I hope the trip to a foreign shore helped you in your quest. I'm sure I will be thoroughly delighted with whatever I will recieve.

I gave out the word thay your elves were not coming and that the free liquor was ceasing and dismissed the proceedings. My missing hymnal was returned, and the jolly band of wee rogues has scattered.

I got a thank you note from my next door neighbor with a stamp on it and everything. Maybe he thought that if he brought it over himself, that in the few hundred feet it takes to walk, some angry little creature might kick of bite him in the kneecap.

Some of them DID take it harder than others.

The racoon raconteur seems to have washed his hands of the whole thing. He seemed upset when someone started singing "Dave-ee, Davey Crockett" the last night and left early, but not before leaving a troll muttering about rabies shots.

The elf from nobody knows where was on a binge and did not know where he was from, himself. He'd lost his ID and his memory and one green pointed shoe and the garden gnome couple took him home and said they had contacts and could go through channels to get him back to wherever he belongs. Some local unknown will probably go without a present this year, though. he was in pretty sorry shape.

McGhee and Hash, the House Brownies, alternate between asking for more whiskey and asking me to help pay rehab expenses.

The sprite disappeared quietly to wherever she came from.

After I'd chased everybody out from the courtyard and was walking back toward my townhouse, I saw the possum lying on his back in the roadway with his legs sticking up. "Oh My God!", I thought and ran up to his inert body to see what happened. When I got real close, he jumped up and with a sly wink and a hiccup, scurried off. "Oldest trick in the book!", I muttered as I slunk back home.

Finally, as I was walking back in the door, I stopped to check out what Molly the cat was playfully wrestling around with on the floor. It was kind of hard to tell by now, but it looked like it could've been a green pointy-toed shoe at one time.

Thanks very much, my wonderful Shy and Secretive Santa, and I'll be eagerly awaiting the sledge's arrival with my gift from some exotic shore, at least to you. Hell, I might be living on an exotic shore myself, and just might not be noticing it lately, working all this overtime and all. If you and your elves become less shy and secretive next year, you can be a more active part in the adventure, and a reliable witness that I wasn't making all this stuff up.

People are backing away pointing fingers and whispering, "He goes through a case of whiskey a week and sees 'little folk'!" I know that with all their tacky lights and decorations, they don't really believe in you.

But I DO!

And DAMN, it's quiet around here....