Hooray! January! The holidays are over! How were yours? Mine were pretty great, to be honest. In addition to a sweet vacation, I learned a lot of deep and important lessons, which I will now dispense.
A) Fog is weird.If you were to rank bad weather like you rank D&D monsters (as I so often do), slick icy roads would be like a lvl 12+ dragon. Snow a lvl 8 pack of wolves, Rain lvl 5 giant spider-crab. Light fog is like a lvl 1 sewer rat who dies of being really impressed when you karate chop it in the head.
That being said, Fog is still pretty creepy to drive through when there are no other cars on the road. Weirder still is how all it all the sudden lifts and then thickens wherever and whenever it wants to, like letting a kid play with a dimmer switch for the first time. But if you're going uphill and manage to break out of the top of the fog, that is the weirdest. It's very suddenly clear, and behind you is this big wall of white, billowing around like it owns the joint. Seeing a giant white lake behind you, and then realizing it's not actually a lake, is one of those moments where mother nature blows your mind. But let's be honest - if I was water and could choose to form airborne ice crystals that float around and defy the laws of gravity, I'd probably rub it into everyone's faces too.
I grabbed these not-very-good shots of the lake-that-isn't-a-lake on our roadtrip from Washington to Idaho. Trippy.

Moral: Fog can easily scale up to like a lvl 6 monster if conditions are right.
B) The true meaning of Christmas Economics.I used to think that Christmas lists were lame, and that if you really truly knew a person well, you should be able to just get them the perfect gift that they didn't even know they wanted but would really really love. But economists has proven me wrong! Every year the economy loses millions of dollars in value during the holidays. If you spend money on a present someone doesn't really like, your money is out of your wallet and no one is benefiting from what you got in exchange. Even though the purchase stimulated consumer spending, a loss of value is still pretty detrimental to the economy. The Planet Money Podcast did a whole show and article on the subject,
available here.
The moral is: Embrace the Christmas list, and don't feel bad about exchanging that thing you don't need. For the good of the global economy!
C) Just call me MC Philosophy cause I am a master wrapper.
Close-up! Pew pew!

Martha Stewart would be so proud.
The moral is: All this work has already been torn to shreds. But that's why I own a camera.
D) Resolutions (are) for DummiesOf course I have New Years resolutions. Really awesome ones. But there were two items I stumbled across during the selection process that caught my attention and helped me pare them down a little bit.
Merlin Mann of 43 Folders has always hated New Years resolutions (I propose that, just as Scrooge and Grinch have becomes names synonymous with Christmas curmudgeons, Merlin becomes the name of those who refuse to get into the spirit of New Years. I.E., "Bob refuses to wear these stupid plastic 2011 sparkle glasses. What a Merlin he is"). He wrote
another tirade on the subject this year, using Seinfeld quotes and pancake metaphors. The gist is, stop being so depressed that you always fail at your resolutions. Set modest goals and keep resetting as often as you have to. This is pretty good advice, but I still think New Years resolutions are fun, and that Mr. Mann is being a total Merlin.
Right in line with Merlin's advice was this delightfully simple "How To" guide to forming new habits by BJ Fogg of Stanford University. I ran across it on the Planet Money blog. Looking back, most of my (few) good habits were picked up by accident through this process. I'm prepared to try it out consciously this time and see if I can't streamline the process any.
The moral: If at first you don't succeed, don't worry. The world is going to end in Dec 2012 anyway.