I know my WOW (Word of the Week) readers are hoping to see the new WOW for today and learn the meaning of last week’s WOW. However, I’m afraid I can’t oblige right now. I’ve been reluctant to write about this because it is not my story to tell, but someone else’s. And I want to respect that person’s privacy.

However, someone very dear to me is struggling mightily against a vicious, vicious enemy right now: esophageal cancer. And while I have been a huge proponent of fighting breast cancer because of losing my best friend to that disease, I am now awakened to the fact that esophageal cancer is a far more devastating disease because of its mere location.

Without much warning esophageal cancer can quickly block a very important function in one’s body: swallowing, digesting and providing your body with nutrition. This creates horrific complications and yet, surgical removal of the tumor is also very risky. While this person is valiantly trying to get through this battle, he is fighting increasingly more difficult odds simply because a lack of nutrition to the body creates a multitude of problems.

The survival rates for esophageal cancer make the survival rates for breast cancer look great, even though that I know that those who fight that cancer have no less an easy route to survival. But, this has awakened me to an area of cancer that desperately needs funding, research, and support systems for those who fight it.

Contrary to popular belief (or at least my erroneous belief), you can be perfectly healthy, not smoke and still wind up with this cancer. It is increasing in the U.S. in men at alarming rates and no one knows why. This person was, indeed, perfectly healthy prior to this diagnosis and looked as if he would live a good 15 to 20 years more, at the very least. But, now that is deeply in doubt.

Thus, with great reluctance, yet again, I am going to suspend writing the blog posts for MIP for a while. His care is rather demanding at this point and he deserves my full attention. I hope you will understand and forgive the lack of posting. And when we are successfully past this chapter of his life and mine, I will be back, in full force to bring you my normal “insanity” here at MIP.

I hope you will return to MIP when I resume writing, but of course, that is completely your choice. But sometimes, some things are just more important than learning a new word for a new week.

May God be gracious to you and those you care about. And yes, those of you fighting your own struggles are still ever in my prayers and thoughts.

Until we “meet” again…

Book Club Members: I am up to Passover Week in Killing Jesus. I am finding the politics of Jesus’ time very, very interesting. How about you?

Warning: You might want to get a beverage first.

I am doing a small series on how to increase your chances of keeping your 2014 New Year’s resolutions. Most of us generally want to improve each year, but we often fail because we fail to plan. Today I discuss another way that I keep myself on track with the changes I want to make each year. It’s my color-coded to-do list:

1. I create a simple list at the top of my “Date List” that only includes 16 items each day in a Word document. Why 16? Because you have a better chance of keeping your resolutions if you are well rested. Many research studies indicate that you need 7 – 8 hours of sleep per night. As we age, some of us can get away with 5 – 6 hours of sleep. If that is your situation, then you can add 1 – 3 more items to your to do list. That leaves you 16 hours a day to work, to do household chores, to study, to run errands and to improve your life.

2. I write down things as I think of them for what I want to accomplish that day. This includes daily items, such as reading my Bible and washing the dishes (They never leave the list even if I get them done every day!). It includes appointments and things that must take place that day such as: “Go to XYZ appointment” and “Take out the trash”. It includes items from my date list which now should have not only appointments on there, but also the deadline dates for the steps in my improvement projects. When I hit 16, I stop adding items.

3. Then, I look at the 16 items and find the 5 most important things for me to do that day. For instance, appointments are probably going to be red (can’t do them any other day!). I simply highlight those 5 items and click on the font color button and make them all red.

4. Then, I look at the remaining 11 items and decide which ones are the next most important to get done. These usually include my daily items, such as exercise, getting the mail, and doing laundry. I pick the 5 most important and highlight them and make their font color yellow. (Think about traffic lights!)

5. The remaining 6 items become green in font color.

6. I attack the red items first until all of them are accomplished.

7. Once all the red items are done, I attack the yellow items until all of them are done. (I at least make progress on all of them, giving each one at least 10 minutes of my time.)

8. If I am fortunate enough to get all of the yellow items done, then I start attacking the green items. Notice I said, “If”! There are lots of days when I don’t get all the yellow items done and thus, the green items never even make it to my attention!

9. I use the strikeout button to cross off the things I’ve done each day. This makes me feel accomplished, even if the only thing I accomplished was cleaning out my belly button lint. (You can’t let that stuff build up…it might attack you in the middle of the night when you least expect it.)

