What a week! The balancing act between family, my day job, and academics can be pretty tricky. I have found that holidays pose the biggest challenge to my finely tuned machine. I run a tight schedule in order to accomplish the things that are important to me. For that matter, I have plotted and planned my life this way for a very long time and I do believe that generally speaking, “Everything is going according to plan.” It is amazing how the religiouly based holidays induce so much stress on the population. I’m certain that commercialism is the catalyst for so much of this anarchy however, it seems that if Christmas is more about invisible friends and less about chattels, the religious leaders of our planet would unite and put things into perspective but hey, business is good for them too during this season. Who would buy a ticket if there were no show to see? January cannot get here soon enough.