Saturday, December 17th

Yesterday during the day I got a lot of work done — dogs waking me up at 2 in the morning meant that my work day was almost over by the time the sun rose. I went ahead and fired the kiln, caught up on some background HaldeCraft things, and cleaned up just a titch. There’s still so much cleaning to do, though… ugh. But the important part of yesterday was what last night was our annual ex-Novel-Ideas-employee party. Bill and Karen throw it every year, and while the quantity of people has gotten smaller, the love is still the same. I’ve known Bill since a few months after we moved to Gainesville in the summer of 1979. He gave me my first job, at Novel Ideas, when I was 17 (about a month before I turned 18, and to this day he thinks I conned him into giving me the job, but I swear he offered it out of the blue, and it’s my blog, so neener). I’ll have to dig up some pictures from way back then. Anyway, while the party also used to be for current employees of Bill’s, back when we also worked together at Florida Bookstore, it has since become just the old school, hard core Novel Ideas crowd again. Deke, Jane-Anne, Paul and his family. We trade stories of what’s new in our lives, eat good food, toast to each other, and settle in for the annual watching of Christmas specials. Grinch, Alf, Opus, and of course Black Adder. Yes, we know all the words. But we still laugh! It is Good Times.

Bill and Karen do Christmas right!