Well, the stockings are not yet hung by the chimney with care...but the bedroom is clean, and that's something. This will be our first married Christmas at home - that is, we've always come home for Christmas, but this is our first year that we will spend Christmas Eve sleeping in our own beds. Certainly, this is such an occasion as calls for clean sheets and a vacuumed floor.

Now, if I could only get myself in gear and clean up the kitchen & livingroom, we might just have a nice place to sit & roast chestnuts & hang stockings tonight.

Last night we went out to see Shannon spin at the Dance Cave. It was a surprisingly crowded night - I suppose that Christmas Eve Eve is far enough from the holiday that pretty young nightlife can justify spending an evening in thrall to Retro 80's nostalgia. We took Scherezade, having finally met up with her at Lettieri. (It was really cool - as we were waiting for her to arrive, the background music changed from the Sugarcubes to the Dandy Warhols to "Paint It Black" by the Stones. A very Scherezade set.) After giving and receiving Christmas presents (I am now the proud owner of a black baby t-shirt that says "I mate then kill," a Death notebook, a Spanish rosary made by barefoot nuns and a Mexican wrestling figurine) we wandered off down the street to Alcatraz, where Scherezade had some pants to pick up.

What followed was a lazy version of our wolverine shopping habits - she spent a chunk of money on some unique designer clothes while I tried on expensive Emily hoodies and the Boy fumed impatiently. I tried to get him to wear a few shirts, but he was in the grips of one of his rare-but-powerful spells of Typical Masculinity, and he refused to try on clothes that he had no intention of buying. I, of course, had no good answer to that because there exists no good answer to that defence. You either understand trying on clothes for its own sake or you don't. The salesladies watched him stomp off across the street and immediately began asking me if, "my boyfriend was okay."

"It's alright," I said nonchalantly, zipping up a sweater with a tiger on the back. "We've been married for more than two years, and he's become steadily less interested in clothes over that time. Besides, we're married - it doesn't matter if he gets in a twist. He still has to take me home at the end of the night."

Okay - looks like my time here is just about up. I've been able to squeeze out a few minutes of leisure while the Boy wraps my Christmas presents, but it doesn't really take long to wrap a spoon, a Niagara Falls pillow and a magnet. See you later tonight.

"A spoon, a souvenir pillow and a magnet - isn't that what the Pope gives Vienna every year?"

- me, trying to be funny