The holiday season has begun at home, preceded quite a bit by its start in the stores. (Stores very nearly skipped Halloween this year and went straight to Christmas, didn’t they?)

First, we got a wreath for our door from a local door-to-door salesgirl. This is important in two respects: First, I’ve never had a wreath before, and while it sounds sort of cliché, it’s nice and sort of makes me feel like “a real homeowner” (even though we’ve been at the same place for years now). Second, if your kid gets off their ass and actually does the door-to-door sales for their organization, I’ll most likely buy something; if you take the sign-up sheet to work and stick it on the break area table and expect me to register… well, good luck with that. Hard work gets rewarded.

2009 Trans-Siberian Orchestra

Second, we went to the Trans-Siberian Orchestra concert on Sunday. Not the first time we’ve seen them, but a brilliant show. Everything with TSO is always larger-than-life. Every number is huge and that just makes it full of awesome. We were in the tenth row, center section on the aisle

• perfect seats. I snuck a few pictures toward the end with my crappy Blackberry camera. Epic stuff. I’d totally go again.

This week is Thanksgiving and I totally can’t stand turkey, nor am I really big on attempting to coordinate a bajillion disparate schedules to make sure everyone gets their “face time” in, which makes it my least favorite holiday all year. (I think it’d be more important to get together with people if we all didn’t live within 45 minutes of each other and see each other all the time.)

But I’m not going to let that drag me down. I’ve got this free-standing two-foot-tall green M&M in a Santa hat to stick by our front door and I’ve been waiting to put her out. Onward to the holidays!