Ginger, thank you!

My fabulous Secret Santa sent me a lovely basket full of goodies and good wishes. First, the basket itself is lovely - red-handled, woven, round basket with a plaid red and green border with little Scotties circling the top. Love. Then! Homemade peppermint bark. Which is so delicious and also made me realize how often I happened to post about peppermint bark this last month - Hello, subconscious? You are so not subtle. Also? Rock on! (Heh, I think it's on my Deena sheet, too.) So yum.

There's also an adorable, plush penguin who, when squeezed, wishes Merry Christmas and a ho, ho, ho. So cute. Then, I have a lovely, bone white tea mug with a steeper and lid, decorated with pandas romping happily among the bamboo trees. That's right, folks, a penguin and pandas.

When I opened the box, one of my favorite scents wafted upwards, which came from a Karma Komba soap from LUSH. Mmmmmm. Heavenly. Then, there is a lovely, hand-carved, jade good health (thank you!) charm - a small gourd, with three smaller charms dangling below, all in green jade on a red cord. Beautiful.

And finally, a pendant, made by Ginger - a small, square two-sided frame with a lovely saying on one side and the symbol for serenity (Serenity!) on the other side, hanging from a black ribbon. I love it, and it is just the kind of thing I wear, too. Oh, oh! And the card has a computer on the front with a Christmas tree on the screen - how perfect is that?

Thank you so much, Ginger, for such a thoughtful, generous, buffista-riffic (LUSH, penguins, pandas, Serenity - awesome), good wishes-including Christmas treat. I have such a huge smile on my face right now.

Yay! I'm so happy you liked it, Jen.

Nicole! I'm SO glad it finally got there!!! And now maybe my cryptic comment upthread about "once you get it, you'll know why it was delayed" makes sense. I think that, between the deluge of Xmas mail and the badass snow you had last week, the package got hung up.

Anyway -- yay!!!

even though it's small and I can't eat it, it's still my favorite prezzie in the box. I'm not sure that I can describe it well enough so go here and check out the red devil on the far right. He's a Demon Guardian keychain that'll protect me from Teh Evil of the world. Squee! A little Devil keychain. And he's holding a pitchfork!

I'll tell you a secret about the devil keychain -- I packed up the whole box, taped it securely, and taped the address sheet on the top. Then I went in my bedroom and was hauling out other people's prezzies to wrap, when I found the box from Uncommon Goods, which held, among other things, the devil keychain. D'oh!

After briefly debating just sending you a separate wee package for the devil keychain, I sliced open the tape along the *bottom* of the box, so as to not disturb the address sheet on the top, and wiggled the devil keychain in there carefully, and then re-taped the box.

The next thing I pulled out was a tub of TJ's mint cocoa (chocolate and mint just *belong* together) and a box of TJ's Candy Cane Joe-Joe's (think oreo's with candy cane flavored creme filling). OMG YUM!

I knew there isn't a TJs out there, and a little Deena!birdie told me you were crazy for mint chocolate. When I saw the candy cane Joe-Joe's, I *knew* I had to intervene in order to bring the two of you together.

I'm so glad it finally got there, and that you like it all!

I totally remember this! I have a very clear picture of that icon in my mind, although I can't remember for the life of me what my own icon(s) looked like.

crazy! here's hoping my hair wasn't too crazy in that picture.

I remember I found you all on WX just about a week before OMWF aired in Nov. 2001. (I'd gone looking for Buffy articles on Salon and found the TT forums, which had gone pay already but which had a link to the WX forums.) I lurked for a few days, but I could tell pretty soon that I was gonna like you guys. I know I delurked right around the same time as SA, Fay, and Plei -- we were all that late fall/winter, anyway.

I think the musical definitely helping in bringing people around, and I remember vividly that a group of us in Bitches who sort of fell into it around that time ended up pwning the Smallville community. Oh, the days of yore.

OMWF was a good recruitment tool. Brought out the theater majors and musical fans.

I wore my tape out of that, memorising all the songs and lines and all of it. It was precious to me. My younger sister was like to kill me though, for all the playing of it.

Buffista~ma is powerful stuff. I was just sitting here thinking that I wanted a little something to munch on, and I remembered that my Seekrit Santa present had been delivered (I was on my way out the door earlier when I almost tripped over it. THANKS USPS FOR KNOCKING ON THE DOOR. and I'd forgotten when I walked in) I was a bit wary, because there was a warning label that said READ ME FIRST and talked about liquids under pressure, but it was covered with the return address label! However, seeing who it was from, I was confident that it was simply a reused box, and not a sender who wished to endanger me.

I opened it to find a cornucopia of goodness. There were many lovely kitchen gadgets, including a garlic press (which I really wanted), a microplaner, chopsticks, condiment bowls and a cute little canister (I forsee sea salt). There were also two books, The Time Traveler's Wife (which I almost bought to day, so yay), and Artists in Crime. Last, but certainly not least, a box of molasses cookies (with a very thoughtful ingredient list, I never would have thought of that), that, according to the card are "good for dipping in everything from milk to coffee to scotch"

THANK YOU JZ!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Sympathies on your kitty, Megan.

I'm trying to think of the people who delurked at WX.

I delurked at WX, too, and I remember ND and Sean joining - Kristin also, that fateful long night that Tim was on and we started raising money for Nilly's travel, wow that was fun. I'm hardly ever around any more, I know, but I used to stay to post after work with the late crowd, the antipodeans, ND, most of the West Coasters. Good times.

2007 has been a pretty good year. I got a promotion and moved to a new dept. at work. I maxed out my deferred comp, a big goal met. Most everyone in my family is healthy, including 91-yr. old mom, with whom I just traveled to Mexico to visit my sister who lives there most of the year. The old cats are hanging in there. Java the cat is middle-aged now and kills the rodents before he brings into the house, which he does rarely. I've been mostly healthy, which I credit to good genes.

In the new year, I want to travel somewhere besides Mexico (in the last 18 months, 5 weeks of vacation were spent helping sis move to/from/to/from/to Mexico. Enough!), develop an exercise-today instead of exercise-tomorrow ethic, tick off more of my big house/yard chores from the long, long list, and maybe get out backpacking and/or scuba diving.

DJ: which episode of This American Life?

and now that I'm here:

Goodbye and Good Riddance to people who only come to the movies once a year and complain about how crowded it is.

Thanks everyone for the cat hugs.

Last night we got two new kitties. A 4 month old kitten we've named Dougal and a year old cat named Merlin.

Merlin

Dougal

Megan, I'm glad you get to start the new year with cats. Gorgeous shots of Merlin & Dougal.

I delurked January of 2000 on TT, but had been around for a wee bit longer. And all I can say seeing those early posts is that I find myself exceedingly annoying. I mean, really! It's as bad as reading old journals!

Shiny kitties! Very cute. Yay for the family expansion!