It's starting to look a lot like Christmas

I put up my christmas tree today, and all that, and as the song says,"It's starting to look a lot like Christmas". It doesn't really feel like Christmas, though, and I'm not sure why. Normally I'm really pumped for christmas, but this year it all just seems ... distant, I guess. It's probably partly because I bought most of my presents when I was in the US in October, so I haven't had much christmas shopping to do; it's probably partly because we've been quite busy at work (although we're going to the Mount Nelson for Christmas lunch on Wednesday ... yum yum!). And partly I blame the shops - they start with the christmas decorations and christmas music and christmas merchandise and christmas food so early[1] that you kinda learn to ignore it because you know it isn't even near Christmas yet - and then suddenly it is, and it's as though you've been caught unawares, even though the shops have been building up to it for ages.

But I've put up the tree, and decorated the house, and put batteries in my singing Santa ("Let's twist again, like we did last Christmas ... Ho ho ho ho"). My tree's quite cool, because it's one of those fiberoptic ones, so when it's switched on it's really colourful. It looks a bit boring switched off - I think I need to get bigger ornaments, because the ones I've got on it now get a bit lost. And it's a bit crooked, because the clever people who made it tried to fit a 1.2m tree into a 0.9m box. Which they accomplished by bending over the top 30cm or so at a right angle so that it would lie across the top of the box. I dunno. So I've straightened it as much as I could, but there's still a slight lean to one side near the top.

I'll try to take some photos to put up here, but I suspect that the place I use for photo hosting may have suspended my account due to inactivity. I really wish that blogger would just come up with some simple solution, like hosting the photos themselves.

[1] My local Pick'n'Pay is already selling Hot Cross Buns, can you believe it.