I got some other nice presents, too. A waffle iron that doubles as a griddle! A footbath with nubbly things and roller balls and jets of bubbles! My very own poster of Joel Robinson! Beautiful, beautiful amber and silver earrings! Cashmere socks! Man, how am I going to wash cashmere socks? Hand wash, then lay flat to dry, I suppose. Well worth the trouble: they're incredibly, luxuriously soft.

Denise gave me a super cool traveling jewelry case, just the thing for when I go on vacation. And she gave me a huge gift basket of...candy. And cake. And cookies. And champagne. She hadn't known I'd joined Weight Watchers. Neither had my parents who sent us candy and pistachios. Also some gift certificates, and lovely monogrammed towels for which we are very grateful as most of our towels look terrible, all pulled threads and worn edges.

Although it was darling of everyone to give us delicious treats we have so much fattening gift food in the house it's not funny. I've got to get rid of it. I don't know what I'll do, though. Everyone at work is on WW as well. Perhaps John can take some to work. He, of course, made cookies yesterday because he always makes cookies for Christmas. Luckily, I don't care for that particular kind. I'm in no danger of eating any. But it's scary how many other types of temptation there are in the kitchen right now. I hardly dare go in.

One of the things I gave John was a new keyboard, an expanded one because the one we've got is hard to type on and is approximately six inches across. Okay, I exaggerate, but it feels like it. And I have small hands; John must feel like he's typing on a toy. So I got Apple's groovy expanded keyboard, and many thanks are due to Michael for picking that up for me. Unfortunately, we discovered we have to run a higher version of our operating system than we currently have loaded. We can't upload the new version for some technical reason which I thought I understood but I don't, so I can't fix it and right now neither can John. So we are screwed and I am typing on the old keyboard.

We'll figure it out somehow, but it's kind of annoying. It was such a clever gift idea.

Now the sun is down so I can officially claim not to have left the house all day. I haven't even changed out of my pyjamas. It's great. I mean, I could use some exercise, but I didn't want to leave my warm cocoon and my new toys. We had waffles for breakfast, and the cats played with their catnip cats (doesn't that seem terribly wrong, somehow? It should be catnip mice), and I spent time at my MOOs, and John and I watched the volleyball video I gave him, and suddenly it's 5pm. Time for our annual Christmas dinner of Thai chicken curry and rice.

Tomorrow I'll use part of my gift certificate at Barnes & Noble on my lunch hour. I will need plenty to read as I'm expecting a very quiet week, all three days of it. I wish, wish, wish Margaret Frazer's new mystery was out but it was delayed a month for some reason. I guess I'll pick up the earlier part of Fiona Buckley's Elizabethan mystery series that Pooks told me about. I read the fourth book and thought it was quite decent historical writing, though lacking the spiritual depth of the Sister Frevisse series. That's what I'm wanting right now, you see. A chance to spend time in a period before the Age of Reason. I need a bit of faith and peace, a respite from the high tech life, even if I'm just borrowing it for 60,000 words.

Oh, and by the way:

Past Life The Index Next Incarnation