10. At the end of each day, I highlight everything on the list and “unstrike” them by clicking on the strikeout button again. Then, I highlight them again and turn the font color black.

11. Now, I delete any items that were accomplished and don’t need to be done ever again (or at least not the next day!). Depending on how many items are still left, I add on items for tomorrow based from my date list and any other new commitments that may have cropped up during the day until I get to the magical 16. Then, I re-code them red, yellow and green as in Steps 5-7 above.

What I have learned from using this system is that the yellow items eventually become red and the green items become yellow. Since I’m pretty good at getting the red items done every day and some of the yellow items every day, most things get accomplished eventually and amazingly, on time!

There are good days and bad days. Why? Because sometimes life intervenes and crises arise. For instance, right now a family situation has cropped up that requires a lot of my attention. But, I’m still getting at least a few of the red items done every day and the family’s agenda has temporarily become my agenda, meaning that the most important things are being done (taking care of my family)–my agenda has just become mostly yellow and green for right now.

Also, some days I lack motivation and just need a break from the to-do list, so I often look at my to-do list on these days and don’t see a lot accomplished. But, resting is important, because if I don’t take care of myself, I’ll be in a hospital or dead and then my agenda really won’t get accomplished. I do have days where I’m just plain lazy, so this past year I did even more with that to-do list to combat my procrastination tendencies:

1. Since I feel accomplished crossing off things on my list, I estimate how many minutes it will take me to get each item done. I put that number next to the item.

2. When I’m lazy, I find the red item taking the least amount of time and do it first. Then I take the red item with the next least amount of time estimated and do it next. That way I can pretty quickly cross off several items within an hour or two.

3. The increasing number of items crossed off motivates me to get those yellow items done next. By the end of the day, that “lazy day” turned into a pretty productive day!

Do you have to do this exactly as I have described above? No. Do what works for you! But, get busy and try some system and see if you can’t keep those resolutions better in 2014! Even if you fail and your system didn’t work, you at least tried and learned that you need to try a different system and that, my dear reader, is progress and improvement.

Point to Ponder: Try the system above if you’ve never done it. If you aren’t a computer whiz, then just use a notebook to make your to-do list and use highlighters to color-code it. You can also use “A”, “B”, and “C” to order your priorities for the day. Or, “R” for red; “Y” for yellow; and “G” for green. The point is to get started today…somehow…some way. Do it! No more procrastination! Then, give yourself a small reward for being so good!

Friday’s Post: Keeping Your 2014 Resolutions: Blissful Sleep!

You might also like: Keeping Your 2014 Resolutions: the Date List and Keeping Your New Year’s Resolutions: Backwards Planning

Picture picture

Last week’s WOW (Word of the Week) was stichomythia. Merriam-Webster Online says the definition of stichomythia is: dialogue especially of altercation or dispute delivered by two actors in alternating lines (as in classical Greek drama). I seldom engage in Greek drama, but I am afraid I have a somewhat small “debate gene” when it comes to certain people in my life and when I do engage it, it becomes a rather major drama of my own making. Let’s just say I should try to lessen the stichomythias of my life in the future, for the sake of all those who manage to like or love me in spite of this nasty gene!

This week’s WOW is orotund. Here are my definition guesses for orotund:

orotund: 1. when one’s obesity resembles a cheerio…a really large cheerio 2. the general shape of a rotunda 3. oratorical verbosity.

Point to Ponder: What are your guesses for orotund? Submit a comment below. Do you know this word? Tell me, tell me!

Wednesday’s Post: Keeping Your Resolutions: Color-Coded To-Do Lists…

You might also like: Word of the Week: stichomythia; Word of the Week: New Words for a New Year; and Word of the Week: styptic

Book Club Members: I’m into the “early ministry years” of Killing Jesus. How about you?

Warning: You might want to get favorite beverage.

Contrary to what is probably your first impression of the above title, this is not a list of celebrities you’d like to date! This is developing a to-do list based on a “date list” that you compile after you look at all of your resolution steps, deadlines and important dates.

