Are you sure the solution is pie?

I broke out the Christmas sheet music this evening (you know I was playing "The Boar's Head Carol" and "Good King Wenceslas", awww yeaaahh!), and tomorrow we're going to get a tree at long last, and bake cut-out cookies with too many sprinkles on them. We're going to holiday-spirit up the place for real, damn it!

It's lucky we still have a little while to go before the official holiday to space out the present-getting, because Mr. Nous's birthday presents finally arrived just today. His birthday was over a week ago, and the package from Amazon came this afternoon, d'oh! He's very excited about his gifts (and has them in a pile right by him where he's watching television, which reminds me of gift-hovering I used to do during Christmas as a kid), so I don't think it was too terrible for him that he had to wait. At least he knew they were on their way, with the UPS tracking.

Among his haul: the complete series of Spaced (which I totally didn't get for myself because of Simon Pegg, nuh-uh), a bunch of Flash Gordon movie-reel shorts (the sort they showed at Saturday matinees in the 30s and 40s, and of course during Saturday television back in the day when they just had a ton of junk in the back room and threw whatever on -- oh for those days of awesome Roger Corman type flicks or Val Lewton's turning up on UHS!), Election (yes, the awesome Reese Witherspoon one); a collection of Coen brothers films (Blood Simple, Barton Fink, etc.), The Mammoth Book of Best Horror Comics, and Journalistas: One Hundred Years of the Best Writing and Reporting by Women Journalists. Christmas gifts are going to be very low key generally except for nieces and nephew, but I wanted to make sure he had nice stuff for his birthday, because he's always so generous with presents, and so appreciative of gifts. ♥Mr. Nous ♥

In keeping with the holiday theme (what, I totally have a theme here!) I bet you already know about beatonna, flist, because that's how smart you are -- but if you don't, watch her journal for some great comics (my favorite is still Pony! and Cookie-Eating-Napoleon) and fun geekery about historical figures and Canadian politics. Today's Santa comics are win -- I'm going to lay right here until you give me cookies.

Oh! And I forgot to say, though I've already thanked her with many exclamation points, I got the most fantastic gift from allyndra in the mail: an assortment of fancy-schmancy sodas! Lavender! Vanilla bean! And other flavors that are awesome! I may do soda reviews here, which will only interest me and possibly adis723, but soooodaaahhhh!

Mr. Nous is diligently doing our taxes in the living room, and because I like to avoid reality, I'm hiding in my study.

So it seemed like the perfect moment to wish Happy Birthday to zandra_x! I hope you had a supremely lovely day. All the best to you for this year ahead. <3

Highlights from this weekend: buying presents for our brand new coffee table (it needed coasters, and a subtly scented pillar candle, hobviously); taking many sudden naps (I'm still feeling very run over from this cold, and did a lot of "I'll just sit here for a second to catch my breathzzzzzzz"); having a phone conversation with Miss C about the many positive attributes of Snickerdoodles; and writing myself into various corners for this fic that's past due. Hope you're all finishing up good weekends.