I still have stuff to do

Saturday at the pilot's house was nice, and the following Sunday dinner with more of my friends was nice, and this past Saturday was also nice, though I did feel a bit rushed with the whole thing of having to be in Irving and then in Arlington and then yet another place in Arlington. Following that dinner some of the group went to see the Interlochen Christmas lights, but not me. Maybe my husband will offer to drive me tonight, since we didn't get to go to that other thing in Oklahoma.

Right.

Well, something interesting happened during the meeting Saturday. I was wearing a Slytherin scarf, and I got some comments the nice looking scarf. And one of my friends asked how much I would charge to make a scarf if she already had the yarn for it, and I had to tell her that the scarves are eighty dollars, and if she bought the yarn already it would still be about seventy dollars, cause it takes about seven or eight hours to make one. And she said okay, she'd think about it, which usually means no. And then I thought how this particular person is usually good with crafts and such herself, and I went back and suggested that maybe she could just pay me thirty dollars to do the three or four hours of work on the knitting machine, and then she could do the remaining work that did not require the machine, which still takes about four hours but requires no special equipment and is not brain surgery (or at least for her it would not be brain surgery). And she said that she'd think about that.

So right after that, this guy that I don't know very well was trying to ask me something. And it's a very noisy room with all of us having different conversations, and I couldn't make out what he was saying at first. He was asking if I had a Hufflepuff scarf.

Now, normally, I don't have a lot of scarves just already made waiting for someone to buy them. Normally, if you want to buy a scarf from me, you have to give me the details of what you want, and then I'll make you one and you can pay me when it's finished. And usually, after people hear that it's a minimum of eighty dollars, they lose interest anyway. But it did just so happen that last year I'd made one each of the scarves from the third or fourth Harry Potter film, and that I was going to give two away at a Christmas Party last year, which I figured that everyone would want either Gryffindor or Ravenclaw, but I also had Slytherin and Hufflepuff ready to go just in case someone wanted to trade. And as expected, no one at the party really wanted Slytherin or Hufflepuff, so I had them leftover. And it just also happened that I had both these scarves in the car (along with a few others) cause I had taken them somewhere to show someone else, and I just forgot and left them in the car. So when this guy asked about the Hufflepuff scarf, not only did I have one, but I was able to go out and get it for him, though I figured that he'd change his mind after hearing the price.

He didn't say that eighty dollars was too much, only that he didn't have that much with him. I let him look at the scarf while I talked to other people, and he said that he still wanted it, only he'd have to buy it some other time. And it was not a gift for someone else, he just wanted to wear the scarf himself, so he wanted to buy it before it got cold again. He asked if he could pay with PayPal.

Now, my husband has a PayPal account, and I certainly buy enough things with it, but I'd never before had anyone want to pay me with it, other than on eBay, so I didn't have all that information in my head. It certainly would have been possible, in the room with all those nerds and their smart phones, but I didn't have a clue how to go about it, and I couldn't get my husband to answer the phone (he was at someone else's house playing video games, but I'd forgotten and didn't try calling there). And this guy did not really live nearby, and he would probably lose interest if he had to wait another month to get his scarf. But we did manage to exchange emails and figure out a place to meet Sunday afternoon, and he has his scarf, and I have eighty dollars.

Or I did have eighty dollars. I've already spent some of it.

Anyway, I'm pretty happy about the whole thing. This is only the third time that someone has ordered a scarf and actually paid for it.

Okay, so I've bought some more supplies and will try again to make some ornaments, which will probably be a Christmas gift for K, though we will not be exchanging gifts until New Year's Eve, and it will be too late for him to use them this year. But he'll have them for next year. If that doesn't work I don't know what I'm going to give him, probably some homemade dessert, but he's said that he'd rather not have candy as he's already eaten way too much of the stuff and is starting to feel ill, and G already gave him (and the rest of us) cookies, so that's probably not a good idea either.

