Breakfast this morning turned out to be a small piece of apple-cranberry pie that Dave brought in to the office (he brought in half of a pie, not just the "small piece"), left over from Thanksgiving. We finished all our leftovers Sunday night--we had turkey sandwiches and mashed potatoes and green beans. I think there might be some olives left, but I don't think that counts.

I met my friend Lisa for dinner last night to celebrate my birthday. She gave me two beautiful handmade candles--handmade not by her, but by a friend who makes and sells them. They have slices of orange and apple embedded in the wax, apples and oranges grown by this woman, sliced and dried by her, and made into candles. They smell wonderful, of apples and cinnamon and oranges.

We talked and talked, looked at photographs of her little girl, Katie, and talked some more. I said something about wanting to decorate my office for Christmas, and she said she'd been going through her Christmas decorations and found a string of poinsetta lights that she thought she'd put up on Katie's dollhouse. I looked in the basement this morning to see if I had an extra string of lights, but couldn't find any--we moved a bunch of stuff in September when I thought I was going to get DSL installed, and I think we may have buried them.

So I stopped at Target on the way home tonight and bought a couple of boxes, plus a string of old-fashioned bubble lights and a miniature artificial tree in a tin bucket for my desk at work. I have a little string of battery-operated lights, and I bought a box of miniature Mickey Mouse ornaments and a silver star for the top. Oh, and tinsel.

I love Christmas stuff. I love buying Christmas-print paper towels and napkins and sandwich bags, and I love it when the soft drinks come out in holiday cans. I love getting out the Christmas placemats and mugs--I mostly like things that I can use rather than decorations that just sit out--I love normal, everyday things that have a Christmas spin.

When I got home tonight I got out the Christmas placemats and went down in the basement and got the stockings and stocking hangers, and hung them up on the mantle. That's probably the extent of the decorating I'll do before we leave for Florida on Saturday, but I wanted to do something.

While we were out at lunch yesterday, Julia turned on the stereo and it was playing a Christmas song, and I asked her what CD it was, and she said it was the radio--that one of our local stations is playing Christmas music continuously from now 'til Christmas. I've completely gotten out of the habit of listening to "regular" radio, if I ever had the habit, and lately I've been tuned to NPR almost exclusively, following the Presidential election.

But I set a button for 102.1, and I've been switching between them. The seem to be playing a whole hour of almost uninterrupted Christmas music, then about thirty straight minutes of commercials. So I can hit it right, or I can hit it wrong.