My Christmas was technically white, as a bit of snow fell during the day—only to immediately melt upon reaching the ground.

At Marin’s request, my dad and I carted a Christmas tree to the house; we never quite got around to decorating it fully, though, so it stands in my dining room festooned with jelly-bean-colored LED lights and wearing an Ikea silver star at a jaunty angle. (Its heart is in the right place.) Besides, my family’s favorite part of the tree is its smell—though, of course, this tree hasn’t been all that fragrant.

After significant cussing, I was able to put a string of white lights over my kitchen cabinetry; between that and the tree, we’ve been able to navigate the downstairs without additional light. The outside of my house is completely dark, where most of my neighbors managed to get some lights out—or, at the least, a wreath on the door.

So, uh, I declare this year a semi-Christmas. Next year we’ll do better!

Adding significantly to the chaos of the season has been two kittens that Marin adopted: Maaya, and the Rogue Pooper. Maaya is the black one:

We still need a name for the other, provided she doesn’t wear out her welcome by continuing to use my house as her litterbox.

If it’s not intuitively obvious (it was to me, but not to my sister): kittens are a PITA. Given how much work these two take—and that’s with them entertaining each other a good deal of the time—I have no idea why anyone ever has children.

…

I don’t think I’ve quite realized it yet, but I’ve finally gotten most of my life straightened out. My finances are in order; my paperwork is filed. I can now honestly say that I’ve saved some money this year. (Yay!) My server move is complete, and I’ve upgraded my computers to Leopard. They’re being backed up hourly to an external hard drive, courtesy of Time Machine, which is singlehandedly the greatest thing Apple’s done for its users in years. (Plug in an external drive, tell the computer to use it as a backup drive, and then ignore it—backing up has never been that easy.)

All that remains is putting away a bit more stuff around the house. Thank goodness.