(Sunday Paper, Volume I, Issue 28)

There's a topic I keep meaning to write about but I keep pushing it off.

It'll happen eventually, but it's got a good shelf life. It's evergreen. It has no specific timeframe - I can write about it any week...so if something else comes up during a week where I think, "Oh, that's good for the Sunday Paper this week," chances are I'll go with that other topic.

It's centered around my daily routine - I'm hoping at some point I'll write about what a typical morning is like for me and get some feedback about how other people start their day.

It probably won't show up in the final few Sunday Papers of 2016...but it'll definitely come off the shelf in 2017.

The reason I bring it up this week, though, is that this week was anything but my normal routine...So I thought I'd tell you about it.

The good news is I'm finally feeling better.

It took a while - though I was up and about all week getting the girls to and from school it wasn't really until Friday that I really felt back to being myself.

But it stinks that it took that long, because this is one of my favorite times of the year: I like getting out the Christmas lights and putting out the decorations around the house. Usually I'll do that the Saturday after Thanksgiving, along with a pretty whirlwind house cleaning. This year that was not meant to be.

Instead, I've been cleaning here and there and putting up decorations one by one when I come across them. The lights are up, as you can tell by that blurry picture at the top of the post. Thursday afternoon the girls and I went in search of a replacement decoration for a snowflake that broke a couple of years ago and was held together by tape last year until I finally decided to toss it. So we went out and found this great wreath. And once I put the wreath together I had to hang it to see how it looked. And once I hung that wreath I had to put out the other lights to see how they looked, and well, Thursday night I had the lights up. It felt good.

Maybe I'll find another flurry of energy to finish the cleaning and put up the rest of the interior decorations. Then I can do what I love to do this time of year...enjoy a clean, decorated house while I watch some football on TV with a drink in my hand.

This year it's just that my time to enjoy all of that has been thrown off by a few days.

Writing

Nothing has probably suffered more from me being bedridden so much of the past couple of weeks than writing. But I got back into doing some stuff this week, so that's good. But the past two Sunday Papers almost didn't happen, and I just didn't feel like sitting in front of a computer very much the past couple of weeks. So let's hope that feeling goes away as my health improves.

Comedy

Not a banner week in my comedy career. I told you last week I had to bail on the Friday and Saturday shows. I ended up not being well enough to go to the Sunday show...and then I had also planned on going to a show Tuesday night that I couldn't make. Hated that I couldn't do any of them. Need to get back on that horse this week...and it might be a good week to transition back. I have nothing booked, so I can just grab stage time anywhere I can. Interesting observation from my experiences this week: I think, if you are in good standing with others, other people are far more forgiving for you having to miss something due to sickness than you probably are of yourself.

What I've Been Enjoying

You would think I'd have tons of things to recommend to you because I've spent so much time in bed recently. Believe it or not I didn't absorb anything new...and I fell behind on all of my podcasts and I haven't really been experiencing anything in life the past couple of weeks. So I have nothing to tell you about here...but I feel like I'm forced to so I'll just tell you that Kathy and I have been catching up a little bit on old TV that we've DVRed and not watched. One of the shows we're catching up on is Drunk History. I guess there's a reason I haven't brought myself to delete the past couple of seasons we've had stored up on the DVR - I really enjoy the show. If you're unfamiliar with it: a comedian - or other well-known (in theory) person - sits down to explain a historic scenario while drunk. Then that story is acted out and it's usually very funny. I like hearing the different interpretations of history - I think the episodes I enjoy the most are the ones that feature the history with which I'm most familiar. I think I'll know I've made it the day I'm asked to talk about some part of Boston history on Drunk History.

Notes

*If you click that link above about replacing the snowflake, it connects to one of the 'New Things' in 2013. (That snowflake apparently did not live a very long life....let's hope I get more than three years out of the new wreath.) But that month I wrote about a few of my favorite decorations around the house, so if you're interested, that's still relevant. I still love the 'family' ornaments along the wall and the Christmas cards that have yet to go up in their decorative spot.

*Today's joke, when I write it, will be number 339 for the year. Looking forward to finishing up this daily task (you may or may not remember my daily challenge for 2016 was to write at least one joke every day)...it's been good - I now have a couple hundred good jokes that I can probably use on stage, but I'm sure I can take some of that material and write deeper or more thoroughly about certain topics. 2017 will be about getting back to normal writing for me - instead of just focusing on the one idea per day - and my primary focus for the new year will be getting as much time on stage as possible.