Many of you who have “your acts together” may think the following is really rudimentary. But, what I’m learning is that many, many people struggle to overcome the non-stop ravages of something that has been plaguing them for years. So, if that’s you, read on. If you’ve got it together, how about sharing how you accomplish tasks and projects by sharing a comment with us below? Two minds are better than one, even if it turns into a “committee meeting.” 🙂

On to the Date List idea. I am always attracted to innovative, attractive planners and planning systems with cool graphics. Unfortunately, these don’t seem to work for me. I don’t even want to think about how much money and time I’ve wasted on such stuff. What started working for me was the back of a spiral notebook and a pen/pencil. Yep, that’s what worked. Now, I use a Word document. Yes, just one. Why the Word document? Because it’s “green”, cheap, my laptop has a delete key that gets used more than I care to admit, and I can cross things off and color-code with the click of a mere button.

While in grad school I was juggling a lot of responsibilities: schoolwork in a 21st century college setting (I felt like I got my bachelor’s in the stegosaurus era.) 3 hour classes at the end of the day when most of us middle-aged people are trying to put our feet up and trying very hard not to think actively, work in a very active graduate assistant’s position, mothering duties, husband-wife time, housekeeping, car maintenance, home improvement projects, and helping my daughter plan her wedding. Sometimes I was also balancing trying to get in 150 hours of counseling in 16 weeks–another requirement for the master’s degree. Did I do all of these things perfectly? No! But, I accomplished a lot and realized I’m not perfect and neither is anyone else. If they look perfect, it’s an illusion.

I found myself completely lost with all the deadlines circulating in my head because of all of this. So, at the back of one of my spiral notebooks used for class notes I started writing down all the deadlines based on the project/role/task in question. I didn’t worry about whether they were in chronological order–I just wrote them all down from calendars, to-do lists, backwards planning and syllabi. Then, I put them in chronological order. From there I created a to-do list for each day. The tasks for the first date on my list go on the to-do list first, even if my backwards planning has managed to miss a step or two. The 2nd date’s tasks go next on the list until I get to 16 items. (More about my to-do list next week). I keep adding tasks on my daily to-do list until I get to 16 items. Why 16? Read next Wednesday’s post!

While in grad school, I would compile a date list for an entire semester–it just seemed like a good “cutoff.” Now I do it about a month ahead, but continually. In other words today I will add items on the date list for 2/10/2014. I keep my date list right below my to-do list in my Word document, so that I can make sure that the most urgent deadlines are always on the same screen with my to-do list.

So, let’s see what a portion of my date list might have looked like in 2011:

• 1/9 Take out trash
• 1/9 Work from 1 to 5 pm
• 1/9 Read Ch. 2 of Culture book
• 1/9 Meet with site supervisor at 6 pm
• 1/9 Counsel client at 7 pm
• 1/9 Pick up youngest from church youth meeting
• 1/10 Work from 8 am to 12 noon
• 1/10 Class from 6 to 9 pm
• 1/10 Read Ch. 3 of Theory book
• 1/10 Pick out a research topic for culture class
• 1/10 Bring trash can inside
• 1/10 Meet daughter to select wedding invitations
• 1/10 Take daughter to dinner

Get the idea? Now, I have to be honest. I’ve been doing this for so long now, that my date list is no longer this specific. Now, it would probably just say, “Work…Trash…Ch. 3 Culture” next to a particular date. But, I put enough there to jog my very faulty memory. One of the common date list items now is “Post,” meaning that I need to have a post fully written, edited, published and promoted by that particular day. Anything that I do on a daily basis like exercising, doing dishes, cleaning, and doing laundry is not on the date list…only items that have a specific deadline.

What’s the beauty of this system? It forces me to deal with the highest priorities and deadlines first and it forces me to think about all the tiny steps and tasks that must be done to meet those deadlines. 

Would this list work for a planner or smart phone app? Absolutely. So, if you like your planner or app, use it! I’m not insisting you do this my way–this is what works for me.

The best part? If you create a date list, you often have time for a…date night. 🙂 But, to this day, I’m still waiting on a date night with…George Clooney.

Point to Ponder: Is your brain “swimming” with deadlines? Do you just want to “throw in the towel” and give up? Stop. Breathe. Get a pen and a piece of paper. Get your favorite beverage. Sit down. Pull out all the calendars, papers, flyers, brochures and anything that has a date/deadline on it and compile your date list on a piece of paper. Take it calendar-by-calendar, project-by-project, until you have one really long list. Now, put that list in chronological order with the earliest deadlines first. It’s okay if you miss one or two and have to add in some few, in between lines. Nobody is going to see this list except you–so it can be as messy as it has to be. If necessary, re-write the list once you’re sure you didn’t miss any important dates/deadlines. Don’t forget your backwards planning dates for all of your resolutions! Good job! You’re on your way to keeping those resolutions and being the successful person you envision!

