Countdown to Santa - Are You Ready?

Are you ready to entertain the visit of a jolly spirit who eats your cookies and drinks your milk, but leaves packages under your tree, or bush, or on the table? Are you ready for an invasion of visitors, guests, cards, pets and people? In other words, are you ready for the "Holidays"? I'm quite sure many of my readers are not "quite" ready for this yet. As is often the case, I'm relying heavily on gift cards. DH is almost impossible to buy for, and with his birthday so very close to Christmas, it's a double-whammy for me. I actually bought him more than I normally would have, but that doesn't necessarily mean much. At least we'll eat well - LOL. 

I do love prime rib, even if I'm always a little worried 
about cooking one. It's a VERY expensive cut of meat. 
But I've done it before and it turned out beautifully. I'm 
sure I'll be successful again this time. 

I took a closer look at the "Beast" that's in my freezer. It's HUGE. It's a 5+ pound chuck of meat, which I'm expected to roast to perfection. I'm pretty good at roasting prime rib, but it's always a bit frightening to face a piece of meat that costs that much and that we'll be eating for days. If I mess it up, he'll have wasted a lot of money on something that could have been awesome, and didn't quite turn out that way. I'll be checking my recipes out quite carefully. I've cooked beasts before, and they've been awesome, but I always double and triple check to make sure I know what I'm doing and that I have everything I want on-hand before the stores close for the holidays. I'm cooking this on Christmas Day. 

There is so much that is wrong about the Christmas that 
is presented as "true" in modern days, but people seem 
to find it just perfect, and it's not my religion, so more 
power to them. 

For those of you who are Christian, or nominally Christian, this is an important time of the year for you. I know many of you are planning to be in Church for Christmas Eve and possibly Christmas Day. It's rather nice that midnight services (which I've attended every now and again) allow you to pack both days into a single event - LOL. I'll celebrate the Solstice as I always do - quietly, but respectfully, as we pass into the next phase of the cycle. 

I celebrate the turn of the season, the rhythm of life 
on this planet, and the annual rotation around the 
sun, whose light allows us to survive on this, the 
Third Rock from the Sun. 

The three Sundays I've worked have actually been busy days. Yesterday was quite a respectable total at the end of our four hours, and the last two weeks also had people and good sales. I'm very grateful. It was business we desperately needed. We also need items that we ordered last week, but unfortunately I suspect they'll arrive too late to be of much help this season. Now to start working on our four-day END OF THE YEAR sale. This is our big one - huge discounts on almost everything in the store. 

I'm pretty sure I'll have to work all of the days of our 
End of the Year Sale. I'd better double-check my days 
and dates, and I'll probably take Tuesday as my "day 
off" next week, else I won't get one at all. 

So, time to wrap things up for today and get moving. I need to get a couple of bills paid before I go upstairs for breakfast, so I'd better move along. Have an excellent day, Slava Ukraini and חיים למען ישראל.