Wow, the work week is over. I'm weary and ready for doing a whole bunch of not much. We finished our Christmas shopping earlier in the week, for the most part; I'm not satisfied with and want to add to the gift for Cheryl, but we probably won't get together before the holiday anyway, so I have some time. Last night I finished the last of the wrapping, staying up a bit too late doing so, but I had all the stuff dragged out and only two presents to go, so I wanted to complete the job. The whole reason for doing a flurry of wrapping last night instead of this weekend was that The Boss was coming by my office today, so I wanted to get his stuff ready, but then he got caught up in a meeting that ran long and didn't even make it to see me.

I had a lovely Christmas lunch today with my friend Theresa. For three years now, we've had a tradition of going out to lunch at the holidays to one of the more upscale downtown restaurants. Today we went here; the last two years were here. We exchange gifts, too, but nothing too overboard; the lunch and spending time together is the more important part.

I'm doing something similar with Anne. We talked about exchanging gifts but decided that whatever we'd normally spend on one another, we'd rather put toward tasty noms and libations, and the four of us (she and I plus husbands) would spend a nice evening together with good food, good drink, good friends and lots of laughter. Hey, I don't think I ever blogged about Anne getting married, which she did last month! She and Rick eloped to Helen, Georgia in mid-November. I was really touched because she was doing the "something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue" and she wanted the 'something borrowed' to be borrowed from me. She was wearing her aunt's pearls as the something old, so I took her several different pairs of pearl earrings and a pearl bracelet from which to choose, all of which had some emotional significance to me. She wound up choosing and wearing the earrings I'd worn at my wedding, which were given to me by Cheryl. Awww!

Tonight after work, we had dinner at our favorite Mexican restaurant and then got the grocery shopping done. So between that, and most of the Christmas preparation and Christmas planning being done, we can spend the whole weekend staying far, far away from the mall. I am looking forward to a long, lazy weekend - a far cry from this time last year.