I'm still thinking that I might make a scarf for the pilot, but again that is something that won't be needed until New Year's Eve. There's still stuff that needs to be done by Friday. I need to get something for my brother in law (probably a gift card for a restaurant), I'm thinking of knitting three hats, and I need two $5 gifts for the Chinese gift exchange. Also I'm wondering if I should put a gift I recently got in a similar exchange in with my brother's gifts, or if I should just keep it. Cause as cute as it is, I don't really need a Star Wars computer mouse, but probably my brother doesn't either.

Okay, in order of things that need doing: buy gift card, buy two $5 gifts, make candy and maybe cookies, knit three hats, wrap gifts, make ornaments, knit scarf, and wrap more gifts.

I still haven't put up a tree.

Dallas Zoo Dollar Day

It was yesterday, and we went. We had gone before, but it must have been many years ago. I remember it being crowded, but not this crowded.

I wonder what the difference was? Like maybe last time I went, not so many people used the Internet on a regular basis. Or, maybe last time there weren't all these Hispanic people who don't speak English, and this time there were many ads for the event in Spanish. Or, maybe last time I went it was so long ago that there wasn't a DART station.

I don't know, but something must have been different.

Anyway, I knew that the zoo opened an hour earlier, and I wanted to get there earlier, but maybe not that early. We stopped for frozen drinks and left at about ten after eight. I think if I ever do this again, I'd have to leave maybe ten after seven. The cops were out directing traffic, or we'd never have gotten to our parking space. We were in the overflow parking, but at least we got an actual parking space. Other people who came later were directed to park on the grass. And I'm sure that they still had to pay seven dollars even for that.

And it was hot. It was really, really hot. I have been to many zoos before, and I knew to bring bottled water. I knew not to bring any drinks with a straw or a plastic lid that might become trash that ends up in an animal's cage. Still, with my bottle of water with no straw and a tightly screwed on cap, they would not let me into some of the exhibits. Leave your drink here, and you can collect it on your way out. Right. There's a zillion bottles of water, mostly the same size, mostly with blue labels. If there's nothing special about your bottle of water, how are you supposed to find yours. You'll get someone else's by mistake and catch whatever germs they have.

I ended up finding some other hiding place for my water bottle and going in a bit later.

And we road the monorail thing, which we rarely do. It was an extra three dollar ticket, which I think is at least half of what it normally is. I'm not sure how long the wait was, but it was about three times as long as what I thought. I looked at the line and thought, that's long, but not too bad. But of course that wasn't the whole line, and there was another bridge or something that you wait in line past where I was looking, and still a bit more of a line past that. But, after you wait in line that long already, you keep waiting. I think it takes about a hundred people at a time, and there were at least two trains going, so we did eventually get on.

A bit after our ride, there was an announcement that due to the high temperatures and high humidity, they would close the ride at 1:30. It was nearly that time when they made the announcement. And the announcement made no sense. What did the temperature and the humidity have to do with the operation of the monorail? It made standing line very unpleasant, and it would have been nice of them to warn people how long they would be in line, but closing the thing because it's hot seemed a bit silly. It is hot all summer. What does that have to do with anything.

We did wonder if maybe they had sold so many tickets that they just couldn't sell anymore. But then why didn't they just announce that they were sold out?

Weird.

There was the regular overpriced zoo food, and then there was special dollar day food: dollar hot dogs, dollar sodas, dollar chips, dollar cotton candy (the kind that is made ahead of time and sold in a tub), dollar popcorn, etc.... We decided not to stand in line for the hot dogs or spend that much money on other stuff. We were tired and ready to leave soon anyway. We decided to look at a few more things and then head to Chili's for soup and salad and chips and salsa.

I just really wanted to see the giraffes. They have it set up now that you can get up close to them and pay to feed them. But while the zoo in Abilene sells some animal food for a dollar or two, this place sold lettuce for five dollars. That would have been ten dollars for the both of us (after already spending two dollars to get in, seven to park, and six for the monorail), and there were already plenty of people feeding the giraffes, so we decided against it.

