Here it comes again, another Christmas. Kristie and I started our Christmas shopping mid-December but still found it difficult to pick gifts for everyone. Finding the right gift seems to be the most stressful part about the whole season, everything else (the merry making and gathering) seems to happen more naturally.
The Christmas Skunk (above) adorns our tree again this year, a tradition we've kept since Rosebank. And speaking of grey furry critters, 1999 is the Chinese Year of the Rabbit - promising a relaxing and happy year for us all.

Well not thousands, but completing my Christmas orders for HangUp saw me bind my hundredth book for that shop alone. Finally, I have weekends to myself again and can spend time with Kristie and the new Apple computer (the two are inseparable at the moment).
The computer is very lovely; it's so nice to be able to use photographic colour and stereo sound. Despite the games, it is also proving to be a very productive beast; I'm currently dabbling in 3D artwork.

We've scored tickets to some of the more dubious stage productions lately. Return to the Forbidden Planet, a musical sci-fi Shakespearean modern comedy was a bizarre but entertaining feast, even though the sound levels were all over the place and we were either threatened with deafness or straining to hear.
The other notable event was Master Plan, basically a dialogue between Freidrich Nietzsche and the composer Wagner. It was very well produced and acted - but was such awful intellectual tripe that Kristie and I walked out half an hour into the performance.
The script was just so awful - it was like watching a university- level essay performed to music.

Kristie and I set the alarm for 4am one morning in November - I had been awake past midnight binding books, as I had for most nights that week.
We woke in the cold and the dark and moved quickly, leaping in the car and driving along a dark back road away from the city.
I kept checking the compass to keep our orientation, to make sure we would find the right place to stop.
There were a few other cars on the exposed hilltop when we got there. The trees opened out to a wide paddock that swept down the range into the valley, and the sky was early-morning indigo. We huddled against each other outside on the ground, sitting wrapped in the silver window- shade from the car, watching.
And that's how we stayed for a good hour or so, waiting for the Leonid meteor storm to break over our heads.

We managed to see about eight shooting stars in that time, and a couple left red burns in the sky for a few seconds, but it wasn't as spectacular as the one in the 1960s
The Leonid meteor showers occur around November 17 each year as the Earth passes through the dust trail of comet Tempel- Tuttle. If you find yourself suffering from insomnia or curiosity around that time of year, cast your eyes in the direction of Leo (Northish).
Apparently there's another annual meteor shower around December 12-14, this time from 3200 Phaethon (an asteroid) and appearing to come from Gemini, but I suppose most of you missed it and actually got some sleep. Never mind, there's always next year.

Kristie was having a crap week (as you'll hear) and Cath was in hospital, but we three managed to make it out to Tanunda in the Barossa Valley ready for our balloon flight on the morning of December 5.
Half a dozen or more helium- filled party balloons were released from different locations and tracked by spotlight in the pre- dawn darkness. The wind was too fast, and it looked as though Kristie's