I have six MUST DO chores scribbled on a yellow sticky. Six MUST DO BORING chores, which means even though they are very easy – i.e. go to the YMCA and sign up Ian for the winter session of swim classes – I will stall and surf and re-warm my coffee until as late as possible.

I’m taking my mom to the mall in an hour. She is one of those grew-up-in-a city-and-so-isn’t-a-natural-driver people. She hates driving on highways. She drove over a bridge once about twenty years ago with her hasard lights on. Not driving on a highway is a major obstacle to getting about this congested area of the country. She knows the back routes to almost every mall and store in the area, but there are still a few that are only accessible by highway. So, I’ll take her there. Never a happy shopper, she’s also pretty much stopped entirely. So, I’m buying all her Christmas presents for the boys this year. She’ll give me a check later.

I have to make some time to read this Atlantic article about writing advice from people who actually get published. It’s another one of those sure-fire traffic topics, but I need to get inspired.

I’m not that inspired lately. Another old timer blogger dropped out of the business yesterday. I am not using the blog as a generator of article topics anymore, mostly because I’ve decided to finish half-written books this spring, rather than write magazine articles. So, I’m trying to decide what’s  going to happen here. I could write one big blog post per day that is more personal than political, like Lileks. Or should I ramp up efforts and do rapid-fire, mini-posts, like Sullivan, and then embed lots of ads to make this a job? I could go either way.

I’m immersed in disability world stuff right now. Because I don’t want to wear out my welcome with the topic, I’ll throw out a couple of links without much commentary. A review of Raising Henry in the Times. Do autistic kids take in too much input and then shut down?

Soon, I’m going to transition from the decorating and shopping phase of Christmas to the cooking phase. Got to prepare the fishy menu and make the cookies for the care packages. And soon, I’ll get sick of all this Martha Stewart shit and get back to complaining about income inequality and the politics of schools. Soon. But this sticky note of horrible chores awaits.

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I’m just going to add to the blog post throughout the day, as I get a minute or two to surf….

Love to hate rich folks? Check out this Christmas card.

It’s nice to see that it’s not only American professors who are griping about the dumbing down of standards.

Oooh. Lots of people still wondering about yesterday’s Brooks column.