The Christmas Rush at work didn't feel as overwhelming to me this year as it has in the past. I suppose it's partly because I know what I'm doing better, but I think even Bruce commented on it. Insanely busy, as it should have been, but it didn't feel as AAAAHHHHF*(EYKJA:!!1!! as I'd feared. Except for a few times.

I forget if it was the week of or the week before Christmas, but Monday night, the power went out. Sometime around 6:30pm, probably fifteen customers or so in the store, I had about ten downstairs in the basement where I was working (where all the Christmas stuff was out). The lights started flickering, and I'd gotten a flashlight ready just in case...and then they went out entirely. And stayed out. I called out for everyone to stay put (even employees can barely get around down there in the pitch black), and I'd come over with the flashlight and lead them to the stairs. Everyone was pretty calm, I think even the little kid someone had was fine, everyone was just kind of confused and laughing a bit.

There was a bit of a bewildered mob up at the front registers - luckily Sue Mac had stayed a bit late (she's a grown-up, otherwise it was me and all new kids working), and had already called Ann and Bruce. The alarm was beeping nice and loud and obnoxious - not a constant beep, slow enough that I could tune it out, but enough that it drove Mac nuts. Some people left right away, but others remained hovering, with shopping baskets full of stuff. I had the bright idea of saying that since we had noooo idea when the power would be back (we can't get the registers open when the power's gone out, and most people need to use a credit card), anyone who wanted to could leave their name and we'd hold their stuff for them for whenever they wanted to come back. So we bagged things up, took names and phone numbers, and soon had everyone out.

Bruce took awhile to get there, he'd been way out in Westfield at the lighthouse (which he and Ann have just sold to the state), but Mac stuck around, and a friend of hers had brought her a huuuuge plate of Christmas cookies like an hour before. So we hung out and ate cookies and the kids tried sneaking up and scaring everybody in the dark. We tried to send a couple on dinner break, but Wendys' power was out too, and poor Casey had to deny her cravings for a baconator. It was a good 45 minutes or so before the power came back, so, we ate a lot of cookies.


The following night, it was pretty busy, and I got called downstairs to give them a hand. I reached the register to find several of the BIG Precious Moments pieces on the counter...and the ledge of the main PM display *covered* in Precious Moments pieces. Lists of item numbers all over the place, Josh and Erin running around, a middle-aged guy in a long black wool coat still looking into the cases.

He was buying *all* of those pieces. And needed them all gift-wrapped. (We gift wrap for free. Technically it needs to be over $10, and not sale priced, but that's the only limitation. This means MADNESS at Christmas.) So eeeeveryone was running around in a flurry, Erin and Josh were trying to get all the boxes found, while Mac was helping other customers down there.

The small, normal-sized, regular Precious Moments pieces run about $20-$30 each. They're pricey. The Disney ones are all $45ish. The big pieces run $100-$200. And then there was the HUGE special edition piece that I honestly didn't think we'd ever sell, because it was like eighteen inches high and $500.

Apparently the guy does this every year, I just hadn't been there in the past to experience it. Fortunately, he said he'd be back the next day to pick them up and all. (He left us his business card. He's a high-up in providing oil for the area. "Ohhh...") The way he said it, it sounded like he'd be in in the morning, so we were determined to get everything wrapped that night. (Just our luck, I don't think he came in until two days later.) Erin plugged away at it the whole time, keeping a running list of the price of each piece, and writing a brief description of each one on the bottom once wrapped. Josh helped her awhile, Luke I think watched them, until eventually they called me down to help, since Erin and I were the fastest wrappers there.

We VERY nearly made it, and by 9:00 had all but one of the $2600 worth of Precious Moments pieces wrapped, and that only because it was the display for the $500 piece and the box was nowhere to be found, so it needed packed up carefully into another box. (Of course, after that was done the next morning, Ann discovered its misleadingly-labeled, misplaced box out back.) We were a little late getting out that night, but that always happens around the holidays anyway.

Christmas Eve actually wasn't complete insanity, pretty busy for most of the day, but it died around 3pm or so, and Ann and Bruce actually closed up the store for us at 5.