Monday’s Post: Have you ever engaged in stichomythia?

You might also like: Keeping your 2014 Resolutions…Backwards Planning, Keeping your New Year’s Resolutions…for good; and Because I Want to Be With You…

Warning: You might want to get a beverage first. 

Last Friday I discussed that a possible reason why we don’t keep our New Year’s resolutions is because we fail to break down these lofty ambitions into “bite-sized” pieces. In the past when I have succeeded at keeping my resolutions, it has helped if I take those pieces and schedule them onto my daily “to-do list.” I work backwards on this. How? I take the date I want to realize my goal or resolution and then order the pieces backwards from that date, putting the last critical piece closest to the “due date” to complete the resolution. This year I really need to get busy and paint one of our bedrooms. I’m trying to turn it into a guest room.

I may have visitors wanting to use that guest room by as early as February 1st.  So, here are the pieces of that painting resolution, in reverse order:

1. Dust and vacuum finished room.

2. Remake guest room bed.

3. Put furniture back in place.

4. Remove all drop cloths and painter’s tape.

5. Clean up paint cans, trays, rollers and brushes.

6. Finish 2nd coat trimming.

7. Finish 2nd coat painting.

8. Finish 1st coat trimming.

9. Finish 1st coat painting.

10.  Spackle holes or dents.

11. Tape around door and window frames. Put down drop cloths

12. Move or cover furniture.

13. Purchase paint and spackle.

14. Select a paint color.

15. Get paint samples.

Since my health adventures can often derail these resolutions, if I don’t plan for them, I also try to build in a few “ill days” just in case. This is a good idea, even if you don’t have my health adventures–you never know when life is going to hand you a “curve ball.” So, if I’m working backwards, here’s when I need to get each of these steps done, date-wise:

February 1st – Ready for company

January 31st – Dust and vacuum room

January 30th – Remake bed.

January 29th – Put furniture back in place.

January 28th – Remove painter’s tape and drop cloths.

January 27th – Clean up all painting equipment & finish 2nd coat trimming.

January 25th – Finish 2nd coat painting.

January 24th – Finish 1st coat trimming.

January 23rd – Finish 1st coat painting.

January 22nd – Spackle holes and dents

January 21st – Tape around door and window frames. Put down drop cloths.

January 20th – Move furniture.

January 18th – Purchase paint and spackle.

January 17th – Select a paint color.

January 16th – Get paint samples.

Once the above is completed, I start putting the first dates’ tasks on my to do list as I complete other tasks. My daily to-do list only has 16 items on it. Why? Because you cause your body undue stress and illness by not getting 8 hours of sleep per day and that leaves you 16 hours to get things done out of a possible 24. Granted–some items on my to-do list take much longer than an hour, but many also take less than an hour, so this seems to work for me.

What if a resolution requires the same repetitive step day-after-day? This is also true of me. It needs to stay on that to-do list so you remember to do it and not allow other things to get in the way of completing it, if at all possible. I make this easy for myself by keeping a simple Word document of my daily to-do items. It makes deleting and color-coding my list really easy (more about that in a later post). I tried to do this on a fancy planner and on a computerized and smart phone version and I grew irritated with all of them. The KISS to-do list document works best for me and I’m not killing trees in the process. I started using this process in grad school and seem so much more productive since then. (Not perfect, but better!) But, if you like the fancy planner, smart phone or computer-version, be my guest and use it. The biggest mistake is not to plan at all!

Point to Ponder: Ready to get started on putting deadline dates on all of your “pieces” for attaining completion of that resolution item? Good for you! It’s okay if you struggle to put the “pieces” in reverse order as I did above. That’s what a delete key is for! Just keep working at it until you have thought of every step or piece and keep re-arranging them until they are completely in reverse order. Then, assign a target date to complete your resolution. Then, schedule target dates for each of those steps/pieces based on your target completion date. Don’t forget to build in some “days off” for unexpected things!

