One Big Job Done

We finally finished up the Christmas letters tonight after dinner. It took waaaay longer than I had planned on it taking. One of the reasons was the sheer volume; we were within a few letters of 200 and we left off a couple dozen at least. This is about double what we normally plan. Part of the increase is that whenever we move, we send to a lot of people we normally don't just to get our address out to everyone. Plus both of our families are growing as people keep growing up, moving out, then having their own kids who grow up and move out. I don't know how to cut it back, but it's pretty clear that Debbie won't be making 200+ Christmas cards by hand next year, and you don't want a hand-made card from me. Ask Courtney and Joe if you doubt the truth of that statement.

Anyway, all the messing about has kept me mostly off the intertubes, so everyone gets a break from the usual lunatic ravings. That will likely continue for the rest of the week. I have to deal with all the piles of Really Important Stuff that are scattered all over the apartment and breeding in the dark corners. I have no idea what most of it is or where it came from, but I'm sure there is stuff in there I'm supposed to be paying attention to.

Speaking of which, we still have a dead router sitting in the middle of our living room. I contacted the company again today to find out what's up and got a prompt response telling me basically to chill out, it's Christmas, they're really backed up, and it's going to be a while. Great. Thanks. Wheee. I'm sure the next message will be they are out of stock and would I like to spend more money for a slightly nicer router larded down with features I don't need. I should have just made do with some POS from Staples.

Speaking of which, we bought a new laser printer at Staples a while back. It was the day before we were leaving for Portland, so I didn't have a lot of time to mess with it other than to open the box and realize that it didn't include the USB cable. Now ain't that sweet. We went back for the cable after we got home, which Staples was glad to sell us for half the price of the printer. I wonder if Staples pays kick-backs to the printer manufacturers so they'll fail to include all the parts necessary for their product to function normally. Ye flippin' gods. I can't even go to a store and make a simple purchase anymore without feeling ripped off. Yes I know I could have order the cable from Amazon for six bucks instead of paying $25, but we really needed the printer up and running (see the first paragraph).

Well, enough whinging for one night. Besides, my keyboard needs some juice, all of which probably means it's time for me to go to bed.