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In past years, I've always had some post-Christmas blues. Sort of, anyway. More like post-Christmas disgusts, actually, after family members spend absurd amounts of money on stuff we neither need nor want, leaving us with wads of guilt about what the heck to *do* with the stuff, plus the inevitable "we didn't spend enough on THEM" stuff, and so on.

This year, due to a combination of factors that led to our relatives not having time to buy so much crap (and therefore spending more money on one *decent* present, off a list of things we suggested), plus our endless complaining about not having any room in the house, we actually didn't have that happen. We got some quite nice gifts, we managed to buy stuff for relatives that *they* wanted rather than feeling like we had a quota, and we don't have a houseful of stuff to find homes for.

It's progress. Perhaps next year we'll persuade them that alternative gifting (heifer.org, and the like) really *would* make us just as happy as still more material possessions.

Meanwhile, my husband has the week off, and incentive to help with the basement (making room for the pottery wheel I bought him!) so hopefully we'll make some housecleaning progress. I also commissioned his brother to do some of the kitchen work that we now have even less time for, and he properly installed our stove while we were gone this weekend (the previous stove was a built-in, and this one's not, so it's been sitting an extra 3-4" up on the cabinet base for I-don't-know-how-long). Progress, hurrah.

Every year, there's a Christmas present that stands out, one I'm really proud of... I've either scored a great deal, or found something that's exactly *perfect* for someone, or something like that.

This year, I think The Gift is chartreuse maggots. We were in the sporting goods store, picking up handwarmers and whatnot for the hunters and fishermen in the family, and I was looking at the wide array of really weird baits. (Catfish baits don't count. They're *beyond* weird.) I'm not really sure why, but for some reason they feel compelled to put fluorescent dyes in stuff, as if trout are some deep-sea fish or something. I mean, the glitter I can see, it looks like fish scales, sort of, but I don't know why panfish are attracted to freaky colors. Apparently they are, or at least bait-buying fishermen are, so there they are. And I looked at all of them, and found... chartreuse maggots. I'M GIVING MY FATHER-IN-LAW CHARTREUSE MAGGOTS FOR CHRISTMAS!

No, I don't know why I'm so irrationally pleased about it. He's also getting a neato handmade pigsuede notebook, so it's not like he's *only* getting chartreuse maggots. (The suede is not, be it known, chartreuse. It's a dark, almost-black blue.)

While I've certainly programmed in a heck of a lot of languages, I haven't spent quite so much time doing heavy programming in two at the same time. Or really, four, since the MS flavor of SQL is substantially different from the MySQL version, though the Gamehawk use of MySQL is rather lite compared to the rather ugly nested subselects I'm doing in the office.

I think the problem is that Delphi is too similar to Perl in superficial details, so I can't keep it as distinct as, say, RPG and Perl. Tonight for the first time I started to type a line of Perl code and had to stop and think about a quite simple function.

Or maybe I'm just getting old.

Our church advisory council, of which I'm a member (actually, one of the few members, since it's been losing members to moves and whatnot and we've been too busy to find replacements), is having their annual Christmas dinner tonight. Five couples, and this year because of the church finances we're opting to have a semi-potluck at a member's house instead (read: I'm in charge of the budget and I'm not gonna spend big bux at a restaurant). Semi-potluck, because I'm assigning people to bring stuff, and only two of the other gals are helping. We're fondueing, because I own four fondue pots, two of which date from the 1970's.

So we just chopped up beef tenderloin, made reuben balls, breaded cheese, and we have cocktail franks (those are hard to find... there are eighty-leven varieties of "little smokies" but that's different) that'll be batter-dipped. Whee. Oh, and a goat-cheese snowman (three cheese balls rolled in sauteed garlic, fresh-ground black pepper, and sauteed rosemary, with rosemary arms and a carrot-and-peppercorn face).

And bagna cauda.

Like good self-respecting geeks with no Italian ancestry, we were of course introduced to it by way of Babylon 5. I just finished making it, and testing it with a Wheat Thin, being that one of the other gals is bringing the veggies for dipping, and the other the bread. Yum. I can feel my arteries hardening already...

Yay for my husband, who did a lot of the work because my back's still out, because I hauled laundry to and from the basement yesterday. I thought I was careful, but I guess not enough so.

Aside from actual "job" work (I hit the $1200 mark today, which is pretty cool), I haven't gotten anything done in the last few days, because I've managed to Do Something to my back. I'm not sure what, or how... aside from a bit of sciatica when I was pregnant (par for the course), I haven't had any back trouble to speak of. This has felt like the typical worked-too-hard lower back ache, except multiplied quite a bit. Very odd. I bought a fifty-pound bag of dog food Monday, but a clerk insisted on loading it for me and all I had to do was tip it out of the cart into the back of the van, so it's very unlikely that was it. I've been sitting goofy at work because I'm wedged in next to a desk, at a folding table, but aside from a too-high keyboard there's nothing *that* weird about it and I usually feel bad keyboarding in my shoulders and upper back. So I'm mystified, but it seems to be getting better, so I guess I just must have lifted something I shouldn't have, and that I don't remember.

So the Christmas tree still isn't up. Bah.