I’m not going to list all of my Christmas gifts. They were all good. I didn’t get anything that made me go, “Uh… what?” But I don’t want to bore you* so just a few of the highlights…

This, as you can see, is an electronic weather station. This panel communicates wirelessly with the other half of it which sits outside gathering the weather data. That’s a white plastic thing that’s shaped vaguely similar to the engineering section of the starship Enterprise, with a wind speed thing on top and a wind direction vane on the bottom.

My husband accused me of being “obsessed” with the weather. Well, I’m not. Or I wasn’t but I guess I am now. This gadget is fun and addictive. I can’t quit looking at it. And I’ve already learned something. I’ve learned that a five mile per hour wind is a bit windier than I thought. I’m not the only one who is “obsessed” though – the other two human members of the household also seem to find it rather interesting.

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This mug was a gift from my brother. Our tastes and attitudes are so extremely different it’s hard to believe we’re related at all but he usually does okay with picking gifts and this one’s a big hit. I love that particular shade of green. I didn’t even notice at first that the chicken is green too. It seems to work – like there really should be green chickens. The whole thing – the picture, the colors – are cheerful but calm. Normally, I use my Christmas mugs until New Years Day or even a few days later but I’ve already started using this one.

Another gift from my husband was two albums by the Trans Siberian Orchestra, which is not an orchestra at all, it’s a band. My musical tastes are broad but complicated so buying me CDs that are not on my Amazon wish list is risky so I was a little worried when I saw the small package under the tree that was obviously CDs. But I like these! They are rock operas. Sort of a mix of rock and classical with a bit of Broadway thrown in. It’s not the sort of music I want to listen to all the time but these albums add a nice bit of variety to my collection.

First, my favorite of the two, is Beethoven’s Last Night (story) The other is a two disc set, Night Castle, of which I have only listened to the first disc so far. I guess this one’s supposed to be a fairly big deal. It has its own website. (very cool)

*Yeah right. I’ll probably continue to bore you with Christmas stuff until at least the middle of January.