It's the holiday season

I'm settling into the holiday season.  My predecessor at my new job always has a radio on (which is odd for me because I haven't done radios at work for years because I've had CDs and things that I listened to instead), so I've been listening to a lot of Christmas music.  It's been odd for me because I went through a phase a while back where I got rid of all extraneous Christmas stuff in my life so that I could enjoy the holiday season.  I don't go mall shopping November through December (ok, I don't do it much the rest of the year, either!).  I don't listen to radio stations other than NPR throughout the Christmas music season.  This means that I can listen to the music at home and enjoy it.  It also means that since I don't spend much time in stores, I get to sit back and enjoy the decorations and parties without feeling overloaded by Christmas.

This year, I'm feeling overloaded again.  I had a week of being inundated by Christmas music.  I was wrapping presents yesterday and was a bit bothered by the music that TP turned on.  I'm not sure why this would be because I listen to other music way more often than the week of inundation I had for Christmas musi.  It might be because Christmas music tends to be very "catchy" and I find myself humming it for hours afterwards.  It's ok, though, because I'm still enjoying the holiday season and Derek switched to music that we don't normally hear on the radio.  My predecessor switched to a radio channel that doesn't play as much Christmas music, too.

My job is rather interesting so far.  I really like the people that I'm working with, and my co-worker gave me an amazing pear cake recipe that I tried out the other night.  YUMMY!  It's weird to try learning a job all over again.  I think that I was rather settled in to my old space.  I was used to people just always accepting my edits and always knowing what was needed to be known about me for us to interact well.

This job is different.  Everyone is very friendly, and people hang-out afterwards.  At my old job, we did hang out occassionally outside of work, but we kept things on separate, professional levels.  In fact, I've done that at all my jobs since high school.  I'm enjoying the adjustment to people being friendlier, but I can't figure out where lines should be drawn.  It's a strange and good adjustment that I'm going through.

The house isn't really decorated for the holidays this year.  With the surgeries in November and the fact that we didn't have plans for people visiting much in December, we didn't really do anything.  The big, beautiful tree that would fit fabulously in our huge picture window is boxed up in the garage. I took out a little table tree (about a foot tall) and put it on the end table, and I also pulled out the holiday tablecloth and our stockings.  I have to admit that I like having our stockings hung on a mantle.

Derek started a blog on livejournal, but he doesn't have one here and I don't have one there.  I've told some friends about this blog, but I don't actually think that anyone's looking at it.  If you are (other than Derek, I know you look), please let me know so that I can decide if I should keep this up or if I should just give up on the idea of online blogging.