A Week In Review

Time will tell whether it was a good idea to try to accomplish the impossible. For the whole week, I would go to bed about midnight (except for Saturday, when it ended up being 1 AM Sunday)and wake up at my usual time, which is between 4-30 and 4-45 AM.

At work, having been in the office for only four days between two weeks of time off, I had endless meetings and then worked after hours trying to do some actual work. I was planning my presents, ordering things, writing the cards, etc. In addition, I had many problems with my conference website, sending tons of emails trying to correct them and meeting with the Talk Selection Committee. I had to prepare a million things for the upcoming PG Conf EU week and manage several 2024 conference submissions.

I took Friday off, and I decided not to go to the Corporate Christmas Party because otherwise, there was no way for me to bake my Christmas cookies. I want to be very clear here: this was not a sacrifice on my side; these are my priorities, and I would be way unhappier if I didn’t do cookies this year.

Lena also took Friday off and left work earlier on Thursday to drive to Chicago so that we could start baking early Friday morning.

I do not recall whether I mentioned it, but this year, due to all of the time constraints, I decided to utilize the Tree Santa company for my Christmas tree delivery because I knew I wouldn’t have time to go and choose it. Since Friday was literally the only day I was at home, I also scheduled the tree delivery for Friday.

It turned out the tree was too thick to fit into my tree stand, so they had to give me one of theirs, and it was not as nice as mine. As for the tree itself, it was fine, but the shape was not as I liked it (too thick in the middle), and the top was “tripled,” and Lena and I spent a lot of time trying to put the star on it.

At 5 PM, we called it a day and went to the Christkindle Market and then to Millennium Park to see the Chicago Christmas Tree and listen to the carolers.

When we returned, we put the lights on the Christmas tree and some ornaments.

We decorated the cookies on Saturday from 7-30 AM to 2 PM almost non-stop, and then went to see my mom (I only saw her twice that week, and I needed to see her before I left for the conference).

Lena returned to Ann Arbor, and I returned home and started packing the cookies for shipping. When it was all done, I started the labels.

Here is where the horror began. The USPS upgraded the Click-and-Ship site and added more questions, and things started to take way more time than before. Several times, I missed the questions and had to start all over again – the site didn’t save my answers. I thought I would be done will all my labels within an hour, having that most of the recipients were in my address book, but I spent an hour and a half and had only five labels done. Also, both Germany and Ireland decided to include cookies in the restricted items list. I spent at least twenty minutes trying to figure out what I did wrong, but turned out it was not me :).

When it was past midnight, and I was only half done with the labels and not packed for the trip, I gave up and went to bed. Fortunately, my Sunday was reserved for “whatever I won’t have time to finish,” so packed my new gigantic luggage, finished all the labels, sealed all the cookie boxes into mailing envelopes, scheduled pickup for Monday, and brought all the packages downstairs, finished decorating the tree (except for chocolates), and finished all the cleanup.

And only when I got to the airport, I was finally able to sit down and blog about all of that. And you know what? My house looks so pretty and christmasy, and the cookies are plenty, and I didn’t forget to put kolacki in the fridge so that they won’t go bad until my next shopping date in a week, and I finally started to feel like Christmas!