What just happened? I swear, the last thing I remember was trying to extricate myself from the corner of a sticky Naugahyde sectional couch, and now it's nearly time to do it again.

Only, this year, it ain't happening. There's not a big-screen, high-def television in the world or on a drawing board sweet enough to get me back out to Bumpkin Patch, Texas, ever again. I gave my dad the old razzle-dazzle about spending quality time with my wife and family this year, so we have a plausible excuse, sorry, reason for not going. Yeah, he bought it.

Anyway, the point here is that time just whizzed by this past year and, in the process, did a little whizzing on.

It's hard to grasp the fact that we're only about three short weeks shy of Thanksgiving 2008, and Christmas looms like one of the Halloween specters we just eluded.

Ghost of Christmas Future, indeed.