Yes, I'm still alive!

Been lazy on updating the blog. You know how the holidays can be. The past two days I've been feeling uncharacteristically "good" which, of course, makes me immediately suspicious.

All the gifts are wrapped. My brother was over the other day to put together the niece's bicycle. I think we're owed a set of reflectors because I can't imagine why a bicycle would be sold without them for the usual spots when the pedals have some built in. What else? Oh, the tree finally got up. That's actually big news.

It's a brand-new artificial tree with the lights pre-hung. We bought a pile of decorations back in the 2003 holiday season but never used them for our holiday spirit was pretty much in the toilet in light of father's death in '02. Well they're up on the tree this year. Brother said he couldn't remember the last time we had a full-sized tree. It's probably been easily over 10 years, maybe closer to 15. Since then we've either done without or had very small trees of maybe 1 meter.

So the nephew is getting a lump of coal from his parents. Seriously. Seems they're for sale online. Ok, that's not all he's getting but this is the "gag" gift. Now before learning of this, I took ages to individually wrap each of his gifts and then put them in one box and wrap it so it looks as if he's shorted. The kid's going to need therapy. No, it's the niece that needs therapy or something. She's still not embracing learning and the alphabet and it looks like she won't be able to get into a pre-school. I'll consider an intervention if she's not improved by springtime. We know from other evaluations that she's six months back of her peers but I'm not convinced she's going to be ready for Kindergarten in 2006. The sister-in-law is getting a remote control spider. Yes, this is the arachnophobic SIL. OK, so what good is a spell-checker if it misses words that are in the damned included dictionary? Bah. Technology by trilobites.

I had a wet dream the other day. I know because, well... anyway I can't remember a damned thing about the dream. That's not fair!

I have some entertainment comments to catch up on with Prison Break on a fall hiatus until March or something and with some movies to spout off on too. But that can wait.