I always thought the best part of a meteorologist’s job was not forecasting the weather, but tracking Santa on that green-screen map on Christmas Eve. Meteorologists might have one dull job, but on this one night, they shined.

Kids today though, can just punch up Google Maps for a high-tech NORAD Santa Tracker with a variety of options to watch the big guy cruising into their neighborhood: Google Earth, Twitter, Facebook. Cool, but it kind of diminishes the old-fashioned spirit for me. I like to picture the whole North Pole as it is in my imagination: elves cobbling away, not tweeting; Mrs. Claus baking cookies, not updating her Facebook status to Finally, the house to myself; and Santa, making his way around the globe by some magical ability, landing on the roof only when I was asleep. Well, Santa, this year, don’t sweat it: I’ll text you when I’m going to bed.

This year, my family and I have decided to ease up on the gift-giving chaos that is Christmas in America, and I couldn’t be happier. Allow me to enumerate the reasons.

1. I just saved a paycheck.

2. Those days spent cruising the mall, not to mention the parking lot? I just got my life back.

3. I don’t need more stuff. In fact, I want less stuff for Christmas; I’m putting that on my list. Less stuff for Christmas, please.

4. No more cruising the aisles of CVS on Christmas Eve wondering if a wind-up talking reindeer is a suitable gift for say, everyone.

5. Wrapping? No human can fold those stupid flaps properly anyway.

6. Heading off a green crisis at seeing all that wrapping paper strewn about, wrinkled and unsalvageable, that the dog tried to eat anyway.

7. No luggage to check, which means more room in the carry-on for books. Underwear and books. Because really, that’s all you need for Christmas.

Sometimes New York is worth the 4-hour trip if it means chowing on pork buns from Ippudo. But sometimes, you reason that 4 hours is a long drive and there might be traffic, and maybe you should just improvise at home. So, the beau and I glazed and slow-roasted a pork butt, shredded it, and paired it with delightful pita from Sofra, which are nothing at all like the dry pita you get at the grocery store but are in fact, mini sandwich clouds. Well, I’ll be a pork’s butt. It was delicious. 

Isn’t the snow beautiful? Isn’t it just lovely the way it drifts and drapes the trees?

Isn’t it cool to wake up and look out the window and find you actually can’t see out the window? Isn’t it fun when it makes your car all frosty and you have to spend 17 billion hours scraping the ice off the windshield and 18 more hours shoveling just so you can use your driveway?

Oh, and isn’t it great the way it piles up on sidewalks so you have to clomp through the icy mounds getting your feet wet because the mountain was more quick-sand snow than solid snowbank and you can’t find boots that are good in the snow AND not unsightly clodhoppers?

And aren’t snowplows awesome when they’re not scraping asphalt and two in the morning and dumping cement-like piles at the end of your driveway that make you ponder whether it might be worth buying a Caterpillar. And is it really a sign of insanity that you did a little research on what it would take to buy, say, a mustard-yellow 2003 front loader, which is $169,000, incidentally, and you think, Huh, well that sounds pretty reasonable?

When you care enough to send the very best, but can’t afford to, it’s fun to send your friends a link to gifts you’d send them if you could. So this Christmas, I’m sending virtual gifts.

For example, I saw this unique Ira Glass finger puppet on Etsy.com recently and sent it to my friend Katie, who shares my addiction to This American Life and probably my mad crush on the nerdy fella.

I’m always finding gifts for my ocean-loving friend Kim like this plate featuring her favorite whale: the humpback.

Then I found this great sculpture for my friend whose initials are HA. But seeing as I spotted it while window shopping at M2L, a store with spare but expensive inventory, she’ll have to make do with a photo.

Virtual gifts say I care and know you so well that you would love this gift, but I’m frugal, so don’t hold your breath.

I’m trying to embrace winter, and while I resist the double-mitten cold, I try to find joy in the beauty of it while shivering like a swimmer after an icy plunge. Mt. Auburn Cemetery is one place I haunt for its peacefulness. It’s quiet mood has a lot to do with the arboretum-like feel—the sleepy willow trees and placid ponds—but mostly I think it’s because the people are dead. Dusted with snow, it’s at its most tranquil.

You can see I like trees.

A lot.

And the occasional frozen flower.

