End of the year fun...

So it's the middle of December. Time for holiday travel, overspending and ugly sweaters. It's also the time of year for countdowns and montages. Today's post packs in a little of everything.

I was more than overjoyed with Southwest opened a terminal at Logan Airport when I lived in New England. The cheap fares, decent customer service and funny flight attendants usually made up for the long lines, minimal service extras and grumpy TSA agents that come with air travel. So I had to click on this link from the Today Show this morning, showing a "flash mob" of Southwest employees kicking it to Brenda Lee's "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree." Oh, those crazy kids... (Note: Those who cannot handle Saving Private Ryan-esque cinematography should avoid this link.)

VentureBeat reported on the "biggest shopping boom since before the recession." I joined about a billion other people doing their Christmas shopping online this year. Aided by really good deals (and the motivation to avoid crowds at all costs), I, and apparently many others, pretty quickly finished my shopping and then sat back and waited for the presents to come to me. In the first 43 days of the holiday shopping season, consumers spent 12 more than last year, or $23.82 billion dollars.

I found the above photo on Google Images. There were so many, each much worse than the last. *gleeful giggle * I had such a hard time picking...

And finally, the first "Best...of 2010" image gallery came to my attention this morning via NASA on Twitter. Yes, I follow NASA. Yes, I'm a giant nerd. Popular Science had the 72 (??) best science images of this year collected on its website. I didn't flip through all of them, but there's a pretty cool acorn squid-thing around image 35. Fair warning, Mom, you will not like image number 1.