Christmas is coming...

You can sing the title or imagine it with a scary, blood and guts soundtrack, as you feel appropriate. I have many things to catch you up and various thoughts on the holiday season; it would make for very disjointed reading if I tried to squish it all in, so here goes on the catching up.

We went to my work Christmas party at the end of November. It was the same as every year, same venue, same appalling DJ, same indifferent food. Fortunately, Stuart was recovering from a cold, which gave us a great excuse to escape not too long after dinner was finished. With four people in my team plus their seconds, we can now have a table to ourselves, so that was nice. The conversation was fun, anyway!

The next weekend, we went to Banff for our annual viewing of the Stuart McLean Vinyl Cafe Christmas show at the Banff Center for the Arts. This time, we brought along our friends Gary and Kat, which made for a nice addition. I discovered this year that if you buy show tickets, you get a discount rate staying at the Center's hotel, so we decided to try that. The rooms were nice enough, but check in was horrible. It's supposed to be a 4pm check in, but we got there at 4:30 and our room wasn't ready until almost 5. We'd made dinner reservations for 5, and by the time we got there, dinner had to be a bit rushed.

Our first three choices of restaurant were either closed for renovations or booked for private functions, so we ended up at Beaujolais, a French restaurant recommended by Mike and Angela.  The food was very good and we might have to go back some time when we aren't so rushed! As it was, we slid into our seats at the theater about 4 minutes before the curtain went up. Phew! The show was amazing - as usual. And it was very nice to just walk back to our rooms from the theater and skip the traffic jam.

A few weeks later, we went to Stuart's work Christmas party. It was just for his department at the university and it was held at the manager's house. Stuart says I did a fair job of engaging people in conversation and it was actually kind of fun, for a house full of people I'd never met before. I did put my foot in it a little bit during the gift exchange, but heck - I probably won't see her until the next Christmas party and she was drunk enough that she may not remember it anyway. In fact, I was a bit surprised by how drunk it got overall, but I think my low alcohol consumption skews my view of what's "acceptable" in the area anyway.

Now, it's the week before Christmas and I'm finally getting my act together. My Christmas cards were finished on Sunday, I finished the jelly and marmalade last night and printed our Christmas letter today. Oy. If you don't live close enough for me to hand you your card or gift in person, then I'm sorry, but it's going to be late!

Between now and when we leave for Edmonton, I still have: two days of work, a yoga class, a shiatsu client, a meet-up with a friend for drinks, a dog to groom, get a massage, pick up the next order of dog food, pack my clothes and organize the gifts and the clothes I'm taking for donation and *finger crossed* to clean my house.  Plus, I'd really like to stop dreaming about work and get some sleep at night. Ah, the madness.