Haiku for the week

Work comes in snowdrifts;
Seasonal cheer forgotten,
Staring at the screen.

I have only in fact had two half-days of 'work' this week; work, that is, that required me to leave the apartment.  However, it being the end of the year, and the end of a couple of long-term courses I've been teaching, I've been hitting deadlines to conduct assessments, produce reports, and finish off handouts that have been in gestation for ages.  And then I landed a new editing job for a local law journal, and... the second article they sent me was just horrendous - required a substantial critique and very heavy rewriting, more than 12 hours' work for only 7,000 or 8,000 words.  And on top of all that, my VPN's been acting up all week (but, strangely, only on my main computer), so I've been obliged to use one of my two old laptops (a 9-year-old Sony Vaio with a completely maxed-out memory, and a 7-year-old IBM Thinkpad with a burnt-out fan) for most of my Net access.  And on top of all that....

Yes, it's been a week from hell.  But it's just about over.  It could be time to start feeling Christmassy at last....