'tis the season?!?!

Holiday store displays are clearly messing with my mind...

For months now -- yes, months -- I've been bombarded by Christmas trees on display in every store and shopping center I've visited. It was maddening to have to dig my way through aisles of Santas and elves and collectible Dickensian villages to find Halloween candy. It's too soon! I've been grumbling to myself since mid-September.

And the grumbling continued today as I watched my coworkers set up an artificial Christmas tree right in front of my desk... until I realized... wait a minute... Halloween is long gone... Thanksgiving is now behind us... it actually IS the right time now!

Christmas is my favorite time of year... how could it possibly sneak up on me like this?

i want my l.l. bean

I admit it: I have a weakness for any advertising that involves puppies. You could be trying to sell me anything -- socks, furniture, motor oil, post-it notes, lawn fertilizer, hubcaps -- and if you throw a couple puppies into the picture, you've just landed a customer. I can still recall so fondly favorite TV commercials from Scotland, with these fuzzy little Labrador puppies frolicking in the rolls and rolls of soft-quilted bathroom tissue, only to get tired and fall asleep in the big fluffy pile... and I would buy that brand every time I went to the store and saw that sleepy little puppy on the packaging. Now, if I would've bothered to stop and think about it for one second, I might have realized that I was getting sappy over an ad campaign for biodegradable butt-wiping products that featured animals who just lick themselves clean... but I never did. Why? Because they're puppies!

And I have another advertising weakness, quite possibly worse than the first -- the Brawny Man. Talk about your classic strong, silent type! He was one of my childhood heroes. Looking into those crystal blue eyes (which the cellophane packaging made even more sparkly), I just knew he could fix anything. He could clean up the whole universe, if he wanted to. His red and black flannel shirt was clearly a superhero disguise -- and yet, it was so cozy and snuggly, too, he was just irresistable. And so I would always grab him off the shelf and take him home with me, my little knight in buffalo-plaid armor.

All this to say that I am completely and hopelessly enthralled with my new L.L. Bean catalog. From the moment I glimpsed the adorable golden puppies on the cover, I knew there could be no going back. Puppies in the snow, puppies on the hearth, puppies sleeping on a sofa... I want to buy a puppy just so I'll have a reason to buy a fleece-lined doggy bed. But if that weren't temptation enough... there's the Brawny Men. Page after page of ruggedly-handsome tree choppers and firewood stackers and snowman builders and cocoa drinkers... in wool and soft chambray and cashmere and, best of all, plaid. Confident yet cozy, it's hard to believe they could do any wrong when dressed so comfortably stylish. It's easy to envisage those corduroy-clad arms hauling in a Christmas tree one moment, then gathering the whole family for a big bear hug the next... and it's even easier to imagine snuggling up next to that soft flannel in front of a roaring fire, with sleeping kids upstairs and sleeping puppies at our feet...

So keep your GQ, if you please. No People Magazine's "Sexiest Man Alive" for me. I want my L.L. Bean...