Cardeology + Quotation + Signs of the Times

The Most Wonderful Time of the Year(tm) quickly approaches . . . and indeed I'm such a sucker for Christmas that I really do think it's the most wonderful time of the year, excepting September (my birthday month), May (spring), and any time I'm out luxuriating in one of the parks on a sunny day, when I'm convinced that's the most wonderful day of the year.

In any case, I have been thinking about ways to extend the holiday joy to you, my dear readers, and I think it's easiest just to offer this: Send me an e-mail between now and December 1 and I will send you a Christmas card in turn. No hoops to jump through, no odd vocabulary to include in the message, just a simple e-mail with your postal address to chavela_que at yahoo dot com and a little envelope of good wishes and good cheer will come to your mailbox. Many of you friends-and-relations will of course already be on my list, but I hope also to hear from you strangers who post occasionally or who have lurked on the blog up to this point. And it would be lovely if anyone who receives a card from me would send me one in return, but it's certainly not an obligation.

Ten points to the first non-Katy reader who identifies the source of the new headline (author and book).

And the small signs of the season changing:

• I put my comforter on my bed last night, after months of sleeping with only sheets and blankets;
• I linger under it far longer than I should;
• I bought a new hat and gloves (magenta and striped, respectively) and a new pale teal winter coat;
• the snowflakes are up on the lightposts along Seventh Avenue, and light-and-tinsel stars strung across the streets of Williamsburg and Little Italy;
• grocery-store specials on stuffing, yams, pumpkins, and cranberries;
• I'm planning craft projects for Christmas;
• socks curled up in odd corners of the apartment;
• I have an afghan on my lap as I sit here typing;
• the electric teakettle bubbles and clicks all day long.