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Other than Thanksgiving, there is not another holiday that food plays such a prominent role. If you don’t believe me, just go to any grocery store on any day of the week prior to Christmas Day as it is a zoo! If you need what everybody else is looking for you might be out of luck and having to redo your menu. However, if you can get everything you need ahead of time your holiday fare will be outstanding!

We eat with the same bunch of friends every year and we all share in the cooking. It seems that each of us has that “one thing” that we do so well it is always requested back the following year. However, this year, we are doing things a little bit differently. Each of us has been challenged to come up with a variation of what we bring each year. For example, we always bring the soup and an appetizer and since we have been eating mainly vegan this past year, we are bringing things that fit into a mostly vegetarian diet. Unfortunately one of the children has some bad allergies so we do have to modify some of the dishes but we don’t mind as we just love celebrating and tasting Christmas together.

If you have not already bought or been given a calendar for 2010, it is time to go out and get it. Don’t wait until you have to take what you can find because it may not be what is most useful. For instance, several weeks ago I asked my assistant to pick up a planning calendar for me just like the ones I have used now for about ten years. She came back with a totally different kind of calendar; one she uses not the kind I use. It just proved to me that buying a calendar is a very personal thing!

Another realization I have had lately is how many calendars I have in my life. I don’t like to use the electronic ones because I can’t see everything I want to see on them. I also don’t have just one calendar. I like to have a large desk calendar to write all over on my desk as well as a daily “at a glance” calendar to keep all my appointments in. I also keep a yearly calendar hanging on my office wall so I can check out the entire year and see what day falls where so I can plan my monthly activities way ahead of time. I would be lost without all my calendars so I know I have to get mine early and you should too!

Several weeks ago I ran into an acquaintance of mine at the local coffee shop were he told me the bank he worked for had just announced that the FDIC had taken over and the mortgage division he worked in was completely shut down because Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac cut off their funding. This placed an additional one hundred and fifty five people on the unemployment line. To clarify, this bank was seventy six years old and had been a strong regional lender for mortgages fro decades. So I asked what did them in.

I was surprised by the answer: builders defaulting on their loans. Come to find out that one of the things that has hurt so many regional and small banks were lending to local builders in and around their communities. The economic downturn has been very hard on these guys and even though your retail residential mortgage is making ten million dollars a year, the bank can potentially take a hit of ten million form one builder! Multiply that a couple of times and you have a big problem. Why the government has not helped some of these smaller banks that lend directly into their communities is beyond me but it would stand to reason that this is just the types of banks they should be helping.

When I recently read that my GPS might be hurting me more than helping, I was a bit put off because I love my GPS! I was relieved as I read on that I didn’t have to give up my GPS all together but I now realize that I shouldn’t totally rely on it all the time. It seems that our brains need to figure out where we are and where we are going for it to remember how to map things. In other words; when it comes to the part of your brain that navigates, you have to use it or loose it. One of the worst things I could think that could happen is not to be able to get myself back to familiar ground if I ever get lost so I don’t want to “loose it”!

So my household has decided that unless we are traveling into territory that we have never traveled before, we will use the GPS. However, if we just need to map a place that we are familiar with we go back to the map and figure it out. This way we keep those brain cells firing so we don’t forget how to navigate while feeling more relaxed when we travel to areas we just know nothing about. I think it’s the best of both worlds.