YIKES! (I just realized what today is!)

Holy cow, it's the 25th.

Of SEPTEMBER.

Meaning there are only three months left.

Until CHRISTMAS.

The busy season. The crowded malls. The one hundred Christmas DVD movies to check off my must-watch-before-Dec. 24th-list. And...the Christmas cards...and the stamps, and the addressing, and the sticky tongue from all the licking...

Oh. Wait a minute. STOP EVERYTHING. I don't do that anymore. No need for me to go into cardiac arrest after all. For several years now, I've been publishing an annual Christmas newsletter document and sending it out by email to everyone on my list.

Well, almost everyone. There are a few people whose ISP's don't let them receive documents with as large a file size as those year-end extravaganzas of mine. But maybe now that I have a blog, I can get around that by posting my newsletter HERE and just sending a link! I'll just have to brush up my XML skills and see what I can come up with.

Another bit of good news is that for these same last few years I've gotten around that whole issue of the last minute panic-rush to come up with ideas to get that newsletter filled up. I've stuck to a format whereby I allocate a space for the happenings of each individual month of the year - and I actually write the "chapter" for each month at the end of that month. So that means by next week I'll be three-quarters done with the newsletter!

Which will leave me more time for catching up on those videos.

And posting on this blog.

And playing Christmas songs on my iPod.

And shopping for the fruitcake and eggnog.

And eating the fruitcake and eggnog.

And going on long runs to BURN UP the fruitcake and eggnog!

These next three months may not be so bad after all! :)