A joyous season to you, reader. It's good to be home.

I woke up this morning with a maddening snippet of lyric in my head. Somewhere in the last dream I had before wakening, I heard the song phrase, "Every time you walk into the room…" Some quick googling told me that what I was hearing in my head was a snippet of the chorus from Stevie Nicks' "Rooms On Fire."

"Maybe I'm just thinking
that the rooms are all on fire
every time that you walk into the room
there is magic all around you
if I do say so myself
I have known this
much longer than I've known you"

So I've played it a time or two today, just to see if any more details from the dream will return to my conscious mind. No such luck. It was worth a shot, though. Funny, the random things your brain digs up—before downloading the song this morning I wasn't even sure that I knew this song.

Mundane life details: Jeff set up the new entertainment center last night. The room looks much better as a result. "Less collegiate," I think was the phrase Kat used. While she hasn't actually seen the room yet, I'm inclined to agree with her.

I chatted with Andy for a short while this afternoon; he's still requesting rather insistently that I try to get some rest. My initial reaction was to laugh it off…and then I sneezed. Again. Oops. I've been trying to ignore the fact that my throat still feels a bit swollen (for those of you who haven't been playing along, I'm recovering from strep throat) and I'm still pretty tired. Maybe I'm not quite as recovered as I originally thought I was.

The people I care about see me completely differently than I see myself. It's difficult to explain to my friends who are asking me to rest and take a break that on the contrary, it's not that I feel that I'm doing too much with my life—it's that to me, I'm lazy. (Odd—was that the sound of about six of my friends convulsing in laughter? It certainly sounded like it…)

In the end, it comes down to perfectionism. I ask myself what I would do with my free time if I managed to get done everything that I feel needs to get done. I've never had a real, honest, and truthful answer for that question except, "I'd probably try to do more."

Kinda sad, eh?

Wow. Jeff just called—it's snowing. I think the winter weather's found me again. Guess I'd better get Fran's litterboxes cleaned out here and get home before all of Huntsville's drivers freak out.