The strong winds last night blew over our little tree. The winds done their business, bringing in much colder weather, and have settled down nicely. We'll get the tree in place again. A calm weather night is in the forecast. The rain melted all but a few clumps of snow We have a brown Christmas, but we can have a football game in the back yard between dinner and dessert tomorrow.

Today is a cooking and preparation day. We want to get much of the food prepared in advance so that we can enjoy tomorrow's company. It's easier to make gravy when you don't have an audience offering suggestions.

Our new little printer worked well last night. We were able to print pictures of Sandra and Joe's trip to PEI in the late summer. Sandra made an album of trip memorabilia as a gift for Joe. We still have a way to go to learn how to manage all those pictures - which ones to print, which ones to publish, which ones to archive. Printing's the easy part. A software engineer once told me, "Before you can process data, you have to manage data."

I was the last person in our group and one of the last people in the building to leave work yesterday. I was making good progress and didn't want to set the work aside in an imcomplete state for the long weekend. I reached a place where it'll be easy to start again next week. The office will be empty next week. About only people working next week will be the contractors. The permanent employees have to use up their remaining vacation time before the end of the year or lose it.

It's time to get cooking.