Well, I'm not sorry that I went, but I think it will be a while before I want to go back.

I was just about to head out the door

And then I noticed that the bathroom light was on. It hadn't been on a minute ago. We were expecting the power to be out for the full eight hours.

Okay, it didn't actually say that the power would be out for eight full hours. It said that the power would be out for up to eight hours. But I still thought that it would be close to eight hours. And the power outage was supposed to start at 7:30, which did not happen, so I started to think that maybe they were wrong and it had been postponed yet again. But no, the power went out, though it was closer to 8:00 than it was to 7:30.

Still, I expected eight hours, so eight hours started at 8:00 would end at 4:00, or close to that. Having the thing over at just after 12:00 was a pleasant surprise.

Having done what I was told for a change, I now had to go around the house and turn on the heater and plug in the computer stuff and plug in the TV stuff. And then there was a bit of a wait while the computer did its thing, and I had to fiddle with four remotes to get the TV and the VCR and the two boxes to all talk to each other again.

All done now, four hours ahead of schedule.

So, I am glad that I did not head out the door a minute sooner, as I was about to waste a dollar and five hours or so at the dollar theater, on a crowded half-price Tuesday, watching movies that I don't really care about, since the two movies I want to see will not be there until Friday.

Okay, so what am I doing now? Nothing. I had planned on this being a totally wasted day, and I guess that it will still mostly be a wasted day. Just that I won't be wasting it at the crowded half-price Tuesday dollar theater watching movies I don't really care that much for. I can stay home and save my dollar and save my gas and just maybe read a book and do a little bit of knitting (when I am not already watching TV or doing something on the computer).

Later, I will probably go to the grocery store and buy milk and eggs and tomatoes and whatever else I've been trying not to buy for the past two weeks cause I knew at some point they were going to turn off the power for a bit and everything in the fridge was going to spoil.

Okay, I think that some of this stuff still needs to be thrown out. But I think that some of it just needed to be thrown out anyway. But the freezer full of stuff that I was afraid of losing looks just fine.

I think that I will go rent The Transformers or some other DVD that my husband cares nothing about seeing.

What smells like beer?

Before I get too much into the boring details, let me say that I mostly had a good weekend.

And if you were planning to eat your spaghetti dinner while watching the latest episode of Being Human, alter your plans a little bit.

A couple of weeks ago I decided to make some cookies. I don't think that I have made any cookies from scratch since I have lived here, but I thought that it might be a good idea after I found this recipe online, and I remembered that I would have three things coming up that would require me to bring food.

So I took the new mixer out of the box and I went and spent five bucks on a new cookie sheet (cause it had been so long since I made any cookies I couldn't find the old ones) and I got together the ingredients that I already had and went out and bought what was missing. The new cookie recipe was not that great, but now that I had this new cookie sheet and all the ingredients for making cookies, I decided to try making an old recipe except to substitute whole wheat flour. That wasn't great either, so I went and bought some regular flour and tried again.

The cookies weren't bad, just not like I remembered. They are sort of tall and fluffy. I don't know what I did wrong. Also, I don't taste the baking soda. Chocolate chip cookies have baking soda, and I am quite sure that I put in the baking soda, but I can't taste it. Does baking soda get old or go flat or something?

Again, the cookies aren't bad, and in fact I am starting to like them, though I sort of doubt that anyone else will. I just can't figure out why they are different. Anyway, I took some of the whole wheat ones to the annual meeting, cause I had to take something, and most of them did not get eaten, which is okay cause that left more for me. I took the regular flour ones to the party, and again not many were eaten, so again I have leftover cookies for me, which I am not complaining about. But I think that I will give up on making the cookies for anyone other than me, and I will figure out something else to take to the last thing, and in fact there is no reason that I have to take anything to that at all if I don't want to. But I'm thinking that I will just purchase some candy instead.

