They Say It's Christmas….

It doesn’t feel like Christmas. The weather is too nice. This week Raleigh has seen temperatures in the seventies, except for yesterday which was rainy, foggy, and blue. How can one think of Christmas in conditions like that? The muzak at the store still isn’t playing Christmas music. How can shoppers be in the ChristmasContinue reading “They Say It's Christmas….”

And it’s Friday, so…?

Looking through the archives I remembered every Christmas is like this. Too much to do, too little time and too little staff to accomplish it. The body forgets. It’s the triumphs of the season–the happy kids, the satisfied parents–that stick in memory, not the bleak moments. And sometimes I wonder how I made it throughContinue reading “And it’s Friday, so…?”

Stalking the wild Harry Potter book

Yesterday brought two surprises. The first, and potentially the most important, was that I got my power back after five days. Raleigh, North Carolina was hit by a massive ice storm on last Wednesday, leaving upwards of 70 percent of the Raleigh/Durham area without electricity, and without electricity I had neither heat nor water. AfterContinue reading “Stalking the wild Harry Potter book”

Trewsday, 25 Winterfilth

The idea of Lord of the Rings Christmas cards still fills me with a sense of dread, but as Geoff Trowbridge pointed out in his comment to my entry of a few days ago, “[o]ne musn’t forget that Christmas is a profoundly pagan tradition dating all the way back to ancient Babylon, when the ‘FeastContinue reading “Trewsday, 25 Winterfilth”