One of the nice things about being a grandparent is that now I can do fun things for my grandson that I thought about doing for my sons, but never did because I was too busy actually, you know, parenting them.

So during these past couple of weeks, I wrote a very silly book for my grandson called "Muffin and the Circus of the Sun" that stars a little hedgehog named Muffin along with other characters like the Later Gator and the Gift Horse and some very nice Dingbats.

For $11, there is a company in the US that is printing my book and binding it nicely and shipping it to my grandchild who can't read yet, but maybe will one day.

So that is what I did with the first half of December and now it is one its way and I am free to fall into all of the holiday festivities -- markets and concerts and dinners and parties. Today's festivity is a General Strike all over Italy that means the trains aren't running and our paper recycling wasn't picked up this morning. So that is festive, but in a different way from the choir concert.