no time to do anything this year? it was unavoidable...

I think the real hassle is the fact that the 2 holidays (Christmas and new years, always a week apart) are cursed this year to both being on weekends. this basically has killed 2 weekends in december that are now committed to being with family and long-standing traditions for those days that in other years can be used to stretch out the pre-holiday season.

normally we have 4 weekends in december before Christmas. this year, only 3. normally there's a weekend between Christmas and new years for additional parties and hanging out. this year, none.

quite literally, there really ISN'T any time.

the only way out is to make time by telling your work to go stuff it and taking a sanity day or two in the middle of the week (when nobody else is being productive either).  however, to really enjoy that day, you and whomever you choose to do this with all need to have bosses that'll allow it and suddenly what should be a day off becomes a bureaucratic hassle in trying to coordinate it all and it does nothing to relieve the stresses we're already feeling.

we're not putting up decorations at all this year.  we don't have the time and there's no way we can get to them with the garage in its annual winter stuffed mode (and it being too damn cold to even be out there for 5 minutes to work around it).

quality control...

The new Lord of the Rings : Fellowship of the Ring Complete soundtrack CDs have some serious quality control problems.

I had to take my first set back to the store because the 2nd disc had an error on it near the end that prevented me from making backups and mp3s (as is my legal right, mind you).

The second set I got instead had a major splotch in the booklet and the 1st cd has a similar error on it that the previous set had.

The store still has the first copy I returned, so now i'm going to mix-n-match the working parts of each, but damn...

The label / distributor is Reprise records.  Anybody else have any problems with their stuff?