This week has been pretty boring. Work is slow because so many people are about to leave for the holidays (and we're also between projects). My tennis leagues ended and won't start again until January. All our Christmas gifts and Christmas cards have been mailed. It rained all day yesterday and was in the 40s and 50s so it feels like March, not December.

My Christmas spirit, fairly strong at Thanksgiving when it was cold and I was surrounded by friends and family, has all but deserted me. We're not really decorating for the holidays since we're leaving, but I finally put out red, green, and white candles and cut out some paper snowflakes, decorating them with glitter and hanging them above our stairs. Yesterday I put some Christmas ornaments (bought this year at the craft store) away rather than out since we don't have a tree and managed to break one. I feel like I'm in the post-holiday blahs before the holidays have even started.

I talked to AR about this yesterday and she thinks that a lot of people feel the same way. Her theory is that Thanksgiving was so late this year that everyone is a week or two behind. It certainly seems that way from the lack of holiday cards coming (or not) our way. We've gotten two so far--one from The Scientist's cousin (I was very impressed--she's a freshman in college and managed to send us a Christmas card) and one from our landlord.

One cool thing did happen this week. We had our first book club meeting. AR, K., and I recently founded a women's only book club for women we know scattered around the Midwest. We have a website and use a combination of meeting in person (there's a group here and one in the Twin Cities and eventually we may have one in Duluth and Chicago) and using conference calls and speaker phones. Our first book was Crossing to Safety by Wallace Earle Stegner.

We had good food (I made chocolate peanut butter bars, lemon bars, and put out some brie and crackers and other people brought artichoke dip with good bread and taco dip with chips), wine, beer, and a wonderful discussion about the book and how we saw the themes reflected in our lives. I was afraid our discussion might feel a little too much like school, but it didn't at all. It was a great night and I'm really happy everything went so well. We hope to have the next book picked out by the beginning of January and then have our next meeting at the beginning of February.

The mail carrier just arrived and we got three Christmas cards. I feel better already!