Christmas All Over Again

My sister Rose came by this morning for a chat and to bring me my presents from my mom, stepdad, brother, younger sister, and her son from Cape May County. The folks gave me gift cards to Lane Bryant (plus-sized good clothes) and FYE, a retro Coke ads calender (I get that every year - I love retro ads), money, and two gorgeous ornaments from Winterwood, the Christmas store on Route 9 in Rio Grande. My brother Keefe gave me the new Eagles CD, Long Road Out of Eden, which I saw when I was shopping in Philly on Thursday but didn't buy. My sister Anny gave me a checkerboard cake pan set. (Checkerboard cakes are huge cakes that look like checkerboards when layered properly.)

(Notes on Winterwood: Winterwood a wonderful, cramped old farm house - the oldest remaining in Cape May County - filled from floor to ceiling with Christmas ornaments, CDs, collectible houses and figures, lights, and other holiday paraphernalia. It's the best Christmas store in the entire world. I've never seen another Christmas-themed store anywhere near as cool as Winterwood. Mom and her sister Aunt Terri used to go shopping there every Black Friday, and Mom and I would go a few weeks later to finish up ornament shopping. There's a smaller but almost as nifty store in Wildwood across from the boardwalk. I recently discovered there's one on the Washington Street Mall in Cape May as well, in what used to be a gift shop, and before that, a bank. Here's their site: http://www.winterwoodgift.com/)

Not much else went on today. I listened to the Eagles CD and the Hairspray soundtrack and to the WOGL Beatles show. (The Beatles #1 hits, as a group and solo, was the theme of the last Beatles show of the year.) Work was steady but not too busy, a bit of a surprise to everyone...including the managers. For once, we had more than enough help, but there really weren't any problems.