The First Weekend In December

I am typing up this post as I lean back in my big leather recliner and put my feet up for the first time since Thursday evening. It's really quite nice. I have my laptop with me and I'm sitting in my private office/den at the house. Mrs. Claus has already gone to bed but she knew I would need a little relaxation at the end of this weekend so she had a fire built in the fireplace for me and a steaming mug of hot chocolate waiting next to my recliner. All the lights are off but I have the light of the fire, the tv is on across the room though on mute, and the twinkling lights of the Christmas tree (did I mention before that we have a Christmas tree in every room?). I took just a few minutes to sit and reflect before I powered up the laptop but found myself starting to doze off... so I powered it up and here I sit typing my note to all of you. I'm sure when I'm done, I'll fall asleep right here in the recliner, wake up a couple of hours later, and then stumble to bed where I'll sleep next to Mrs. Claus for an hour or so before the alarm goes off.

Speaking of, I don't get much sleep at all during this time of year. Mondays are the closest thing I have to a day off. I can really sleep in on Mondays, which means I get almost 4 hours of sleep on Sunday nights. But the truth is... I rarely feel tired. Yes... I know my body is physically exhausted but I just get so much energy from the Christmas season that I just keep going, and going, and going... until December 26th. Then I truly crash for a few days.

Anyway... you probably want to hear about my weekend. Unfortunately, there wasn't much to tell. It was fairly typical with a number of tree lightings and parade appearances on Friday night. Saturday & Sunday both, I bounced around Asia, Europe, and North America making a number of appearances. I got in a really good run at Old Trafford in Manchester on Sunday... it was Manchester United's Santa Run. That was a lot of fun and I really enjoyed getting to run with and talk to many of you.

The most significant thing I think about the weekend was that something went wrong with our telecommunications network. I am not sure of all the details but I know Melody and her team worked on it non-stop all weekeend. They finally resolved it late this evening NPT. While we were experiencing the issue, neither my iPhone or my Blackberry worked. As a result though, I was "twitter-less". I apologize for those of you following me on Twitter but I just couldn't get to a place to login and tweet.

The other thing I would share is that I met with the manufacturers of the Zhu Zhu Pets to discuss an order increase. Our demand planning team way under-estimated the popularity of the Zhu Zhu pets. We currently have way more Zhu Zhu Pets requested than we have in inventory. The good news is that they are going to do everything possible to increase our order; the bad news is that we will likely still fall short. For those of you making requests via letter, I encourage you to give me an alternate selection in case I don't have enough Zhu Zhu pets to go around. We will be filling the requests on a first-come, first-served basis.

Well... my mug is empty and I'm starting to doze even as I type. I am going to shut down the laptop and drift off to a nice, peaceful slumber. Good night, all.