Le sapin de Noël, version 2019

Christmas seems to roll around faster and faster nowadays. One blends into another. Walt puts up our tree and decorates it every year. Many of the decorations have a lot of sentimental value for us. Some were gifts from good friends, some were made by my mother's sister, and others were gifts we've given to each other. All bring back happy memories of Christmas past.

We'll be having a merry but quiet Christmas this year. Today I'll go pick up our Christmas turkey from our favorite poultry vendor at Saint-Aignan's special Christmas Eve outdoor market. It's supposed to be another rainy morning. I don't know what to expect. Crowds? Many vendors or just a few? I do know to expect to come home with a fine Christmas turkey. I'm not yet sure what kind of dressing or stuffing we'll have with it, but I do know we'll enjoy it. Just the two of us.

Here's the tree 2019 lighted. There aren't any presents under it, but we have given ourselves a few gifts. I gave Walt a new 1 TB SSD drive for his computer, and installed it. Computers, cameras, and the internet are such a huge part of our life now. Can you believe we been blogging for 14+ years?

I ordered myself a really exciting gift. Two of them actually. One is a new chest of drawers for our loft upstairs. This year I started going through all the clothes I had packed away but hadn't worn in a decade or two, with the idea that I would donate a lot of them to our local Emmaüs charity (a sort of Good Will store). But I found so many T-shirts, for example, that I like, that fit, and that I can't bear to get rid of... so I need a new piece of furniture to store them in. Problem is, the chest of drawers has gotten lost somewhere along the way, and even after half a dozen calls to the vendor and the delivery company, nobody seems to be able to locate it. I hope it turns up soon. I think such problems might have to do with all the transit and train strikes that are going on in France right now.

Another Christmas-season surprise has to do with another computer part I ordered early in December — it's a new display adapter (video card) for my desktop computer up in the loft. Pretty nerdy, I know. I ordered it from a French company, but the vendor turned out to be located in Manchester, in England. We've exchanged many e-mails. For two weeks, I was told the package hadn't yet arrived in France and that I would get package tracking information only once it was in French hands. I never got any, despite a predicted delivery date of December 18. I wrote another e-mail to complain. Then I was told the card had been lost by the shipping company. Did I want to cancel the order and get a refund of the purchase price? I said yes. Then, yesterday came the surprise...

Merry Christmas, everybody!