Dell-icious.

Things are gearing up for this move. I've been making lists and checking them, uhm, 900 times. It's kind of nice to not have to move my entire household - I don't really feel the stress of it like I would if I had to pack everything up in this short amount of time. Now - I'm sure that if you call me the week between Christmas and New Year's Day, it will be a different story.

Entirely.

This is the neighborhood park near our townhouse. It's a lovely, big tree-filled space and I can't wait to spend some time watching the boys cavort on the playing fields. Doesn't it look pretty with all those fall leaves still remaining? I'm sure it will look quite a bit different once we get there - bare branches and all.

n n n n n

The Dell technician showed up today. Pretty fast service, I'd say. I called Dell on Tuesday, the tech called me on Wednesday saying he'd received the hard drive and he came this afternoon and installed it. The hard drive came pre-installed with all the software that the computer originally came with, and it's cycling through the decompression, opening everything up right now. I'm keeping my fingers, toes and eyes crossed that this will actually be the fix.

And people? Back up those files. Way more often than I do. 'Cause they are all gone...

n n n n n

My community is having their annual Christmas parade tomorrow. It's got a really small-town feel, with homemade floats and folks throwing candy. The boys and Dr. SmartyPants went last year, and I stayed home to wrap gifts, but I think I'll go this year. Should be a lot of photo ops, I'm imagining. And I need to get a little more Christmas spirit in me. Steviewren posted about it yesterday, and she asked what we were doing to get into the spirit, and I had to answer, "NOT ENOUGH." I haven't even loaded up my Christmas playlist on my iPod.

And that's just wrong.

Once the Dell comes back to life, I'll have to make a new Christmas-y banner, too.

How about you? What really gets you in the spirit of Christmas?