So this is Christmas

Indeed, only two days until Christmas. I've been off work since Friday, and while I love the two-week break afforded by the holidays, I'm not feeling particularly festive this year. Admittedly I haven't made much of an effort to decorate the apartment: I did dig out the xmas ornaments and requisite CDs (Charlie Brown Christmas, A Big Band Christmas, the great holiday album by Barenaked Ladies, etc.) and hung up the stockings (one for me, the other belonging to my cat), but I still haven't been infested with holiday cheer. (I also didn't end up doing much with the ornaments as I didn't end up buying a tree.) Perhaps I'll feel different in the next couple of days when things truly slow down and I get to spend some quality time with the lovely A. (Last year we spent the four days before the 25th in Washington, DC, which was great fun.) She's been super-busy with work - namely wrapping a job up and starting a new(ish) venture in the new year - so we haven't been able to indulge too much in each other's company. We did, however, see Handel's Messiah on Monday night, and we're off to The Nutcracker this afternoon, so it's not like we're not trying to get into the holiday spirit!

All that being said, it's a welcome relief to not have to drag my ass to work until the new year. It's been an arduous couple of months on the job - thankfully nothing unpleasant, just a heavy workload. It's one reason for the paucity of posts on here - I'm just too damn bagged when I get home to do anything other than make dinner and vegetate. (I've been watching a lot of the Toronto Raptors too, although that's been more aggravating than relaxing...) So I'm using this downtime to indulge in some serious ... well, downtime. I've already been reading like a fiend: began and finished the fascinating A Terrible Splendor, polished off Roth's middling and slight (but still readable) The Humbling in two sittings, as well as getting to some short stories from The New Yorker - including works from some "big name" authors such as DeLillo, McEwan and David Foster Wallace - that I had put aside when I had more leisure time to fully engage with the stories. And although The Humbling was a mild disappointment (not a huge one though I had low expectations going in), it has led me to pick Roth's Sabbath's Theater, which the recent novel has been compared to - and which many people feel is Roth's masterwork. So I'll be reading that over the next few days, after which I may finally begin my winter reading project: Tolstoy's War and Peace. Wish me luck.

Watch this space for a 2009 wrap-up, and some thoughts on the coming year.