"It's okay. No Missus to blatantly lie to this Christmas!"

I'm supposed to be on vacation but I'm actually working. That's right; it's 3 in the morning and I'm still up, trying to cram what should have been two weeks worth of careful research and thoughtful writing into one night of hasty Googling and unedited typing to submit to a very (understandably) impatient magazine editor, who not coincidentally, happens to be a former English professor of mine at UCI.

I was so sure when I graduated that those college all-nighters were behind me, once and for all. Clearly, I knew very little about what it really means to be a writer. When Hank Moody said, "Don't be a writer; it's like having homework every day for the rest of your life," he wasn't kidding.

Oh well. I'm pretty sure I'll pull it off. It worked when I was taking English from the very same guy, and he asked me to do this article for his magazine, so he must like my last-minute writing.