How amazingly smug I feel. I didn't shop for Christmas gifts once this weekend, so I avoided the last-minute frenzy entirely. (Okay, maybe once. But I didn't buy anything.) Aside from one teeny-tiny purchase I need to make on the way home this evening, I am done!

Don't run away with the idea that it was a weekend of sloth and idleness, though. The R.C. had to work most of the weekend (that's what you get for having major project deadlines that fall in January every year) and I had to work for 3-4 hours on Sunday morning.

Aside from that, I finished the vast majority of my wrapping, worked on my latest Project Afghan (I can't wait to finish this one so I can work with some better yarn next time), finished my cards and got them mailed out, wound up my Jeeves & Wooster festival (which was so entertaining I may start all over again immediately), and took a certain amount of heat from the R.C. over how many gifts under the tree have her name on them. I may have gotten just a little carried away this year, but I was unemployed at the holidays last year and wasn't able to do much, so I don't feel at all guilty.

Items in my brain:

Cards. Every year, I send out 15-30 cards. Every year I get fewer and fewer cards in return. This year strikes a new low. To-date, I've received one card. Apparently holiday cards are no longer "the thing to do" and if that's the case, I think I was entitled to know.

Now, granted, I only mailed mine out this morning, but I sent seven out inside of shipments with gifts and the ten I mailed this morning...well, those people know they're getting cards, because they do every year and mostly they're family. Either none of them have me on their card list, or the people I know just don't send cards.

I've been pondering this. I'm on this quasi-ecological kick these days, after all. I could certainly save a lot of landfill space and cut down on the general state of pollutedness of the planet if I didn't buy card blanks and make cards every year.

On the other hand, I really enjoy messing around with scissors and paste and I'd be sad to lose an excuse to do so. I had so much fun making cards this year that it's been a struggle to stop myself from starting on next year's cards already.

Gifts. Gifts for co-workers/bosses are tricky, especially at a small company. Especially, I've decided if you work only with men.

In the four years I've worked here, I don't think I've ever had the same boss two years in a row, so I don't exactly have any "history" to go on. The company itself is too small (especially now that there are only three of us) to have a "policy" around gifts.

If I were working with women, I'd just have brought it up - hey are we doing office gifts or not? But working with two guys, I never really found the right moment for the conversation.

I mean, what with me and Bernie having our moments of friction three or four times a week, not to mention him only coming in two or three days a week and Buehler pretty much on mental sabbatical all fall, even on those rare occasions when he showed up at the office on two consecutive days, and stuff like that, you know?

All of that, added to Bernie threatening to quit and/or close the company down every ninety days since I started and I think you can see how there just never seemed to be a moment to discuss holiday plans.

One day last week, Bernie sent us an email asking about a holiday lunch this Friday. That was pretty much the first mention of the upcoming festivities I've heard in the office.

I thought of many things, from trying to do some last-minute shopping for each of them to sending fruit baskets, to buying cookies, but Bernie's only going to be in on Monday-Wednesday-Friday this week and Buehler's only going to be in on Friday, so none of those seemed right.

In the end, I decided to go the no gifts route. I just hope they didn't get me anything. (It feels bad-mannered to receive a gift and have nothing to offer the giver.)

Office "decorations" consist, so far, of the few business cards we've received taped to the window of the conference room and a little glass "tree." It's glass and when plugged into your USB port, it lights up and cycles through colors. It's not amazingly festive, but it gives me something to look at when, as now, the website I'm trying to work on is taking 30 seconds or more for every page refresh.