Year of Mercy. Kerry Weber has a fabulous article on this in the Washington Post.

Marie. Girlfriend posted her birth story in two installements here and here. I have seen pics of the kiddo on Facebook and she is a cutie pie!

Geek Squad. I took my old laptop in on Monday to get the data off the hard drive and they had it back to me today (Tuesday). Additionally, they had me book an appointment so they could chat with me for 15 minutes about my wishes, how I wanted to handle things, and were just fabulous in terms of customer service. Go here for details on them. If you get anything through Best Buy, you need to work with them. Seriously, I cannot recommend them highly enough.

This Christmas carol. Someone recommended checking out this carol in the comments on this post:

This version of “I Saw Three Ships”. I’m seriously loving Blackmore’s Night and their “Winter Carols” album right now:

Go love up Ashley.