All day Friday and Saturday, I had been very careful to read any emails from the group, in case it had something to do with the party that I would need to know about. Not that there was much, just people asking other people if they were going, and what are you bringing, and once in a while what are you wearing, etc.... And there was this new guy that hasn't been to a regular meeting yet, though he's already officially a member of a club, just that most of us hadn't met him yet and didn't know who he was. And he was asking about the party, and no one else answered him, and I didn't quite know what to tell him. But I thought that somebody had to say something. It wasn't an official club function, just that someone had invited pretty much everyone in the club. If he had joined a few weeks earlier, he would have officially been invited already. I didn't think that it would be a problem if he came, but I really couldn't invite someone I didn't know, and I thought that he should talk to the couple giving the party, though by that time it was too late. He already knew where the party was, so I told him the time and a little more info, hoping that someone else would chime in and say whether he was or was not officially invited, but again no one else said anything.

So after all this wondering what I should take to the party and what I should wear to the party, I have bought a black blouse and this sort of black thing that is not really a shawl and yet another black dress, and then I decided that it was too cold to wear any of that and just gave up and decided to wear what I wore last year. Except that I couldn't find what I wore last year. So I ended up wearing some really dark blue stuff and black boots and this black thing that used to be part of a Masonic costume.

I was getting ready to leave early, cause I hate driving in the dark, when I realized that I forgot to charge my phone. So I wait a little while to put some life into the phone, and then I head out, and as I am just nearly there I realize that with moving things from one bag to another and getting my keys sorted out and everything that I have somehow not transferred my wallet and do not have my driver's license or any money or a debit card or anything. Not that I expect to need any money or anything, but it would be very upsetting if something happened and I needed to show my driver's license. I didn't expect that would happen, and I was nearly there anyway, so I kept going, and nothing bad happened. But it was still very annoying.

So I got there at about the same time as a couple of friends, and we were all about twenty minutes later than we had intended, but we were still the first there from our group, and the parking lot was mostly empty. And I have been to this place several times before, but I am always surprised by the layout when I get there. There is this sign that says something like "Lake Ahead", and literally, the lake is right there after the sign. Not that the parking lot I'm looking for is ahead, but the lake is ahead. By the time I read this sign I have already missed where I meant to go, and I have to turn around and go back a little bit.

So we go in and see all empty tables, as everyone who is already there is in the back helping our hostess. So we are relieved that we are not late.

More people come in and bring food, and I am surprised how many of them are not wearing black. A few more of my friends show up, and some of us sit down and eat. And then this guy comes in by himself, and I think that's probably our new guy, and then I restrain myself from blurting out something like "Are you the new guy?" and he looks around a bit and goes to the back of the room. So maybe he isn't our new guy. But a bit after that someone brings him over and says something like these are some of the people in your group. And then there is a discussion between the four guys about steampunk stuff, and then the new guy and the other guy wander off to meet other people.

I get up to get some more food, and I'm wondering what smells like beer?

Probably beer.

I don't drink alcohol, but I do like several things that are made with alcohol, mainly beer bread and beer chili and beer cheese soup. But there was none of that, just beer.

So there was a lot of talking to people I don't really know and whose names I can't even remember. And I talked to the new guy some more. And I talked to M.

This is not M my friend the Klingon, this is the other one, and I see him once in a while, and I have finally decided that it isn't weird and running into him a couple times a year is not a problem. So that's what I thought, so I kept talking to him. I was wrong.

I had a few items of clothing that I decided I needed to part with, though I would rather give them to someone I knew would appreciate them and make costumes from them, so I brought them to the party. I gave a t-shirt to my host, who thought it was such a cool picture that it didn't bother him that it was started to tear. And I looked around the room for women who might fit into the dresses, and I asked a few if they were interested, and they said no. And then I noticed a certain person I did not want to have any of my things, so I did not make an announcement like I had planned. But then another friend arrived, and she said that she wanted the whole bag, so that worked out. I'm glad I thought of it instead of just dumping the stuff at Goodwill with the rest of the clothes I got rid of.