Friday’s Post: Keeping Your 2014 Resolutions…Color-Coding Your Daily To-Do List

You might also like: Keeping Your New Year’s Resolutions…for good; How I Cope with a Heart That’s a Ticking Time Bomb, and You 3.0: Questions & Tips, Part III

Book Club Lovers:  Where are you in reading Killing Jesus? 

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Good morning, WOW lovers! The last WOW (Word of the Week) for 2013 was styptic. Merriam-Webster defines styptic as: tending to contract or bind or tending to check bleeding. Where was this word last fall when I was definitely in need of something to be styptic for all those blood tests I endured???

The first 2014 WOW is stichomythia. Here are my definition guesses for stichomythia:

stichomythia: (sti-kə-ˈmi-thē-ə) 1. a fictitious land in which all things are styptic 2. when “sticking it to the man” is merely a myth 3. the German way to spell mythical sticks

What are your definitions for stichomythia???

Wednesday’s Post: Keeping Those Resolutions for Good…

You might also like: Word of the Week: New Words for a New Year; Word of the Week: styptic; Word of the Week: pinchbeck, and Word of the Week:suffuse

treadmill

Book Club Members: I can’t seem to put down Killing Jesus. How about you?

I, like many of my friends and family, have made New Year’s resolutions in the past. Some I am successful at keeping and others I am not. When I closely examine the ones I’ve kept, I have noticed a pretty strong pattern. I do certain things that allow me to gain ground on a bad habit of mine. Hopefully someday, I will manage to apply this pattern to all areas of my life. In the hopes of being helpful to others who may struggle to eradicate bad habits and to establish good habits in their stead, I will share the pattern that seems to work.

Thing # 1:

Break that resolution down into tiny, manageable steps. 

Many of us make lofty goals (resolutions) and fail to break them down into steps that we can easily handle over time. Why would I assume that I could drastically change several areas of my life at once? It took time to develop those nasty habits and it would now require time to replace them with good habits. There is no more place more evident of this part of the pattern than when I decided I had to undo the damage of bad eating and exercise habits. I, like many people, failed miserably at taking off excess weight until the day when I finally made a list of small changes I could take on, one at a time:

A. Eat on smaller plates and from smaller bowls.

B. Drink more water.

C. Brush my teeth more often (Consumption of food never tastes great after doing this!).

D. Re-organize my pantry so that the healthy snacks and foods are right in front of me when I open the door.

E. Re-organize my refrigerator so that the healthy snacks and foods are in front of me.

F. Figure out what eating plan works with my particular personality and other habits and living style.

G. Get a treadmill.

H. Walk 10 minutes on a treadmill.

I. Make a list of healthy foods that I usually enjoy eating.

J. Gradually replace unhealthy foods and snacks with better ones.

After making the above list, I looked at which one would be the easiest for me to make a part of my life. Obviously, some must come after others. For instance, if I’m going to walk on a treadmill, I probably need to buy one first! I started with figuring out what kind of eating plan works best with my personality. It took me a full month to figure that out! But by the end of the month, I figured out that I needed to “automate” my eating by using pre-portioned low calorie foods. I don’t enjoy cooking, except during the holidays and I am often alone when eating, so making huge meals for 6 people seemed a bad fit for me. I also hate counting points and calories, so that pretty much excluded Weight Watchers or any other plan based on such a premise.

I’m also a cheapskate and often fail to remember to re-order things on a timely basis, so using Nutri-system, Jenny Craig or another similar service seemed frivolous and not easily worked into my life. I finally decided to do my own version of such a system by purchasing Lean Cuisines to eat twice a day. I also allow myself to consume my favorite in-season fruits for snacks and have some popcorn once in a while. I also like Atkins Endulge bars when a chocolate attack hits.

By the end of Month 1, I had already transitioned to this way of eating. May you find success in breaking down your first resolution into something manageable and easy.

Point to Ponder: How could you break down a resolution for 2014 into several manageable steps? Do that now. 🙂 After you’ve had 24 hours to think about those steps, pick one that seems the easiest or the first thing that has to be done to move towards completion of the resolution. Start working on that easiest/first thing before next Wednesday. Share your success with MIP readers so you can help others, too.

Monday’s Post: What does styptic mean?

You might also like: Adages That Have Proven True Now That I’m Decrepit, A Real Scare, and  8 Women Who Changed My Life

Book Club Readers: Santa brought me Killing Jesus, so I plan to start my reading today. How about you?

