Recipe for a successful Xmas

1. Shop for tools at Sears Hardware, books at Acorn or Half Price Books, shoes at Macy's, food at Weiland's and the Clintonville Community Market. If they don't have it, you probably don't need it.

2. Appetizers: egg nog (alternative: Brooklyn brown ale), herring in mustard sauce, aged gouda, sharp cheddar, wheat crackers.

3. Dinner: lutefisk baked with garlic and butter; mashed potatoes with garlic and cream cheese; pork-beef meatballs with garlic, bread crumbs, pine nuts, parmesan, romano, and parsley; peas; tossed salad with poppy seed dressing; braided bread; sauvignon blanc.

4. Dessert: apple crisp and tea while watching a movie and dozing off in a comfortable chair.

5. Go outside and do qigong in a light snowfall.

6. Stay up late. Sleep late.

7. Breakfast: coffee with Bailey's, walnut-date bread, smoked salmon, cream cheese, blueberries, yoghurt, apple crisp.

8. Open presents slowly. Try on the new wool socks, new boots, new jacket. Read the first chapter of the new book. Listen to music that everyone likes, or at least music that nobody hates.

9. Go off to separate rooms for awhile and take a break from each other. Bring in more firewood. Take the dog for a good long walk.

10. Dinner: flank steak marinated in Jamaican jerk rub, baked sweet potatoes, green beans with garlic and slivered almonds, pinot noir.

11. Attempt to watch a movie but doze off in a comfortable chair. Go outside and revive by hanging from a trapeze and doing qigong briefly because it's getting cold. Must be that nor'easter that's about to slam into the whole Eastern Seaboard.

12. Don't stay up so late. Don't sleep so late.

13. Get up, read the paper, meditate, eat a spartan breakfast of bread and apple crisp; clean the kitchen and den; dispose of all the wrapping paper, boxes, and miscellaneous packaging materials.

14. Supper: leftover sweet potatoes with salmon, leftover mashed potatoes with meatballs and peas. Marshmallow fudge for dessert.

15. Go out to an actual movie in an actual theater; engage in complex four-sided negotiation whether to see Black Swan, The Fighter, or The King's Speech, and end up seeing True Grit instead. Not bad.