I talked to the new guy some more, and it is always nice when someone attractive is paying attention to you. He made suggestions, and though he said upfront that it would not be a date, I'm afraid that he didn't really mean that so I declined. It seems like the guys that I have known for a while who suggest something that is "not a date" really mean that and totally get that it is not a date and is not going to lead to anything resembling a date, but guys that I have just met are thinking that the "not a date" will either somehow become a date or at least end with me agreeing to a date later. So no more "not a date" type things with anybody I don't already know. I will be happy enough to talk to you when we just happen to be at the same place at the same time, which is probably going to happen a couple of times later in the month anyway.

At the opposite end of the spectrum, M has reached a whole other level of stupid. And it is hard to believe that anyone is really that stupid, so he must just enjoy making other people uncomfortable. I am thinking that if I have anymore trouble from him, I will start a new blog totally devoted to answering the question, is M really that stupid?

The party ended a bit after that, and I waited for certain people to get their things together so that I could walk out with them and not be around either M or the new guy, even though the new guy was being totally nice.

I managed to drive home without anybody finding out that I didn't have my license in my purse.

Sunday we ate at Taco Bell, after my husband saw a commercial for something he wanted but they hadn't had for a while. And then there was the Superbowl, which he watched, and I watched commercials in between Googling stuff.

Yesterday we went to various thrift stores, but I didn't buy much, and it got cold and rained and we came home earlier than we might have and watched Caprica and Being Human.

And then we got some bad news about this job he was applying for. He had read somewhere what the pay was, but then he couldn't find where he had read that, so he sent another email. And we can only hope that they misunderstood the question. Surely no one gets paid that little. We were only thinking about the job because he read that it was a lot of money, and we wanted some clarification on if that was the most you could make or if that was an average or what. And on top of that you had to provide your own transportation to the interview, which was out of the state and would require either plane tickets and cab fare, or would require driving a lot and get a couple of motel rooms. And then you had to provide some of your equipment and buy somewhat of a uniform, plus nicer clothing was sometimes required.

Anyway, that is the end of that. We would have serious problems with paying to get to the interview even if we thought it would mean a good paying job. There is no reason to even waste the time if it is really such a low paying job. It was about half or less of what we have read about similar jobs, and even those do not seem to pay enough. So that was disappointing, but at least that particular discussion is over.

And I still don't know what is going on

I sent out six emails asking what the plan for today was, and I only got one response. With a bit of prompting I got a second response, which I liked even less than the first one. A third person has said that he is open to suggestions, but he thinks that we ought to head out like we are going to dinner as usual, exchange gifts before we eat, and then the people who have to be somewhere else can leave right after that, and then the rest of us can catch up with them after we eat.

And that would have been a really good plan, except that the second response to my email said that one of us isn't going to be at the meeting at all.

I give up.

We didn't have to do anything at all. We discussed this in plenty of time to say, let's just skip it this year. But nobody said that they wanted to do that. So I'm thinking business as usual, and I go ahead with what I normally do. And then it was a ten dollar limit. Well, it is too late, but whatever. Most people got something worth more than ten dollars. Most of them are getting something that I made, and the supplies cost more than ten dollars. And the one person I had bought something less than ten dollars, cause I thought he didn't have money and I would just get him this little thing that he didn't have instead of a card like he would probably give me, but then he went and sold something so that he could have money to spend for Christmas, so I have added something to his gift. Besides, I thought that I would give him something like that next year, only now I'm not so sure that I want to do this next year, so if I want him to have it now is the time.

One of the seven indicated that she would mostly be giving us baked goods. It wasn't quite an announcement, and it wasn't quite asking permission, but I am thinking that I'm getting cake or cookies or something from her. And that's fine, and I put some thought into what I would get her, something that would be an appropriate exchange for cookies but something that wouldn't look cheap compared with what I got everyone else. The fruit basket is done, and while it is not the most impressive fruit basket ever, I think that it looks pretty good. So that's fine, except that now I think someone else in the group is giving baked goods too, maybe two others.

