— In two miles, psychologically prepare yourself to make a left turn across four lanes of oncoming traffic.

We really enjoyed our recent road trip to Boston and other points east, but returning home, we have found out that we have missed a few things, like Christmas. Not completely and not yet, but a few of our favorite yuletide activities have already fallen off the table this year. The annual cookie party, my one remaining point of contact with the people from Boeing was canceled this year. So, I will not be making Blood Orange Poppy Seed Linzer Cookies this year, not that I have found the blood orange marmalade yet. While not attributable to the road trip, I will add it anyway, because these things always come in threes. We also missed out on meeting with our Kaldi’s bike buddies this month. We were supposed to schedule this month’s meeting, but frankly, we dropped the ball on that one and will have to make amends in the new year. Finally, Anne tried to score tickets to the Tillis Park holiday lights display, on the one night that is set aside for walking through the park and not driving, no carbon-monoxide for me thank you very much, but they were sold out. Instead, after we put up our own lights this week, we walked around the neighborhood after dark, to checkout other people’s light displays. Pictured is the brightest one that we could find. It was also in the running for the kitschiest display too, but another house that featured an inflatable Santa using an outhouse, with the door wide open, beat it out in that category. Every day now, we work to put more cheer in this holiday season, but I fear that this year, we are firmly stuck behind the eight ball, behind schedule and running out of time. We will keep plugging along though. After all, there are twelve days to Christmas, and we do not always have to hit the very first one. Maybe not getting out of the house until noon, taking a coffee break at three and then knocking off for the day is part of the problem? I don’t know. I’ll have to think about that one.