liralen | Many Thanks!!

incandescens for a copy of Onmyoji. I am alight with anticipation.

To Carl for the Read-Aloud Handbook and AB's book on gadgets, as they're both books I probably wouldn't have bought, but am getting a whole lot out of, especially the read-aloud one. It bemused me that there's a direct correlation between how many words are in a household and the resident children's academic capability and IQ. Given our ton-plus of books, this could be very, very frightening with respect to Jet.

To

flit for the teas. Yum. The flower are, indeed, beautiful.

To

aelfsciene for the tea, the gorgeous bookmarks, and especially for Dory. Jet hasn't stopped playing with her, since. He loves having her sit on his hands until she *snaps*, and he shrieks in delight and says, "Again! Again!"

To

bryant for the pointer to Distributed Proofreading, as it's a great way to give of my time that feels really good to do.

My sister was very ingenious and gave me ten stacking *circular* boxes. The circular shape means that Jet can cram the lids on, any which way, and they'll work, and he's been playing with those ever since. And in the midst of the boxes was an antique (likely 1880-1890's) traveling dip-ink pot. The neck's too small for a filler fountain pen, and is perfect for my steel-tipped dip pens and for my quills. The only trick, now, is being able to travel with my quill knife (Trip's and others' present to me a while back)... heh. She also gave me Duane books (yay, more wizard books!).

Mom and Dad and John, together, gave me the A70 we so decisively bought. And the camera is a beauty. It staggered me, mildly, when each picture is about 1 meg, even compressed, but then I realized our new PC's hard-drive is around 22 Gig, so why am I worried? Whew. But the prints from that camera are just gorgeous compared to my old 200k a picture digital camera, and the difference is well worth it. I managed to get a great shot of a lionfish at the Denver aquarium.

I also got, of all things, a new DustBuster, as our old one was giving up the ghost. Yay for practical gifts! I've been using it pretty much every day since, chasing after Jet when Jet isn't using it himself.

So I made out handsomely for Christmas and New Years. Many thanks to everyone!!