I don't have two other fruit baskets. I will just have to go with what I originally planned for them.

I was thinking about the gift exchange and baked goods idea. What if everyone exchanged baked goods? So, there are seven of us, and one of us has said that she'll probably give us baked goods, so she goes and makes six cakes or pies or whatever. And, expecting to get baked goods from her, the rest of us want to give her something of equal value, like probably more baked goods. So in return we each make a dozen brownies or two dozen cookies or whatever. That might sound really dumb, but people do that. There is this thing called a cookie exchange. People do this. So, in this example there are seven of us, and if all six of the rest of us got her baked goods, she would end up with about 144 cookies, or something like that.

I don't think that is such a great idea, especially since several of us should lose some weight, and we already know that she's attempting a diet. If all seven of us made baked goods for the rest of us, we would be in serious trouble.

Which isn't to say that we couldn't all trade homemade stuff if we wanted, just that we shouldn't all do desserts. If a couple of people did desserts, and then maybe someone could make spaghetti sauce and someone could make salsa and someone else could make cheese balls. And then maybe someone else could make non-foods, like maybe soap or candles.

It isn't impossible to homemade gift exchanges that do not ruin your health, but it does take some planning, which we didn't do this time.

Anyway, I've got to put all of this stuff in the car, still not knowing what the plan is. But I am guessing that it will be an exchange after dinner with three or four of us, and we will just have to figure the rest out later. Two of the people at dinner will be getting IOUs. It's too bad that it didn't work out differently, with the people not at dinner getting the IOUs. They wouldn't have noticed.

Boston Market ran out of chicken

Sunday or Monday, a friend forwarded an email to me, with a link to some coupons for Boston Market. In response to KFC giving away a free piece of chicken on Monday (which I totally forgot about), Boston Market had coupons for a chicken dinner with mashed potatoes and cornbread for a dollar. The coupons were good till Sunday, November 1st. And of course they hope that you will also buy a drink (which I did), and maybe an extra side item (which I did not). So I ended up spending about three dollars for every coupon I used, which is not too bad.

Tuesday I went by myself. There was a big line. I didn't think that I was the only person with a coupon, but I thought maybe without the sale being mentioned on Oprah, maybe there wouldn't be quite that many people. But, I was prepared that there might be. Other people seemed surprised at the line. That's always funny to me. What, you thought you were the only one who got that email about the coupons? And I suppose that there were a few people there who didn't have coupons and were just wondering what was going on.

Anyway, there was a line, but I was impressed how fast the line was moving. They just assumed that most people had a coupon, and they seemed prepared to deal with it. I got done with lunch a lot sooner than I had planned on, so I was able to run a few errands before going to the library.

Wednesday we went together to a different location, and there was not as much of a line at first, but later there was. Again, they seemed prepared, and the line moved quickly.

Thursday, we went to the second location again, and when the cashier took our coupons and our money and our drink orders, she says something like "Is meatloaf okay?"

Well, I rarely order meatloaf, but okay. It seems that they had gotten so efficient at selling the cheap chicken dinners that they had run out of chicken, so they were substituting meatloaf. Another customer in line told me that he had been to another location where they were substituting turkey.

Again, the employees were quite efficient, so maybe they will run out of meatloaf and turkey as well.

Anyway, substituting meatloaf is probably a better solution than putting up a sign saying that they wouldn't honor the coupons at all, as KFC did. I still haven't received my rain check on that one.

Whatever. A cheap lunch is a cheap lunch, and I have just printed out more coupons for the weekend.

Defying Gravity and other random stuff

You may have watched Defying Gravity on ABC, until it was announced that the eighth episode was the season finale. Or maybe it was said to be the series finale. I can't remember. Anyway, it's a bit silly to call the eighth episode the season finale, but sometimes they only make eight episodes of a new show, especially when it is just a summer replacement series. Or sometimes they only make ten episodes, or maybe they only make thirteen episodes.