I worked New Year's Eve, too, and even that wasn't tooo too bad. The early afternoon it got swamped a lot, and we *did* sell out of party poppers (which we'd had like 20 boxes of 100 of), but it died around 7 or 8, and being a holiday, I let the kids just hang out and slack off for once.


Christmas Eve, Tom and I had our Christmas here. I baked a ham (which was less work even than usual, since I'd sent Tom to do the shopping - he grabbed a ham largely at random, and it ended up being pre-sliced and having ready-made glaze), I'd picked up a large bottle of a white wine we'd loved before (yay for living in an area with amazing local wineries!), we made up a whole platter of yummy cheeses and some meats to pick up. And, of course, lots of Christmas cookies.

After dinner, when we were just picking at the cheese and whatnot, we took turns bringing over our presents for each other, one at a time, and it was really nice. :) Initially, we'd set a rough spending limit at like, a little over $100 for each other. But since the bulk of Tom's was a new computer desk for me (which I am LOVING omfg), he was all sad because he wanted me to have more than two things to open. (There was another large mystery box besides the desk...and it turned out to be a new computer chair, when he'd told me he was getting EITHER a desk or a chair.) And then every time he went out shopping, he complained that every time he saw something he wanted to get me, it wasn't like, *cheap* cheap...so finally he just decided "fuck it! I'm buying it anyway!", and then warned me with a not-very-repentant-grin that he'd spent a looot more on me than he was supposed to. I'd done the same, of course, though to a lesser extent.

I got a Wall-E coloring book. ^________^ And various other nice things, including a new silverware set for the both of us, which I'm very excited about, and will finally wash so we can use either today or tomorrow. There's this nifty little circle design on the handles, I like and Tom likes too. :) I'd gotten Tom another dragon piece from work, the same company that does the Faerie Glen pieces I adore also does some dragons, with the same amount of incredible detail and lack of cheesiness that marks their fairies. OH! That was the other thing that happened Christmas Eve at work.

On hearing my fears of last-minute customers needing everything wrapped on Christmas Eve, Tom's eyes had gone wide and he got that huge mischievous grin on his face that always means something traumatizing for me. "I'm going to come in and buy you something, and tell you I need it wrapped. And you'll *have* to do it, because I'm a customer!" He was THRILLED with the idea of me wrapping my own Christmas present. Ridiculously excited.

He did it. I was working downstairs, and I saw him wandering around while I was with a customer. It quieted down, and I found him, and he asked what I wanted. I pointed to the Faerie Glen case, grabbed the keys, and followed him over. He nearly bought me two, the ridiculous boy. There had been a few I'd had my eye on, but one of them he proclaimed too creepy (I might buy it for myself, actually, ha), so that helped me decide. That, and we had just that week sold the two larger pieces I'd been really thinking about getting.

So I rang him up, and he asked me to wrap it. I got busy with something else, and he had to wait a few until I could spare the time, so he mock-complained about the service at this store. Then he followed me over to the table we'd set up in the back hall for gift wrapping, and GRINNED at me the whole time I wrapped my own present. Positively BEAMED. It was a little unsettling, but he was enjoying it immensely.

Unusual for him, he got a sudden burst of the Christmas spirit, and was all excited about wrapping presents - so much so, that he wrapped up the new mouse I HAD BOUGHT FOR MYSELF and added it to the pile of things he was giving me. Just to be ridiculous. Unbeknownst to me, he had taken the present I'd wrapped for myself, and put it inside another box, which he then wrapped - and so *did* in fact manage to still surprise me, with the thing I'd picked out and wrapped myself. :)

I also bought him a lot of silly little things, caffeinated chapstick, a magnet toy, and these little iron puzzles from ThinkGeek. They're the kind that are two nicely-shaped bits of metal linked together, and you have to figure out how to get them apart? But the description said they were insanely hard. Rated from 3 to 6, a 3 you could figure out by fiddling with it for a few hours, but a 6, if you solved, they wanted you to send them proof, kind of thing. So I got Tom a 4 and a 5, and he spent the next two days literally cursing me for buying them. ^__________^ (He has solved the 4, and is trying to forget about the 5, I think.)

