It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas

Even though it's entirely accurate to say it, I'm going to say it anyway: The holidays kinda snuck up on me this year.

Last year, I finished and mailed my holiday cards on December 23. This year I didn't even bother to try. No one got a card from me this year. I've even been so bad as to neglect to send cards to people from whom I've received cards. Yet for some reason, I don't think anyone's mourning the fact that no cards with my signature on them have been sent.

Last year, I looked forward to a ski trip over the new year. It got aborted. I was bummed. This year I don't have that kind of event to look forward to. Basically, I'm taking Monday off from work, and returning to the office on Tuesday.

Even though the crass commercialism associated with Christmas set in, as always, just before Thanksgiving, somehow I let most of the month of December piss away without taking any steps toward Christmas responsibilities. Yesterday I mailed off two of the only three gifts I intend to send off for this season. (One of them isn't even a Christmas gift; it's a New Baby Girl gift for a couple whose daughter was born several months ago. I've only just gotten around to putting the stuff in a box and sending them off. No, the gifts are not clothes that she's already grown out of as I held on to them.)

And the worst sign of all that Christmas totally snuck up on me: the blogs I read most often are already starting to put up their "happy holidays, I'm taking a few days off" posts. Wow, it's here already, and I'm wholly unprepared. Again, last year, that was me (albeit over New Years rather than Christmas). This year, not so much.

Not that I have any reason to complain, of course. The primary reason I'm not prepared for Christmas is that I'm all excited for a mid-January getaway. It was cheaper then, so I saved my vaca-away-from-the-office time for the MLK weekend. More about that later. And if anyone wants to buy me a digital camera (>5 MP, >3x optical zoom, memory card slot preferred) for my trip so that I can post pictures about it, please contact me so I can give you an address to ship it to (email link in the upper right corner of this page).

So with that, I leave with you my very own Happy Holidays post. Safe travels to those of you leaving your primary residence and many happy returns.

Happy Holidays!