Christmas again already, is it? My, that year went by fast. But it was an exciting one - and not just in the "may you live in interesting times" sense! Unsurprisingly, I'm sitting in a telescope control room on Christmas night. Not something that happens every year, but maybe half of the years. I was in the same place the night of Christmas Eve. However, in between, I did make it up to the top of the mountain to do a bit of work during the afternoon and get snowed on! Yes, not only was there snow already on the ground (has been for weeks now), but snowflakes were falling on me. That was neat. So it's December, and I'm scrambling. Scrambling to work as many hours as possible toward the 1000-hour annual cap at my main job. Scrambling to sort through all kinds of mail and deal with it. The nice folks who send me a bunch of paper every quarter about my IRA, which I never ever read (the value has gone up nicely in the 3.5 years I've i