Most of what kept me going today consists of stuff I can't talk about here, at least not in detail. Therefore, there will be no entry tonight.

No, wait. There's Christmas shopping, and there's work. Outside of those areas, there isn't much else going on. Even the reading I'm doing is a book that I hope to give to someone when I'm finished — if I finish (and if it turns out to be good enough for this person).

We can always talk about the weather. There's a subject nobody gets tired of. It rained overnight, but it was merely cold and windy today. It's supposed to get down below freezing here tonight, for the first time this year. (I'll let you know if Woodstock is skating around on the bird bath when I get up tomorrow morning.)

(I associate cold December weather with jury duty, for the simple reason that the only time I sat on a jury it was the coldest December ever. People make up their minds much faster when they're thinking about going home to sit by the fire and sip cocoa.)

My shopping trip today was a wild ride. I only wish it could be the last wild ride of the season, because the crowds are getting thicker (and the people in the crowds are getting thicker, too). I only went to three stores in two different shopping centers. I would have made one more stop, but as I was making a left turn, the only lane I could get into without blocking traffic was the one that took me home. So I went home. Sometimes you have to take the path of least resistance.

All that means is that I have to go out again, and if I were a really diligent shopper I'd have done it later this afternoon. If I were a halfway dedicated shopper I'd do it tomorrow morning. Being the kind of half-assed, half-hearted shopper that I was raised to be, I'll go Monday. Or Tuesday, at the very latest, unless I wait until Wednesday.

One stop that I couldn't put off today was the gas station, because without filling my tank I would have had to stay home all weekend. And I have places to go, don't you know. The best part of today's outing was coming home and finding no messages on the answering machine. I dodged another one.

One of the Company's longtime employees quit last Wednesday. I just found out today, because he's unhappy with his final paycheck (which, obviously, I didn't know would be his final check until today, when he got it and started telling people how unhappy he was). He told his foreman that he was quitting on the advice of his doctor, who'd advised him to reduce stress. Then he went out and took another job for a third more money.

The reason he's unhappy with his final check is because it was for zero dollars and zero cents. I have an explanation, though. I deducted the full amount of his net pay (a little over three hundred dollars) and gave it to the foreman, who several weeks ago loaned him two thousand dollars to make a down payment on a car. It was an off-the-books loan, a handshake deal. I've been taking a little out of each check and paying the foreman back, but for some reason (which I didn't know then and do know now) the foreman instructed me to give him all of the employee's current check.

So the guy has been calling around to the other workers in the shop, the people he used to work with, and complaining that he didn't get any money from his last paycheck. He's hinted that he might take his grievance further than just whining to people who can't do anything about it.

What he hasn't told anyone is that he still owes his foreman over nine hundred dollars. Our man didn't have to lend an employee any money, but I think he believed he was buying some loyalty from a member of his crew whom he trusted. Now he has to become a collection agent in order to get the rest of his money back.

And I'll probably get bogged down in paperwork if the guy does file a grievance. Poor, poor me. It's all about me.

Maybe I should have stuck with my original plan and skipped tonight's entry.