We have a small Christmas now. It's outside, on the picnic table, visible from both wings of the house. Woody decorated it with the big, old-fashioned colored lights and it looks great.

When I was a kid, two or three years old, parents grew tired of my playing with the ornaments and nearly tipping the tree over. So, they put the tree in my playpen.

Don't let on, but Mike and Lynn have been hiding the kids' Christmas presents at our house. Sandra and her mother have done a magnificent job wrapping the presents. In addition to wonderful toys, clothes, and Red Sox memorabilia, they bought some spiritual books to bring the holiday back to its original intent. So, to see if we've got this straight, Mike and Lynn bought books such as The Stations of the Cross, while I bought a copy of the aforementioned Linkin Park/Jay-Z mashup (the PG version).

This will be a quiet day at work. Tomorrow's a company holiday and a number of people are taking today and most of next week off. I started on some very interesting work yeserday (using UML to model an information set, for those of you who care about such things). I'll try to get to a good stopping place this afternoon.

I have to do some shopping on the way home and am already steeling myself against my wild-eyed fellow shoppers. This has been a nutty week for commuting as well. Yesterday I listened to the traffic report on the radio for the first time in many weeks, wanting to know about the two mile backup on Interstate 495. (An accident on the Mass Pike jammed up traffic all around.)