Merry Christmas to all

It's been a good day for me. Saw the nephews. Everybody likes "The Dangerous Book for Boys" - I got them two copies, one for their house and one for here, plus a bunch of other stuff.

Some friends have suffered a horrific tragedy - well, it involves one of their parents. I won't give details, but please try to beam some generally positive energy to someone who needs it.

I'm sucking back some wine right now, 'cause I have a blood donation scheduled for tomorrow. Who realized that Boxing Day is exactly eight weeks after Halloween?

Tomorrow isn't just Boxing Day - not that that holiday has any significance for most folks here in the U.S. No, it's also Calendar Day, the day that most stores slash calendar prices by 50%! Prices in most places will be marked down further to $1 for whatever is left in about a week, but by then the calendars will have been pretty much picked over.

The next day, the 27th, I've actually been mandated to work overtime! It won't really be "overtime", since I've only logged 12 actual hours this week - the 24 hours of holiday time for yesterday and today will not count towards putting me over the 40 hour hump beyond which all hours worked count as time-and-a-half. Still, a 48-hour straight paycheck is more than a 36-hour straight paycheck. Most of us who got mandated (there are quite a few) figured that low workloads would cause our overtime to be cancelled, but that was before the power got knocked out for a few hours on Sunday, causing our production schedules to be thrown off.

Somewhere along the way I'm going to try to squeeze in some holiday visiting, too. And I'm adding site links to my sidebar - long-overdue additions.

Merry Christmas, everybody!