Holiday cards and stuff

Just dropped off the holiday cards at the post office -- what a curiously anachronistic ritual it's become. I think these are the only non-business snail-mail items I've sent all year. And yet, there are a handful of relatives and friends (although mostly relatives) where this is the only continuing contact I have with them. In most of those cases, it's a one-way contact and I have no idea whether they actually care whether they get a card or not. For the folks that I am in more regular contact with, the "chatty holiday letter" that accompanies the card is redundant, and for those I'm not in regular contact with, it may be incomprehensible.

The allergies are still killing me. I'm leaning more towards "random pollination event" since a lot of other people I bump into have the same complaint. I actually skipped the gym yesterday: either I can run or my nose can run, but we can't both run at the same time.

Had December's Research Open House last night and had a couple people show up. It's been an interesting experiment, and I've made an internal commitment to give it a full 12-month run at the least (which will go through next July) but it hasn't picked up the momentum or synergy that I was hoping for.