I've had trouble getting in the Christmas spirit.

It's been a busy month at work, and since we flew out to visit family in California over Thanksgiving, the First Mate and I kind of feel like we've already had our Christmas. We finally got our shopping done, mostly for the Little Admiral, this past weekend. (Nothing like last-minute shopping to kill any Christmas spirit that might be struggling to grow anyway.) I worked today in order to make sure that the office will be okay over the four-day weekend -- my department is a 7x24x365 group -- and when I left, I hoped to get a bit more spirited.

Since my son and daughter-in-law celebrate Christmas Eve with her family (we've always been a Christmas Day family anyway), the First Mate and I always try to go to Mass on Christmas Eve. She's been baking all day long, so I offered to buy her dinner to give her a break. Bad idea. Who knew everything closed up at 5 on Christmas Eve? Even Denny's was closed, for Pete's sake! We wound up at an El Loro Mexican restaurant and ate too much food. It was pretty good Mexican food for Minnesota, too.

We thought we'd have to rush to find a place at Mass, so we chowed down and ran over to the church as fast as possible, to walk into an empty room, except for the practicing choir. Mass was terrific, and when I got home, I finally had to face the task I'd been dreading: gift wrapping. We watched "A Christmas Story" while I wrapped the 1,173 things we bought the Little Admiral and the two things we bought the son and daughter-in-law. How did I do? Well, take a peek at this and see what you think:

BREAKING NEWS: NORAD had been tracking Santa, but the French cancelled his flight due to security concerns. They're claiming Tom Ridge made them do it.

Merry Christmas, to all of my friends in the blogosphere. I'm going to take a healthy swig of Christmas spirit and head off to bed.

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