No matter what, it seems, the holidays are cataclysmic. people are usually surprised when i say that December is my favorite month, but what i love about it is that it's so different, i can expect to drive down the street and see decorations, and when i was in school, it felt like you could sort of just screw around the whole month, and frankly that's how it's felt at my millions of jobs i've held by now, too, like everyone was taking work less seriously and being distracted by decorations and whatnot. in a way, i even like the depression factor of the holidays, because it's almost like sad people are understood when they get particularly agitated by their loneliness in December -- there are special resources, it seems, for depression, in december. but it's also so much pretending for me, and that gets tiring sometimes. there's a famous (famous to me, at least) craft store in Pasadena, where i spent my formative years, called Stats. they have a whole hu...