Like every other child, I wasn’t able to contain myself as Christmas grew nigh. To thwart my brothers’ and my enthusiasm, my mother and father adopted the extraordinarily irritating habit of not putting anything under the tree until after we went to bed Christmas Eve. That meant no slack-jawed gazing at the presents, no rattling the innards to discern the contents, nor peering through them with the X-ray glasses ordered from the back of Fantastic Four comic books.

Every year for the past few years, in the weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve, I’ve enjoyed a very special duty. My mail carrier brings me all the letters that local children write to Santa Claus.

Chardonnay is a heck of a grape. It can be made into a buttery, full-bodied, creamy fruit bomb, or it can be made into a pristine, light-bodied, mineral-driven Burgundy. The amazing thing is that both of these styles are widely accepted and mass-produced.

As you may know by now, my sense of humor is pretty quirky, and I don’t always see things in the normal way. For example, take the new Cialis commercial that seems to air 20 times a day.

**Corin Avery Triona was born at 5:41 p.m. Nov. 25, 2010, to Lara Michelle (Meyer) and Eli Emmett Stevens of Felton. She weighed 6 pounds, 8 ounces at Sutter Maternity and Surgery Center in Santa Cruz.

When the famous Greek philosopher Heraclitus constructed his doctrine of change being central to the universe, with the thesis that “nothing endures but change,” he might have been peering into the future, witnessing the state of our tax and legislative system in the U.S., circa 2010.

It might feel early to begin thinking about New Year’s resolutions, but now is the perfect time to set yourself up for success.

As a sportsman and resident of our community, I feel that it is my part to help observe and protect our resources.