Officially winter!

It's now officially winter and I am on my Christmas holidays for two weeks. Hooray! As usual, although it's lovely to have a break from the pressures of work life (mostly self-imposed), being on vacation often creates a separate pressure - the pressure to make certain that this precious time off is milked for all it's worth. On top of this, Christmas preparations are not complete. Ideally, I would like to just do fun stuff. I think I should probably stop creating an inner measure of whether or not I've made the best use of my time off (i.e. "this vacation will have been enjoyed and used to the best of my abilities if..."). What will likely occur is that I will make yet another to do list. Two weeks always sounds like a lot of time, but in fact, it goes by incredibly fast. Real winter has been around since sometime in November. However, since the weather this year has been mercurial, our entrance way is packed to gunnels with a variety of footwear and coats. A day of -20 degrees C can be followed by a day of rain and 4 degrees C.