So, in my least favorite season, I like to ponder this quote:

In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer. ~ Albert Camus

Alert. There’s been a boot buying catastrophe. After getting public input and long pondering which winter boots to buy, I placed my order for the plum patent leather number. Anticipating their arrival any day now, I would run up the porch steps when I got home hoping that the estimated one week shipping actually meant overnight. So, I was more than disappointed when I got an email from Amazon informing me that my boots, ordered from one of their shoe merchants, is out of stock.

I have taken to bed in hopes that I might recover in time to celebrate Christmas. My roommate reminded me that had I gone with the furry pair that she recommended, it’s likely I would be walking around the house in my boots as we speak. 

Instead, I’m checking the forecast every 4.5 minutes to make sure no snow is predicted, because even though I haven’t owned snow boots in years, I feel having a pair when the snow comes is imperative this winter, and I’m afraid I won’t be able to reach a decision before the spring. These things take time.

Up in the Air is not what you’re expecting. Well, if you’re expecting George Clooney to play George Clooney, then it’s partly what you’re expecting. And while he gets a lot of criticism for playing himself, I think there’s nothing wrong with watching a little pure George Clooney now and again without him being all Syriana-serious. I enjoyed the movie, though not quite as much as the critics who are falling off their movie seats praising the work (it just got a Golden Globe nomination). Up in the Air is a solid slice-of-life film about a guy with an interesting role in the wave of layoffs, with a twist that comes in the form of Vera Farmiga—one of those actresses you never really recognize but fall in love with for her skill. I’m not sure this is a movie I’d want to see if I were laid off, especially around Christmas, but then that would mean a whole lot of people skipping this movie, which seems unlikely when you consider The Clooney Factor.

Now for some recent DVD releases: Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead is intricate, suspenseful, and well acted by Philip Seymour Hoffman, Ethan Hawke, Albert Finney (Daddy Warbucks!) and Marisa Tomei. The story—a heist gone wrong—unfolds in a back-and-forth sort of way and is a meaty two hours.

Paper Heart is an indefinable hybrid of feature film and documentary. I stay away from books like this (is it fiction or memoir? Decide please) but this was entertaining nonetheless. Charlene Yi and Michael Cera are charming. Whether or not they are Charlene Yi and Michael Cera or characters playing Charlene Yi and Michael Cera, I have no idea, but the idea is clever and the scenes done with paper cutouts are homemade craft genius.

Frontrunners is the more obscure of the bunch. The documentary was released last year and profiles four student candidates running for council office at the prestigious Stuyvesant High School in NYC where the rhetoric is Obamaesque and the drama is reminiscent of Bush vs. Gore. You almost wish you could vote.

Really, now. Who thought this movie was a good idea?

I will, however, give the director credit for commissioning not only a fictitious language but a fictitious language that is grammatically correct. Points for that.

What is it about not having a book to read that makes a reader feel as jittery as a crack addict waiting for her dealer in the alley by the Stop & Shop?

When I don’t have a book or a prospect of a book, I feel lost. I’m at peace when there has been a book buying extravaganza (rare) or a fruitful day at the library, leaving me with a stack of books by my bedside and giddy with choices: should I read the novel first or the nonfiction essay collection? The novella or the how-to book for my latest project?

When I need a fix, I head to my dealer: Brookline Booksmith. It offers a pleasing array of new arrivals and a solid collection of discounted recent hits. When a cover intrigues me, I  skim the flap because it invariably tells you too much, and instead read the first couple of pages to get a sense if I can stick it out for 200 or 300 pages. And then, when I’ve satisfied myself with a few potential titles, I walk out empty-handed, like a junkie trying to quit.

Lately, I’ve been trying to get my books at the library. But the selection has been limited, so I end up back at home, bookless. Silly really, because I even have a credit at the Booksmith from selling back a bunch of books. I have no idea what I’m saving this for. I mean, I’m in a true book crisis here. This is the time to play my Get Out of Jail Free card, but for some reason I can’t fork it over.

Instead, I make do reading magazines and cereal boxes and bank statements, which only occasionally offer the drama of a novel. And I wait for my requests to come in at the library or pretend I’m content reading that classic tome on my shelf that I’ve resisted for years, which we all know I’ll abandon once the flashier contemporary novel arrives. 

Well, Christmas is coming, and while I may be asking for fewer books, opting to borrow them instead, I’m hoping Santa might just take the hint and bring me a library.

I need your help, people. I’m buying my first pair of snow boots since I was like, eight, and I’m having trouble deciding. I can’t make a decision like this on my own.

