happy holidays

So I was roused this morning by my brother's big, ugly, drooly bulldog slobbering all over my face. It was a rude awakening, since I had someone decidedly more attractive in mind at that moment. Luckily I love that dog to pieces. Which is kinda like my family: big, loud pains in the ass, but you can't do anything but love 'em. It's been a bit like National Lampoon, let's put it that way. I think my best present this year are cloudy skies and wintry weather, a nice respite from desert intensity.

Once upon a time -- of all the good days in the year, on Christmas Eve -- old Scrooge sat busy in his counting-house. It was cold, bleak, biting weather: foggy withal: and he could hear the people in the court outside, go wheezing up and down, beating their hands upon their breasts, and stamping their feet upon the pavement stones to warm them. The city clocks had only just gone three, but it was quite dark already: it had not been light all day: and candles were flaring in the windows of the neighbouring offices, like ruddy smears upon the palpable brown air. The fog came pouring in at every chink and keyhole, and was so dense without, that although the court was of the narrowest, the houses opposite were mere phantoms. To see the dingy cloud come drooping down, obscuring everything, one might have thought that Nature lived hard by, and was brewing on a large scale.

That's my favorite bit of A Christmas Carol. I hope you're all having a good one, and drink some mulled wine for me (we don't do mulled wine here, just beer and cheap zinfandel).