Twelfth Night

Today is the twelfth day of Christmas; so my true love would have given me the last of the strange presents in that song.  I don't have a true love and my presents were a little more sparse, but being Twelfth Night, it does mean that the Christmas decorations should be put away for another year, otherwise you will have bad luck.  I didn't put up any decorations this year, but then I didn't put them up last year, or the year before that.  They were put away on New Year's Eve 2005 and haven't seen the light of day since.

For those in the Orthodox Church, today is the day that they celebrate Christ's birth.  It is Epiphany, the time when the Wise Men were supposed to have found the Christ child and given Him their gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh.

So for some today marks the end of the Christmas season, while for others it marks the highpoint of their celebration.

I'm feeling a little better today, better than I have for several weeks.  In part, this is because I managed to have a fairly good night's sleep, and that always seems to make a difference.  And partly it is because I managed to finish putting my presentation together for the video that I will be part of tomorrow.  I had lots of problems gathering the screen shots that I required, but I managed to overcome my frustrations and get on with making the PowerPoint slides in between problems.  By 5pm yesterday I had finished preparing the slides and had put together quite a reasonable slide show.

While it is not the best presentation that I have ever put together, it is the first one that I have done for a number of years, and I did it all myself.  Now all I have to do is stand up and give the presentation.  I'm not sure what my anxiety level will be like tomorrow morning, but I am pretty sure the butterflies will be huge by lunchtime.  I'll be glad when tomorrow is over.