Thanksgiving is less than two weeks away. That means that preparations move into high gear.

• If you are traveling for the holiday and plan to anything except drive: good luck! Fares have exploded – when you can find an available ticket. If you are in this situation, make a note for next August/September so it doesn’t happen again.

• If you are hosting, all your lists need to be in place: shopping list, task list and schedule, menu, guest list, etc.

• Finish cleaning up the spaces you’ll use for dinner. Trying to clean while you’re trying to bake pies is a bad plan.

• As much as possible, stage everything you’ll need for the dinner in a safe and out of the way place: table linens, china, silver, serving ware, etc.

• Make sure your fridge is clean and you know where the leftover containers are.

• If you have houseguests, plan the other meals for their stay. After cooking a big meal on Thursday, you won’t want to be coming up with ideas and shopping for ingredients on Friday.

• Plan to do your grocery shopping at an off-hour. Nothing good can come from tryingto shop the Saturday before Thanksgiving – unles it’s at 2 am.