This has been a wonderful and merry Christmas so far. purpleglitter got me wonderful gifts, including a new birding camera — the same model as the broken one, so that it will work with my telephoto lens.

My parents gave me a brass clock once owned by my great-grandfather. It's an old electric clock and wasn't made with the ability to start up on its own. A knob in the back must be spun just right so that it "catches", then the electric power will take over. The neat thing about the clock is that it will run backwards if the knob is spun backwards. I used to always set it running backward when I was a kid, and it is running backwards in my livingroom now.