Christmas Day, we got a later start than planned, since it is apparently impossible for me to be organized properly. But we drove up to Rochester, and spent a few hours with Dad and Beth, then the rest of the day with the Grandparents and Mom and Matt. Dad had a field day with the yard flamingos I'd bought for him and Beth (as a gag, for their campground plot), sticking one in the Christmas tree, one in the light fixture over the dining room table... Tom and Matt got on *fantastically*, which made me really really happy. I knew they would, if they had the chance to talk for awhile, and they threw around technical computer security terms so thickly that even *I* got lost after awhile. Also, my siblings are rather blunt when they want to be (usually to humorous effect), which is pretty much the same way Tom is, so it works well. It was actually a really nice day overall, very relaxing and just nice to catch up with everyone, and sit around talking for awhile, munching on yummy food.

Matt and Mel seemed to really love the things I'd made them, which made me really, really happy. I fiiiinally finished the blanket I'd started for Mel like six months ago, intending to give it to her when she moved into college. ^^; Matt, I'd made a mudrug for, knowing how well the one I made for Tom and I had worked out...and it turns out he's just moving into an actual house that he's renting for himself, so it was perfect timing.

Tom and I went out the next day, to hit up the mall with our newly-acquired gift cards, and gift-money his grandmother had sent us. It...was pretty swamped, but only obnoxiously so I think twice. The lines in Penneys were long, but I found some really pretty jewelry. (The hardcore clothing-shopping, I decided to wait until the racks weren't swamped.) I could barely move in Hot Topic, it was so full of...uh, mostly people younger than me, actually. But I was determined to buy cute barrettes for my hair, and so I did. :) Tom picked up a new hard drive, I got some nice Crabtree & Evelyn stuff that Paper Factory doesn't carry, and some new Yankee scents that we also don't carry. (My new crochet secret is Yankee votives. I tuck one into the bag I keep the yarn stashed in while I work, and then fold one in while the finished product is drying after it's been washed and blocked. Scented scarves!)

Tom usually gets frustated at Borders, since he constantly battles with paying money for things he can get for free. Me, I'd always rather have a physical copy of a manga than read it on-screen. And I'd been unable to find unabridged audiobooks of two hefty things I wanted: Howard Zinn's "A People's History of the United States", and Allan Bloom's "Closing of the American Mind". Found them both, and a manga, and Tom bounced over to me all excited over the book he'd found for the 3D modeling program he's trying to learn better. His dad had bought him one, and the one he'd found was going to be a fantastic quick-reference... and he's been plugging away through most of his spare time the last week or so now, modeling. Which makes me very happy. ^_^

Meanwhile, my new computer desk has the PERFECT space for laying the wacom tablet on, and everything's at the right height, and my chair moves up and down, so I can sit here and draw on the wacom just like I'm using a sketchbook - only slightly better in that my work is shown to me straight-on, so I don't get the accidental stretching-out of things from having worked at an angle.


We both worked New Year's Eve, me until 9pm and Tom until 1am.. but when I got home, I made up a little platter of meats and cheeses, and made up two berry parfaits, and got out the sake cups, and had everything ready for whenever Tom got back. When I heard him coming up from the parking lot, I put back on the New Year's tiara I'd worn at work all day, and greeted him at the door with a party blow-out in my mouth, grinning at his confusion.

I waited until he had his new jacket off before I nailed him with pink Silly String.


We curled up in warm pjs and blankets (it's been freeeezing here the last few days), and watched Princess Bride, ate cheese and parfaits (which he LOVED, yay!) and drank waaaayyy too much sake. Especially Tom. He gets very silly.

But then again, he got up on time today, while I lingered in bed until, oh, 12:30 or something ridiculous. I was sleepy, and the bed was cozy, and I get the most vivid dreams when I've had a fair bit to drink. The dreams were far more engrossing than I figured my day would be, so I kept going back to them for awhile.


...so that's Melissa's holiday wrap-up and semi-monthly report. I should really be more regular about recording things that my memory might lose, it's really takes a chunk out of a day to do huge things like this. xp