Well, it's been a while. On Friday, I finally decided on a Handspring Visor Prism for Karen's present. (I also bought one for myself, otherwise Karen would never get to use hers.) Saturday and Sunday were mainly taken up with going to friends' houses and eating. I had a very light meal Sunday night, as our friends had made paella with various shellfish (to which I'm allergic). Probably a good thing, I suppose.

On Monday, I had to go in to work, but my boss decided to close early. Why we were even open, I have no idea, as we had no jobs scheduled on the books and the phone didn't even ring once.

Monday evening, Karen and I went to see The Fellowship of the Ring. Although they took liberties with the plot (and once again, Tom Bombadil was a no-show), it was nonetheless enjoyable. I found myself quite impressed with small touches, like the fact that Galadriel's pointed ears were pinkly translucent when backlit, like real ears. The CG environments were excellent, though the constantly-moving camerawork produced two problems: a couple of times, the CG elements didn't track exactly with the practical photography, and fast-moving foreground elements didn't use nearly enough motion blur (which created a noticeable strobing effect). Nevertheless, turning John Rhys-Davies into a dwarf was an astounding accomplishment.

When we got home, Karen found the marathon of "A Christmas Story" on TNT, and there the television remained until the marathon had ended Tuesday night. This is especially ironic, as Karen makes fun of me for watching a movie on DVD, and then playing it again with the commentary track enabled. She says she can't understand why anyone would watch a movie twice in a row...

I gave Karen the Prism, a Captain Teutonic T-Shirt and a bunch of the "white chocolate salty balls" that they sell at Borders.

I got everything I asked for (Windows XP and guitar strings) as well as some things I hadn't (a new belt, a Simpsons T-shirt and the first season of The Simpsons on DVD). I decided I was having too much fun relaxing to install Windows, so I downloaded and installed a bunch of software on my Prism instead.

Karen made a wonderful Christmas dinner (ham, stuffing, broccoli, asparagus, macaroni and cheese and biscuits). We topped it off with some of Ben & Jerry's Festivus ice cream, which (despite the description on the container) tasted like an admixture of pumpkin pie and Pfeffernüße.

And all was right with the world. At least in my little sliver of it.