Well, maybe not completely - we took a little break this noon to watch one of our friends give a presentation. But otherwise - it's cold outside these days, and there's even some snow, as is fitting for this time of year. The little cat likes to hang out on my desk, lying on my right arm and occasionally "helping" by adding a lot of empty spaces, or äääääää, or whatever her paw happens to hit as she stretches (or walks off, across the keyboard, of course). 

While she is chilling, I am trying to keep up with the things on my list - wrapping up Forum stuff and working on the museum projects that I have in the pipeline. And, of course, the shop. As November is almost over, it's high time to send the monthly newsletter... and in theory, being a good shopkeeper and marketing person, I should (have) put in there a lot of things to animate people to buy stuff for Xmas. 

But... well. Just a few days ago, there was all this "Black Friday" and "Black Week" madness, with ad bombardments everywhere and gazillions of "great deal!" newsletters, and I'm already being bombarded as well with reminders that Xmas is coming up and I might want to buy this or that as a present. And frankly, I'm quite sick of all this demand to be a good consumer and buy, buy, buy. It's just too much. 

So I did decide not to do the usual pre-Xmas-extra advertising this year - the newsletter is mostly like any other one during the year. I've never been very good at tooting my own horn for the stuff I sell, but my hope is that it will speak for itself well enough to keep things going. And maybe I'll feel more like "hey! go buy this!" next year again, when the consumerism craze of the end-of-year has passed...