Wired, tired, and uninspired, I ventured out in the wee hours of the morning as the first snowfall of the year began. I'd been caught short on cigarettes again, and I'd promised myself I wouldn't try to quit again this week.

Each year, I'm a little disoriented for about a week around John Lennon Day. I save vacation to take weeks off at the end of the year, so the beginning of December is always about a focused push to end the working year well, earlier than any of my colleagues expect. As usual, this year I'm working around the clock, stressing, because it all has to happen right now or not at all.

Walking out of the store with fresh smokes, I realized (again) how out of phase this made me with the world. I stood briefly in the parking lot, watching the big, damp flakes come down between me and the Irish themed bar across the street. In compliance with marketing materials nationwide, several visible houses had been displaying holiday lights for a week or so already, making cozy little postcards in the night-time snow.

Other people are preparing for Santa Claus and/or the Christ Child - I have them penciled in for about two weeks from now, and am actively dodging their calls. Just then, though, as I stood searching my pockets for fire, I appreciated the chance to remember they were coming to town.

As is typical for my midnight cigarette runs, I chose to drive around randomly long enough to smoke the first one. This time I went toward downtown, trying to summon some Bing Crosby in my mind to go along with the warm seasonal scenes I'd pass along the way. Got one lit up, pulled out of the lot.

My tires crunched down a thick layer of salt on the road, enough to be complete overkill unless every weatherman in town is wrong. My only idea about that is cynical - the dis-elected city administration is trying to run down the winter's salt stockpile now, so as to present the opposition party with a challenge just as they take office. Note to self - try to avoid driving in snowfalls in this town a month or two from now.

I had to dodge a bit to avoid scattering that salt on the presumably-armed folks loitering in the next block. Weeknight, 1:30 AM, snowing: the local awful titty bar, the one renamed from The Dungeon to something even less clever, still has a determinedly aimless crowd out front.

I make a wide circle around a few blocks, past the home of an old friend and my nominal parish church, to reverse direction along the main drag back to my house. I pass a couple of cold-looking women within a few blocks, walking along the road I must drive. Both of them tried intently to sustain eye contact with me as I rolled past, unslowing.

(A few weeks back, a more-savvy friend of mine explained to me that that behavior was how I should be able to guess they were hookers. Hell, I had no idea - where I grew up, if you didn't look, smile, and wave as your neighbor passed, you'd eventually be shunned as stuck-up. Get exiled to some neighborhood like the one I live in now.)

I never did quite get the Bing Crosby thing going in my mind - must be because I'm too disoriented, too focused away from the season.

I have to sleep a bit now, then shovel some snow, then get back to work.