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I am home and alive. The Santa Cruz crowds downtown were impressively mellow. I’m officially impressed. Didn’t see or hear a single shopper freak-out. I think we were all so glad to have had the torrential rains end, that was enough.

Once more in to the last-minute-shopping breach, my friends. I’ll post something if I get home again safely.

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Power was off for most of today. At one point we just piled dogs and teenage kids in the bed and just lay there staying warm, semi-napping, and relatively quiet until one of the chihuahuas fragranced the air with a delicate little kazoo noise. It took a while to restore order.

Power is on. My deprived daughter got up out of bed when it clicked on just to sleepily play Minecraft for half an hour. Poor electricity-deprived mite.

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When you live with dogs, sooner or later (or all the time, in our sad case) one of them is going to expel something disgusting from one of its two ends and then another dog is going to eat it. I call this process “regifting”.

Every time I look, Facebook is asking me, “How are you doing, Tad?” It’s like slipping in and out of consciousness while attended by anxious friends. “Can you hear me, Tad? Have you alerted people of your condition? Would you like to share your new hospital address?”

Okay, since I was talking about Facebook, I have a philosophical question. I’m sure everyone’s answer is different. How long can you take over a Facebook message without feeling self-indulgent or show-offy? For me, it’s about twenty to thirty seconds, tops. That’s usually time enough to write it, glance at it to make sure most of it’s spelled correctly, then hit “post”. Occasionally, like if the message is about something political I might take an extra twenty seconds to see if it makes any sense. Other than that, I pretty much treat Facebook as conversational, and don’t worry too much about getting it just right. Now, if I was getting paid for it, I’d probably give it a couple of more drafts…

We have finally committed Tree. The gap is getting smaller and smaller every year between tree and holiday, but for my own peace of mind it needs to be pushed back a little — to a week, maybe, instead of three days before.

It all comes down to the need for better planning. Says the guy looking at the last lifeboat from the Titanic rowing away.

Actually, while I’m thinking holiday thoughts, I’m thankful for Facebook, too. It doesn’t cost anything, and it’s a social lifeline for a lot of people in a way that television, another advertising-driven medium, doesn’t. You don’t have to do it, but if you want to, it’s pretty good. But it’s someone else’s business, users. Long as you remember that, you’ll be okay. Despite its sometimes arbitrary-seeming changes, it’s enabled me to reconnect or stay in touch with a lot of people I wouldn’t be able to reach otherwise — so, no complaints here.

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The holiday approaches, serene as a skidding eighteen-wheeler on black ice. I used to love this time of year, but during the last couple go-rounds, my position of record has been a prolonged flinch.

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I’m glad I wasn’t the only one.

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Today is my wonderful wife’s birthday. I am older than dirt, and yet she is somehow younger than springtime. Go figure.

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Long day’s drive with a very nice middle — I went up to Petaluma to do SWORD AND LASER, which will show up on YouTube sometime in January. Veronica and Tom and everybody involved with the show were very nice and treated me like a normal person, which is exactly how my doctors like it. I had fun, and although it was about five hours’ trip total, it was also one of the most beautiful days to drive through San Francisco I’ve ever seen, wind-cleared skies, stark winter sunlight edged in gold at midday, and nothing to look at but everything.

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I don’t so much want to express myself as I want to think, I realize now. Expressing myself, mostly by writing, is the way I can do as much thinking as possible and still make a living.

Now I know how zombies feel while Christmas shopping. I downed a double-shot espresso to drag my virus-ridden body out to the stores, and for a while I felt almost normal. Then it wore off, and it was like bits of my body were dropping off — hands, feet, etc. — until I was a shambling wreck. At which point I gave up and came home. And now I’m going to lie down. Happy Holidays! Send me brains, please. Don’t worry about refrigerating them, I’ll be eating them immediately.

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I think the NFL head office called the refs at half time and said, “We don’t think New England should get beat this badly on national television,” because some of the calls against the Niners since then have been really, really dubious.