In four days, at this time, I will be home. I am sooo excited, you have no idea. Hopefully, LA will be as lovely as ever, nice and sunny, and I can shed these stinking wool coats for at least a week. Knock on wood. (That's right. A nice full week of Thanksgiving vacation, mainly because I'm skipping classes I don't attend anyway.) Of course, with my luck, it'll be dreary and cloudy - but oh, a girl can dream!

I'm actually more excited than I know I'll be once I get there. Then I have to deal with family - why don't I have a backup prescription of Valium I can take for these instances? - and pressures to stay in med school and questions about my dating life and why in the world are you giving up the profitable world of medicine to become an academic? Ahhhh. Where is the Valium right now?

Also, Christmas shopping is stressing me out more than it should. I know it's not even Thanksgiving yet. But what am I supposed to do when Bed, Bath and Beyond started blasting Christmas music The Day After Halloween and all the ads on TV and inserts in magazines are about presents? I do things best under pressure. Maybe I should wait until December 23rd to buy everything. Or - my personal favourite - give presents on New Year's instead of Christmas so that I can take advantage of all the post-Christmas sales.