Well, we didn't win any prizes in the Christmas raffle down at the pub. Not even the squash.

In fact, we somehow managed to miss the raffle drawing entirely. We don't know how. Not only did Alice tell us that it would be held December 24th at lunch, there is also a sign near the door saying the same thing. But when we arrived for lunch (having even made a reservation!), there was no joyous crowd of festive revelers on hand and the prizes had all been taken away. Even the old men who seem to live there had apparently gone to their actual houses to be, presumably, with their family members who do not spend all day every day at the pub. I hope they were all able to recognize each other. It was sort of eerie -- I don't think I have ever been in the pub without the old men there before.

So we ate our subdued little lunch and bought a jar of Daniele's artichokes and came home and built a fire. We ate some panforte and I "watched" the Lauren Bacall version of Murder on the Orient Express while sleeping on the couch.

My friend Taylor had asked me take a picture in the pub and send it to him, so I sent the one above. "There's no people in this picture," he said. "Yeah," I said, "there were no people at the bar."

Just the other day, Jonathan and I had been congratulating ourselves on how many things we have figured out in the past four months. But really, I guess, the truth is that we still don't know how this works. We don't know how any of this works.

We have made reservations for what is supposedly going to be a big New Year's Eve dinner. There was a sign up about it near the door. Fingers crossed!