Great question! Mine goes something like this:
1. If I haven't used RAW mode when shooting, I begin by resizing to 300 dpi (my Rebel shoots at 180 dpi.)
2. I always "defog" my photo right away...a trick my buddy Rhonda Stark taught me. This is accomplished by running the Unsharp filter with settings of Amount: 20%, Radius: 60 pixels, Threshold: 0 In fact, I have created an action that does this step for me quickly!
3. My preference for color correction is to add a Curves adjustment layer. (That way if I'm not happy with the results I can just delete the adjustment layer and start back at square one.)
I usually look for a portion of the photo that I know should be a medium shade of grey and click the middle eyedropper from the Curves dialog on that area. Then I click the black eyedropper on the darkest portion of the photo and look for an area that should be white...clicking the white eyedropper there. Then I pull the middle point on the curve up a titch to brighten the photo.
I like my colors to "pop" a bit and I make frequent use of Jinky's Itty Bitty actions to jazz things up after I've got the basic tones set with Curves.
My final step is to run the Smart Sharpen filter...but I usually bump it down from the default to about 50%.
I'm eager to hear what everyone else has in their bag of tricks....GREAT question!