I also noticed the disappearing wishlist item thing about a week ago, but in my case the mystery was solved this (particularly rainy) Christmas morning: everything that was flagged as purchased but hadn’t shown up was in fact bought by my parents, who had cleverly pretended not to know that I had a wishlist at all. So along with some other things, I got some gifts that I had been particularly wanting but certainly not expecting from the family, which worked out really well.

Christmas at the Story house is more or less over, and while we lacked a Christmas anteater this year, we more than made up for it with a Christmas pelican. We had the usual fantastic, stomach-popping dinner with the local extended family, and everything went pretty much perfectly. I did burn an entire tray of Christmas cookies yesterday, but since we made about five anyway, they ended up serving as particularly festive dog biscuits.

I’m going to go disappear into my brand new Shorter OED for the next (say) six months, but I’m sure someone will find me eventually.