalapeño poppers) for supper. Heh.

We were going to go for a bike ride up the coast today, but it’s grey and weather.com threatens rain. Rain, in fact, for at least a week. Well, phooh. Ken’s feeling snozzly, so staying indoors might be best in the end. Although we may go out to the garage and play with the paint-stripping tool for a bit.

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Not so much with the playing with tools today after all. We went to see “National Treasure”,** and it was longer than we expected. We got out at 6:20, I had to be at Elizabeth’s at 7 to carpool to the Caer Glas full moon/Solstice ritual. So we went to the Mongolian BBQ, then Ken dropped me off at Elizabeth’s. The ritual was beautiful, in the cold and wind (the rain kindly paused for the duration), and then some of us crammed into Ismay’s tiny house while Elizabeth did some healings.

Ken came to pick me up at Elizabeth & Griffin’s, and the four of us hung out talking until nearly midnight. I had no idea it had gotten that late. Good people, fun conversation.

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*Trivia: In “Rudolph”, there’s an Island of Misfit Toys, which includes a spotted elephant, a Charlie-in-the-Box, a bird that swims…and a perfectly normal-looking doll. Ken perused the Rankin/Bass website and found out that the doll wasn’t in the original scripts. When asked, Rankin said that the doll had psychological problems. This keeps making us giggle at random moments.

**While it had a few minor logic issues, this movie hit all of my movie-watching buttons. A puzzle to solve, intricate clues, action, humor, mystery. Highly recommended.