SRS, this is the problem: there's virtually no kitchen in the house in whose outbuilding we are staying, which makes cooking proiblematical. There's no television, and the Internet connection is so bad that downloading and watching a movie via the Web can mean hours of annoying "downloading" pauses. There's no room for a celebration in our tiny cabin, and our hosts' house is, well, just not a place we'd take it upon ourselves to decorate for a holiday they don't celebrate.

We plan to be a little bit merry -- we'll cook as nice a meal as we can manage, and we'll decorate a tree in the orchard to feed the local wildlife -- but in general, I'd rather wait and celebrate when we have something to celebrate as well as a congenial place to do it.

There is another reason for the delay too. You can read about that on my Facebook page...don't really want to share with the world.