Warning: Get 2 of your favorite beverages first.

Happy New Year! Not to be outdone by December, there are just as many “holidays” in January that make one turn his or her head and think, “What?!” Here’s what I mean:

January 2nd – Run It Up the Flagpole and See if Anyone Salutes Day (Doing this at a military base is cheating, right?)

January 3rd – Festival of Sleep Day (How festive is a festival involving sleep???)

January 3rd – Humiliation Day (I guess this day is for the people who were awake at the Festival of Sleep.)

January 4th – Trivia Day (We need more opportunities to pour useless information into our brains?)

January 5th – National Bird Day (in a month when most birds have flown south for the winter)

January 6th – Bean Day (January 7th must be “Passing Gas Day,” right?)

January 7th – Old Rock Day (So, we watch Rock Hudson movies this day???)

January 8th – Male Watcher’s Day (I suppose Female Watcher’s Day would be sexual harassment?)

January 9th – Play God Day (This is a day in which we honor U.S. politicians???)

January 10th – Houseplant Appreciation Day (Actually watering mine would probably be a good start.)

January 11th – Step in a Puddle and Splash Your Friend Day (Let me guess–1/12 is Former Friend Day?)

January 12th – Feast of Fabulous Wild Men Day (I think I’d prefer to feast on wild rice, thank you.)

January 13th – International Skeptics Day (I guess a national holiday wasn’t enough here.)

January 14th – Dress Up Your Pet Day (as if we didn’t have enough opportunities in December)

January 15th – National Hat Day (Duh. It’s  January.)

January 16th – National Nothing Day (I got…nothing.)

January 17th – Ditch New Years Resolutions Day (aka “No More Waiting at the Treadmill Day”)

January 18th – Thesaurus Day (So, when is Dictionary Day?)

January 20th – National Penguin Awareness Day (Since I live in Texas, this should be relatively easy.)

January 20th – National Buttercrunch Day (I generally consume butter that is crunchy, don’t you?)

January 21st – Squirrel Appreciation Day (Let’s not tell Duck Dynasty about this one, okay?)

January 22nd – National Blonde Brownie Day (Blonde brownies are smarter than brunette brownies?)

January 23rd – Measure Your Feet Day (Why????)

January 24th – Beer Can Appreciation Day (Most beer drinkers prefer appreciating what’s in the can.)

January 25th – Opposite Day (I suggest not using this day to contradict your boss.)

January 26th – Spouse’s Day (This is probably even less appreciated as a holiday than February 14th.)

January 27th – Punch the Clock Day (One should punch a clock on a Monday.)

January 28th – National Kazoo Day (Celebrate this one at home to prevent losing your job on 1/29.)

January 29th – National Corn Chip Day (I smell a Communist plot by Frito-Lay.)

January 30th – National Inane Answering Message Day (Many will have to do nothing to celebrate this.)

January 31st – Backward Day (as opposed to Opposite Day?)

However, there are some actual useful days to celebrate in January:

January 1st – New Year’s Day (Make goals for the new year so you can drop them on January 17^th.)

January 6th – Cuddle Up Day

January 12th – National Pharmacists Day (Thank your favorite pharmacist!)

January 13th – Make Your Dream Come True Day (Notice this comes before 1/17.)

January 19th – National Popcorn Day (That’s an excuse to watch a movie, right?)

January 20th – Martin Luther King Day (Remember how this man changed the USA for the better.)

January 21st – National Hugging Day

January 23rd – National Pie Day (May I suggest you get or make a pie for a neighbor and take it to them?)

January 23rd – National Handwriting Day (Write an actual thank you note with pen and ink!)

January 24th – Compliment Day (Maybe hand write why you appreciate your neighbor???)

January 27th – Chocolate Cake Day (I won’t have trouble observing this one…how about you?)

January 28th – Fun at Work Day (Maybe bring a chocolate cake to work???)

January 29th – National Puzzle Day (Doing puzzles helps us retain our mental faculties as we age.)

January 31st – Inspire Your Heart with Art Day (Go to an art museum/gallery to inspire yours!)

Friday’s Post: New Habits for a New Lifestyle…

You might also like: The Odd Days of December; The Odd Days of November, Twas the Night AFTER Christmas…, and If You Visit Your Cardiologist, You’ll Wind Up in Kansas