If you have an Advent Calendar, today is the day that you should open up that seventh little door. You've got 18 more little doors to open. No cheating! You can only open door number 7. For all the rest of you, you've got 18 more days before Christmas.

Have you ever enjoyed doing something so much that you've totally lost track of time? And then you become totally surprised and bewildered when something draws your attention back to the time that you've spent on that activity? I did that this morning. I love playing my clarinet with our contemporary group at church. There was a practice this morning at 7:45 AM. I arrived five minutes early and I hadn't even had my morning cup of coffee yet. We ran through the music that we were going to be playing on Christmas Eve. There was a lot of music to go through and we went through each piece at least two times. All of a sudden I'm beginning to notice that my reed is starting to act up. Only another person who plays a reeded instrument can understand this concept. The reed was getting "lazy". It had outplayed its alotted time limit and I was frustrated that I'd have to stop and change reeds. Then my lips started acting up. I was loosing air at the corners of my mouth. Frustration. I still wanted to keep playing. I was mad at myself because mouth muscles were way out of shape. Surely I hadn't been practicing enough. But wait a minute! Wake up! It was now 9:45 AM! I'd been playing for two solid hours! Well duh! And guess what? I had to come back at 10:45 AM to practice my clarinet with the church orchestra for another hour. I spent three hours playing my clarinet today. I was enjoying myself so much that I totally lost track of how much time I was playing. Now I have the swollen lip to show for it all. Oh well. I don't have to play anymore today. Tomorrow will do. In the meantime, I'll get this Christmas letter all printed out with my new printer and get the cards all addressed and ready to mail. My next practice will be on Thursday for the choir cantata which plays for two services next Sunday.

Today's Little Bit of Trivia

The moon has a tail. A glowing 15,000 mile long tail of sodium atoms streams from the moon. The faint, orange glow of sodium cannot be seen by the naked eye but it is detectable by instruments. Astronomers are not certain of the source of those sodium atoms.