It's my last day in New York before I leave for the Holiday, and I've managed to finish most of my Christmas shopping. One project didn't get finished (and I'm still deciding what to do about it), and I need to buy another thing once i get to Sheboygan, but otherwise I'm DONE.

Overall, I need to do better next year. A few things are arriving in the mail, and since I didn't order them soon enough, they'll probably arrive too late for the Christmas morning paper ripping. So sad. And I was thinking of doing Christmas cards, but they never happened either. I considered turning the idea into New Year's cards, but... too little too late, probably.

I'm getting excited; it's almost here:

ONE week until Christmas!
TWO many things left to do (and buy). (i know... too)
THREE more work days until I'm outa here.

I miss my 5 week Christmas vacation. Speaking of which... the movie of that title was on TV tonight, but it just isn't the same after they censor it. I guess I need the DVD version.

I hope I even have a Christmas vacation. The flights are pretty dang full already for the holidays. I guess I've always traveled much earlier, and have thus skipped the rush. Aww, there's three seats left; what am I worried about?

I almost bundled up to go outside for my fourth shoveling of the storm, but I decided that it can wait until tomorrow. The snow just keeps piling up; 14 inches is a lot of snow. Luckily, my Wisconsin roots have prepared me for this sort of thing.

That's where my quirky obsession with shoveling developed. I know that it's supposed to be a chore, but I look forward to it. Perhaps my parents tricked me into enjoying it; I remember jumping out of bed to get outside before my mom had shoveled all the good stuff without me.

When I moved into this apartment in June, I noticed right away that there was a shovel in our seedy little entryway. And with only three apts in the building, I knew that shoveling duties would be up to me. Nobody's going to balk at that.

So I'm a little off... get over it.