03 December 2010

22 Days Before Christmas

Thursday was mostly devoted to work, and I was quite happy to get two orders done on the new Virtual Desktop. We couldn't do it previously because macros were not enabled in Word. I was told by IT to enable all macros because it was a secure environment; previously we had been forbidden to do so due to viruses. So, yay!

During lunch I got the foyer decorated; at least the lights on the miniatures tree worked this year! Later on I was able to decorate the divider that separates the upper story from the foyer.

Just before we went to bed, James brought up the board that goes over the mantel shelf and I brought up the box with the village. That was for today, but it was done very late in the afternoon.

I started out by trying to print the labels for the Christmas card envelopes. This was a terrible mess. The cartridge in my printer was shot, so I tried to print them on James' printer. James' printer has never been the same since he tried to print some decals and got the paper wrapped around the drum and we had to peel it off. They eventually did print, but half of them were bad.

I did, however, finally get the yearly newsletter printed out neatly.

About eleven I left for the Apple Annie Craft Show at St. Anne's Church off Roswell Road. On the way there I stopped at Publix for cash and the post awful for stamps.

The show was fun, although the vendors I wanted to be there weren't (the woman who makes the bottle straps and the person who sold the dog soap). I got only three small things, two of them gifts.

On the way back I stopped at Borders. Found some neat little photo-history books like this, the 1900s, 1910s, and 1930s, for only $2 each. Also bought a "Period Living" and a book (which it turned out we had—I thought we only had the DVD).

On the way out I saw a new hardback called Christmas 1945. Wow! Looks great!

Stopped at Trader Joe's for some bread for lunch and also some proscuitto, but I didn't look at the label carefully enough. It's smoked. Ugh. But I was hungry, so ate it anyway.

Then stopped at Target to buy the glider rocker I have picked out to replace the papasan chair. It turned out the box was too big for the back of my car, so I told them we would come back tonight. I did get a new toner cartridge for my printer before coming home. I got the Samsung original (the price merely made me scream silently) instead of the Office Depot refurb, which is what I got last time. It made nice black copies for a short while and then scattered toner all over the inside of the printer and has given me nothing but pale grey copies for months.

It was only after I'd nursed a sinus headache and taken the dog out that I got to work on the village. Luckily I put everything in the same place each year, so it was easy to place the seven buildings and then arrange the now-well known figures around them: the returning soldier greeting his girl, the nuns singing to the family while Father O'Malley reads his scripture out back, the kid with his tongue stuck to the flagpole, the boy with the plane model, the shoppers exiting Woolworth's, and the policemen just having left "the Buttery" (which is downstairs from radio station WENN, of course).

We had supper at Ken's Grill again, then went back to Target to fetch the rocker and to Borders to return the book (I found its sequel and got that instead). James got me the Christmas 1945 book for Christmas! On the way home we spotted Christmas lights at every quarter, including the house that has a big trumpeting angel on each gatepost of their house.

We received our first Christmas card today, which was enough incentive for me to sit down and finish all the signatures, stick the missives in certain envelopes and label them, and then sticker and stamp them, which I finished up during Tonight.

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