Well, I knew going into work today that it was going to be a long, bad day, and indeed, it was a long, bad day. We all have 'em, but you'll have to pardon me when I say that my bad days mean more to me than your bad days. This was the kind of day that had me aging a year by the hour and, by 5 PM, looking into a mirror to see not myself, but a tired creature more closely resembling Amy Monkey of Congo fame. The kind of day that required a solid thirty minutes of chewing dead skin off my fingers when it finally ended if only to curb what was a decidedly larger appetite for destruction. And the worst part? Throughout the day, all of the various stresses and things-going-wrong slowly manifested into a solid vision of a half-done bottle of tequila on top of our fridge. I was banking on this tequila. My one shot, literally, of coming home and simmering down without any explosions. There was no such tequila when I got home. The woman says that there was never any tequila there to speak of. My migraniousuper stress made up this wonderful used bottle of tequila as a coping device. It worked, I guess, but I really wanted that damn shot tonight. At least I had Nerds.

God, I love Christmas. It's even better than made-up tequila bottles. This here thingy is a Nerds "Fun Book," which expands on the idea of selling multipacks of Life-Savers in book-themed holiday boxes with better candy, better graphics and better French hens. There are 200 things I like about the Nerds Christmas Fun Book, but to meet my personal quota for brevity bonus points, I'll limit myself to telling you only six of them...

1) The book/box/whatever is absolutely covered in Nerds creatures acting the parts of Santa Claus and his reindeer.

2) The various Nerds creatures are incredibly easy and fun to draw. I never would've came to this realization without the Christmas Fun Book.

3) The thing comes with four full-sized packs of Nerds. Two of 'em are just normal, unChristmassy Strawberry/Grape boxes, but the other two are fabulous "Frosty Nerds," with Cherry & Punch and Watermelon & Punch divided into perfectly matched armies of red/white eat-pebbles and green/white eat-pebbles. This is worth nothing because I like candy armies.

4) It actually costs less than four packs of Nerds sold separately. What's more, they don't even promote this fact with some stupid star-shaped burst on the front cover.

6) There's like, three bazillion games and brainteasers printed on the inside of the book/box/whatever. Everything from mazes to word scramblers to some other thing where you attempt to make as many words as possible from the letters in the word "decoration."