Jen and I are thankful, happy, and a little overwhelmed by the sheer Christmas-osity of the Dugan clan; between my folks and my sister, we have to figure out how to fit an entire furniture store’s worth of stuff into our rented Chevy Trailblazer. Jen has a new garden composter the size of a cement mixer; it will provide rich, meaty humus for the entire neighborhood. We have a brand-new amplifier with enough inputs on the back to control the Maryland power grid. It will be the command center for our wedding music selection and the basis of our entertainment center, supplanting the hand-me-down Sherwood receiver I inherited as payment for moving my friend Sophie seventeen times after college. I have a new close-focus lens for the G3, which means I will be bombarding all five of you readers with macro shots of everything under the sun. We have enough cookbooks to start our own library branch, more boxer shorts for me, and Jen has a heavenly pearl necklace from my sister which could possibly (but not definitely) be a stunning counterpoint to a wedding dress.

We stopped in to see my Grampa Dugan on Saturday, and it was great to sit with him for an hour or so. He looks fantastic for a man of 89 (definitely better than he has the last few times we’ve been up), and he’s looking forward to the new golf season. My aunts and uncles have each arranged to take him for a couple of weeks this winter, which will be good for him, as he’ll be eating better and actually using the heat.