It's just about that time! One more day of work tomorrow, and then I'm off for my three days of feverishly anointing people's feet. And tomorrow barely even counts, since it'll be a skeleton crew at work. And I mean that. So many people are taking tomorrow off that we had to bring in mystically animated skelton warriors to help fill in. They're going to wear jaunty santa hats! And it should be really awesome watching them answer the phones.

"Hi, I have a question about a lymphoma study."

"HHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!" (Clatter.) "WHhhhhhhHHHHHHAAAA." (Clicking of teeth.)

I love you, animated skeleton temps! Also, the skeleton temps don't care if I sit in my office all day and drink whiskey. Skeleton temps are my kind of people. That is to say, dead.

Oh, be quiet! I am FULL TO THE GILLS of love for my fellow man! And since I don't fucking have gills, that should tell you how utterly bereft of love I am for my fellow man. Which is a great attitude to have when throwing a Christmas party!

Yeah, Saturday night, we've invited people over to drink themselves into oblivion after they've endured some quality time with dreaded FAMILY on Christmas Eve. It's always funny to me the commonality of response to the invite: "God, that sounds great. I'm going to need a drink or two after hanging out with my FAMILY." You people are suckers! You know who you need to be hanging out with for Christmas? Skeleton temps.

A booze-up at our place, of course, means hiding all the liquor I don't want anyone knowing I have. A couple years ago, I watched in horror as one of my guests dumped very expensive vodka into Bloody Mary mix. (People who make Bloody Marys with expensive vodka are, to my mind, completely insane. And, apparently, my friends.) Another time, I saw someone take a long, loving gulp of $50 scotch right from the bottleneck. Having seen the horrors, I will tuck those liquors away somewhere safe, like say Yemen, and let the teeming horde have at it at the awful stuff, such as the mysterious, haunting bottle of butterscotch liqueur. And worse. "Hey! J. is taking pulls off our bottle of Chartreuse!" "Jesus, who cares?"

And then of course there's the main event, Jesus Day, when the wife and I will exchange gifts. I will feel tears spring to my eyes when I open whatever incredibly thoughtful and unexpected present she has bought me, and her eyes will similarly well up, for entirely different reasons, when she opens my gift and lays eyes on her new kitchen fire extinguisher. "It puts out grease fires and chemical fires, honey!" I'll squeal. And she'll reply, "First the irregular shoelaces in my stocking and now this?" Later in the day, just to add to the Christmas fun, I'll light a small fire in the kitchen to let her take that mother for a test drive.

See you on the other side of the weekend, people! Have yourself a non-meh bunch of Jesusy time off or whatever. And for God's sake--literally, I guess--if you're one of those people who gets really depressed and suicidal and all around the holidays . . . just don't do it. It's honestly not worth it.

I mean that seriously. We only pay our skeleton temps nine bucks an hour. And you have to buy your own santa hat.

Happy Holidays!