Back from Samsonville yesterday. It was a wonderful Christmas, hard to imagine better. We made it to Samsonville in time for Christmas Eve at my sister's. Bob and I went to midnight mass. Christmas Day was at my parents', and on Saturday we hosted Bob's family at our house.

Getting back into the working groove will not be easy. I didn't use the computer very much, and so I had about 100 emails, and only a (relatively) small proportion were spam. Answer them is all I did today, tomorrow it will be back to the other stuff. Luckily, I made the grading deadline on the 23rd, so there is no student evaluation still pending. Of course, there were two emails from students asking "why did I get this grade, I deserved better?" (Which always makes me think, why didn't I ever think to ask that question of faculty when I was a student?)

I got a nice new digital camera, which probably means I'll be using more pictures here. Eventually, that is...when I figure out how to use it. I didn't take even one picture in Samsonville, and we already took the tree we had there down!

I got many books this year...several novels by Margaret Atwood and Sandra Dallas, and a calendar with William Wegman photographs. And a silly little cat and dog joke book.