I have simply got to start getting some of these holiday memories down, before they are gone for good. To heck with any semblance of order.

We spent most of Sunday Christmas shopping. While the wife normally has most of the gifts purchased well before December, this year we were only about half done when we went to Colorado. And, as much as everyone else complains, I love shopping during the holiday season. I like the crowds, and simply accept the long lines as a price you must pay for the pleasure.

One gripe I do have, though, involves parking. Specifically my wife's method of parking, although there are others in the family just as bad. The routine is always the same. Enter the parking lot, drive past handfuls of perfectly good parking spaces looking for one unlikely space close to the doors, then circle back out, stopping repeatedly for pedestrians and other vehicles, until you eventually end up parking at the outer fringes anyway.

She knows this irritates me, and if it wasn't for my irritation, I am sure she would circle close to the doors a second, or even third time, hovering to find a place to park just a measly 50 meters closer to the door.

If she would simply park in the first convenient spot, we would have been inside with at least one item in our hands by the time she does finally park. I simply do not understand the need to circle for several minutes in hopes of conquering a close-in parking space just to save 50 steps.

Especially when we are going to spend the next few hours doing nothing but walking and standing. Fifty steps, even in fresh, cold air, is insignificant.

But that is still the way it goes, in every parking lot.