The candidates:

There are the sporty and fuzzy Earth Newton

Or the shiny, preppy Tretorn

Or the gleaming eggplant Earth Elite

Or, or, or the buckled, warrior-like Earth Serengeti.

Don’t let the size of that last image bias you or anything. Let the voting begin.

Or “welcome” in Finnish.

In a nondescript old building in Quincy is the strangest little place: the Finland Steam Baths. It’s been in operation since the 1920s.  Think sauna with steam, with a temperature hovering around 130 degrees. It’s exactly where you want to be when a blizzard is raging and the plows are struggling to keep up. The shower room is a marginally cooler room where you can rinse off in cold water before heading back into the jungle (a private steam room) where you must truly focus on breathing.

But just when you think you’ve found something no one else could have possibly stumbled upon (the humble building, the mediocre website), you learn that even a number of Yelpers have discovered this odd little place.

The puffy coat made its season debut this morning after I wrestled it out of the closet. It requires its own closet, but I am not so flush in the closet department, so it has to share. Anyway, its arrival means 1) it’s cold and 2) the return of the Puffy Coat Mafia. Look out, people.

Also, this may be the winter I break down and buy snow boots. How I’ve managed to live in New England without them for years is a mystery, even to me.

The reaction of most people when I told them I have jury duty today is, “Ugh, sorry.” But not me. Nope. I just rip that envelope open, eager to see where I’ll be fulfilling my patriotic duty, ready to serve.

Well, maybe that’s an exaggeration. But I certainly don’t get all annoyed or start making up excuses. It’s called a democracy, people. People in oppressed countries would kill for such a privilege. Of course, then they’d get their own trial. Still. 

The point remains that you should not be a whiner when it comes to serving on a jury of your peers. They are, after all, your peers. OK, maybe Vinnie doesn’t seem like your peer at first blush because he knocked off a daycare center, but he is. He’s you in a desperate situation. And, like a good peer, you have to let him know that this was a dumb choice and deliver a “guilty” verdict. But if Vinnie looks like a nice guy and promises never to do it again, well, OK. Not guilty it is. 

Mostly though, I like jury duty because they tend to spring you at lunch, which means the afternoon off—a patriotic thing indeed.

I really like clouds—from above when they’re not blocking my sun. I snapped this while returning from my sister’s wedding in Virginia.

I especially like when a mass of them makes it look like I’m flying over Antarctica, which gets me to thinking about explorers like Shackleton and how absolutely ridiculous his voyage sounds, even decades later. I mean, could you eat your friends if you got stuck in ice?

And then, we descend through the clouds and the city opens up below just in time for the sun to cast a glow along the skyline. Hello, Boston. Good to see you again.

Living near Boston, I love how the country can feel foreign and wonderful. Being near the mountains reminds me of vacation and camping. Out there, I still find myself awed by the simple things: a sky full of stars, the stillness following the crunch of leaves, a plume of smoke from a chimney.

And quality fog shrouding the mountain.

And tree-lined country roads with wooden fences.

And rolling hills that really roll.

So, my sister seems to really like this guy. Good thing, ’cause she just married him. I like him, too, so phew, that really worked out. Mostly though, I’m happy that this was the kind of wedding that didn’t require bridesmaid dress fittings and the assembling of cheesy wedding favors late into the night. Five of us, plus one dog, attended.

We gathered at the foot of the mountains in western Virginia, where the colors of fall were still fading.

A snafu with the bouquet (um, who was supposed to bring that?), had me violently pillaging the one  imitation floral arrangement to make an impromptu spray. After wrapping a hank of ribbon around the stems, she was good to go. When the music kicked on, she floated down the aisle, they exchanged vows, the dog didn’t eat the rings, and they were married. Simple as that.

When it’s nearly 70 degrees in December, you must schedule face time with the sun at lunch. My happy moment: stealing away to a cafe that serves breakfast all day and devouring an egg, bacon and cheese sandwich on a stool by the  propped-open door and a breeze blowing in that whispered summer. And a mostly-tackled crossword puzzle. And an oatmeal chocolate chip cookie.

Boston, you’re so fickle. Today, I’m in love: you’re in the 60s. Tomorrow, you’re still pretty amazing for November: hello, 50s. Saturday you’re looking average, 40s, but I’m sure we can work it out. Sunday, damn you, you’re gonna be in the 30s, so we might have to break up. I refuse to look at Monday’s forecast.