As my finger hit "send" on the final email to my professors today, I literally exhaled.  Wow.  Fall 2012 of grad school is in the books!  I'm ready to load up on some good fiction for the next month since I've not really been able to read anything not related to school.  I've been keeping a list of titles I'm interested in (a mark of a true reader according to Penny Kittle), so while I'm shopping with Mom and Anna (and Baby Cora!) tomorrow I may try to pick up a little holiday treat for myself.

Speaking of shopping, I'm making progress in that area. When I sat down to make my official list last week (I was a little late in doing that -- I had it all in my head, though), I was kind of impressed with myself.  Several things were able to be checked off which makes me feel better about what I still have to do.  Amazon has been my BFF lately with its free 2-day shipping for Prime members!  In fact, I realized the other evening that I'd ordered the wrong book for Parker.  I submitted the return online and a message was on the next screen telling me to keep the item.  Since I'm a "valued customer" Amazon refunded my money, let me keep the original book, and then processed the new order.  Yay!  It's not quite a Christmas miracle, but I'll take what I can get.

The warm weather has been nice.  My husband does not want it to ever leave!  But, I'm really struggling to feel all Christmas-y when the high temps are in the 70s.  A cool-down would be nice and I would love a white Christmas.  My yard could actually use one more mowing -- leaves and shoots of some type of weed are just everywhere.  I would feel weird mowing in December, but that's not unrealistic.  It was downright balmy when I was on afternoon duty Monday.