I had a post half-written when Firefox froze on me. I'm too tired to bother rewriting it well, so I'm just going to ramble. I'm exhausted as I was wrapping gifts at 12:30 a.m. last night (having started after midnight), and generally had a terrible night's sleep. Also, I am glad that I was able to get away with spending much less on gifts this year, in part due to TS's contribution... which made me realize that it seemed a little unfair that all the other couples in the family (parents, aunt + uncle sets, grandparents, cousin + spouse) all got to chip in together to buy me a gift, yet I was solo in giving gifts to them. TS volunteered to go in on gifts with me, especially since last year everyone (unexpectedly) bought him gifts and he didn't have anything in return, except for my immediate family. So rather than us each give gifts separately to my family, we're going in on them together (except for my parents... don't know why but that still seems weird to do jointly).

I still wish my family wasn't so big on the gift giving, but I have to admit that I do love the feeling of finding just the right gift for someone and seeing their reaction. It's not that we're all greedy little buggers, and we do focus more on the time spent together (and food eaten), but I'm just getting tired of all the exchange of "stuff," so I was trying to get things that were a little more useful and usable this year. (DVDs excluded, but those don't take up much space and do get used, if not used up.) TS and I also agreed to a $30 limit with each other, plus a nice dinner. I suppose we could have made our limit even lower, but it's still quite a drastic change from the Guitar Hero and sunglasses we exchanged last year. :-) We exchanged our gifts last night because it made no sense to bring them up to NY just to have to bring them back down. He gave me a new yoga DVD that I am excited to try out and... new art supplies! Charcoal pencils and tools and a nice sketchbook. I regularly talk about needing a hobby, but never finding something that holds my attention, and I've also mentioned how I used to love my art classes but was only ever good at charcoal and pencils. I'm so out of practice though that I've asked him to give me weekly "assignments." We'll see how that goes.

Tonight is my office Christmas party, which mean I'll have to pack for the trip home tomorrow morning. I know I'm going to forget something. I guess I just need to make sure I have my gifts, gift-making supplies, and some warm clothes as it looks like it is going to be a VERY white Christmas this year.