Back - and down it all comes

Well, it's Epiphany - the 12th day of Christmas - the day when we are supposed to strip the house of Christmas cheer, beating the chain stores as they prepare to put out chocolate Easter eggs, and commiserate over all the broken New Year's Resolutions. More on those later?

Before I disassemble the tree, here are my two ornaments - dated, as per usual - for Christmas 2007:



Christmas ornaments for 2007: a snowman in a light bulb - literally, a "snow globe" - came from Penrith's Target store in the January sales of 2007, and kept hidden away till Christmas, and a Hallmark "Shrek 3" figurine. He swings from a string of Christmas lights, with his pal Donkey under his arm. This ornament came from a Perth Target store during my vacation last October.

A bonus this year were 25 little glow-in-the-dark cherubs. I originally saw this in a Penny Miller catalogue, but they were about $19.95 for 50 cherubs, and no indication of just how tiny they were. When I was in Perth last year, I saw packets of them in a $2 shop ... for just $2 for 25. A bargain! Except that: when do you ever have all the lights out in a room with a Christmas tree? The cherubs can't glow in the daytime, of course, so I got to see them glow for about 30 seconds each night when I turned off the lights and headed to bed. Way to glow, cherubs!



I have lots of news from my recent holiday to Brisbane but, as each day creeps/flies by, the anecdotes seem to become a little less compelling, or less essential to tell when there are so many new things to talk about. Suffice to say that I must mention that I owe Virgin Blue a big thank you for letting my new (extra) bag onto my flight when I was running late. After seeing all those poor, angry, frustrated easyJet customers and workers on the UK TV show, "Airline", I was expecting a similar embarrassing scene, but all was calm and cool!

Sunday's magic number: 91.9 - Drat. Creeping up, even though I thought I was being fairly ruthless. Ah well, this week last year was like the beginning of the end, so tougher rules will have to apply from now on. There's still so much Christmas food around the house, though, and people gave chocolate, too. Sigh.