I saw a camel yesterday.

It was part of our town's Christmas parade and it was huge and fluffy and beautiful. Have discovered new love for camels that I didn't know I possessed. Especially the fluffy kind.

Somehow talked the Humbug Father into watching all the Puissance from Olympia tonight. Considering he thinks horse shows are as boring as I think golf is (a lot), it was... surprising. He even took an interest. Suspect working over Christmas is getting me a little more leeway than his loud and frequent complaining otherwise suggests.

I was sad that Cian and Casper didn't win though, partly because Casper's beautiful and partly because he shares the name with my cat. I won't get to see any of it tomorrow because of the whole being-in-work-til-nine thing-

- that I'm still a little confused over. They're in 'til nine tonight shelving and we don't get deliveries on a Saturday, so there shouldn't be that much to shelve. If the words "do a really good recovery" (ie. tidy the entire shop book by book) come out of my manager's mouth at any point, there will be managercide. Especially when, on asking Rob to give me staff discount on my Spiderwick Chronicles box set, I was told "Sorry, manager's in and we're not supposed to." I'm working through Christmas for these people and they won't even lend me their staff discount.

Which is half the reason why I went to Borders today and spent £60. The other half is that I had £10 off when I spent £50 in store and I had £20 in national book tokens to use, which I wasn't going to waste on the piffling selection at Waterstones. After a cathartic hour wandering around, choosing books and having to bug the staff twice to find things because of the beautiful immensity that is Borders, I did the very thing I've been despising customers for for weeks; namely, presenting the guy at the till with a basket of nine books with a combination of two buy-one-get-one-half-price offers, a £10 off code and two book tokens to scan. Took him forever, bless him.

I laid out all the books on my bed when I got home and spent a happy few minutes admiring what weeks of repression looks like. I've spent more time in a bookshop than I have at home over the last few weeks, without being allowed to so much as flick through a book, watching people spend a fortune and restraining myself. Nine books, all things I've wanted to read for a while and I haven't let myself indulge in buying. Bliss. Then I spent a good couple of hours resorting my bookcase to fit them in; I went with more size height to make it look tidier this time, meaning some authors have their books on two or even three separate shelves. It will annoy me, eventually, but right now it looks pretty and I'll care about it bugging me when it finally does.

kindoftrouble, the other part of your Christmas present arrived today and was immediately wrapped up and posted this afternoon, but it's not likely to be there for Christmas. Sorry. At least it's on its way.

Tomorrow we have Secret Santa presents to exchange. Considering I sneaked a look into the envelope containing the remaining, unused name tags yesterday and found only the three Christmas temps left presentless - yeah, I'm not holding out any hope of good times.

(Sorry I haven't been answering comments for weeks - after Christmas my hours drop right down and I should be able to catch up.)