Today is day No. 2 of a 16-day excursion into vacationing excellence.
The time-off period started well enough. Yesterday I started the day with coffee with Abbi then a family Christmas party (held at the Cathedral of St. Dorothy the Matriarch), then a trip to the mall for a bit of shopping and then food-court dinner and a movie — Anchorman 2, which was hilarious — with Liz and Brian, Julie, Nichole, and Lianne. Today features a bit of housekeeping — cleaning, podcast production, grocery shopping, last-minute gift-buying — to settle me for the week.
Then … nothing.
Well, not nothing. I have quite a bit planned. It’s better to say that apart from another Christmas party on Tuesday, and a possible planning visit with Tony on Jan 2/3/4, that I’m not leaving the house. Instead, I’ll remain cocooned at home, with the feline overlords, performing sundry tasks:

• Polishing the novel
• Reviewing 2013’s achievements and planning 2014’s goals
• A buttload of cardio
• Soliciting contract writing work

I’m looking forward to it.
The last few years, Christmas hasn’t been much about the holiday; instead, it’s about the time off to hunker down and re-center myself.  A period of end-of-year renewal, as it were.
And I’m way past ready to get to work.