Today is for resting and recovering.

It's been a long week -- for lovely, good reasons and for some frustrating (but not overwhelmingly so) reasons. I got to bed early last night as the start of recovery.

Christmas was low-key, as hoped. We gave few gifts this year -- my cousins in Dayton gave me a snack-pack, my cousins in Olympia sent me a check, TJ and Cindy over in Virginia sent me a Shadow reprint (stories by Walter B. Gibson (writing as Maxwell Grant) and Alfred Bester, with a Harlan Ellison introduction) and Border's gift money, and Mom and Dad gave me Powell's gift money and a calendar. Being poor right now, I gave my charming personality.

There was also the gift of food. Good food. REALLY good food. (Inspiring this exchange at the table: Me: "Some things should be buttery and some things shouldn't." Dad: "Cheerios shouldn't.")

Christmas Day's temperature hovered close enough to freezing that we nixed a proposed trip to see the film Marley and Me, and we Walshes just cocooned. Yesterday morning my parents and I got in Dad's car and got me home and then to work, and they got back to their home with no problem. Since then, we've been above freezing and rainy: the better for starting to melt this snow (especially the snow on my neighborhood's streets) so I can actually go places using my car.

But, again, today is a resting-and-recovering day. Keep it simple, man. (Which acronymizes as "KISM.")