Having time off at The Holidays always makes me think I will catch up on all kinds of reading. I never read most of last year's Christmas gift books. In the To Read stack: a collection of excerpts from memoirs, a book about the lifesaving stations on the Outer Banks, a book of baseball essays, Gregg Kimball's book on Richmond, and Nelson Lankford's Richmond Burning. I haven't touched a one of them, yet. The party, shopping (modest as it was this year), and wrapping filled my time. I am making my way through the New Yorker with the green cover (there's another, somewhere, right?) and Style.

In last week's Style, Slipek gushes about Main Street Station and there's a pretty good piece on highways and development. Apparently, Capital City has more highway miles per capita than just about anyone else. The author interviews urban planner types from VCU who assert that building roads creates the mess rather than solves it.

Icky weather (okay, rainy, but 58 degrees) and that feeling that a cold is catching up to me may keep me from my tradition of a walk through Byrd Park on Christmas Eve morning.