So, I had thought that they had only made the eight episodes, and that if the ratings were good they would make more for next year, and if the ratings weren't good then the season cliffhanger of them all looking at whatever was in storage bay four would just be the end of it.

Turns out that they filmed thirteen episodes, and episode eight was not meant to be the season cliffhanger. ABC just isn't going to bother with the other five episodes. People in Canada are still watching the show.

So, I have just found out that channel 131 has episodes nine and ten. I have just watched episode nine and seen what is in storage bay four. Tomorrow I will watch episode ten, and hopefully episode eleven will be posted on Saturday.

Anyway, if there is something that you like to watch now that you missed, and you can't find it on Hulu, look on 131.

And there is a lot of cool stuff on Hulu that you might not have noticed.

I've already mentioned finding The Bionic Woman on Hulu. I have yet to look at Return of the Planet of the Apes (animated), but that's cool that they have it. If you missed Daybreak, (think more serious Groundhog Day with the black guy from Private Practice), you can still watch it. You can watch the nineties version of Dark Shadows. They have the short-lived Century City, about a law firm in the future. Maybe you would like to watch Carl Sagan's Cosmos. They have three seasons of Sliders, and seven seasons of Stargate SG1. They have most of the new Outer Limits, and a lot of the old ones.

Anyway, they have a lot of cool stuff if you are ever wanting something to pass the time.

I guess that is all I have to say for now. I have the usual stuff to do. I'd better get started on it.

Some time to myself

I have three days to myself. It has been a long time. I can't remember how long it's been since I've had a few days to myself. In fact, it has been a while since my husband had any work at all, so I'm not even sure when I last had even an afternoon to myself.

So I am debating should I do anything that I wouldn't normally do if he were here.

Of course, I have no money, so I really shouldn't do anything. I should stay here and clean house.

Now, there are parts of the house that are easier to clean when he is away, so maybe I should do that. But on the other hand, I already started something before he left, and I should finish up with that before moving on to something else.

To tell the truth, the timing is bad, and I probably won't do either. I will probably spend tomorrow or the next day mostly in bed. I hope not, but it is a possibility.

And, with the computer all to myself, I'm going to watch all of the nineties version of Dark Shadows on Hulu. Assuming that I don't spend most of tomorrow and the next day in bed. And assuming that my mother doesn't call and ruin my whole weekend.

Finding food

I have a garden. I'm not very good at it. It least, I'm not very good at it right now. Twelve years ago I was better at it, but then, my husband did more of the work on that one.

But I like the idea of it. And I like going out in the morning to see what I might find. Maybe some tomatoes are ready, or a squash, or I might find some beans, or asparagus, or some radishes might be ready.

Gardening can be sort of like an Easter egg hunt for adults.

Lately I am wishing that I did not use up so much space on the more ornamental stuff. I am not going to eat the elephant ears. I probably won't eat the pumpkins (if the plant even produces any fruit, which so far it hasn't). I'm not overly fond of sweet potatoes, but it will be fall before I can eat those anyway.

I'm getting a few tomatoes. I have yet to see any fruit on my eggplant. Tomorrow or the next day I will pick my second squash. I've picked a few radishes. I have turnips, but I'm not really into turnips. I got a few peppers earlier, but right now it is really too hot for the plants to produce much. I got a few beans, but those were just some that I planted as an experiment. The beans I really wanted to eat didn't even sprout. I got lots of asparagus earlier, but that is mostly done until next year, and I miss it.

As I am trying not to spend any money, I am really missing it.

There was this thing called eating down the fridge. You try not to buy any food for a certain amount of time and see what you can make from stuff in the freezer and pantry. So I had thought that I would have done that for fun with some other bloggers if I had heard about it in time. Now it feels like I'm doing that for real. I can't go out to dinner, and I'm trying not to go to the grocery store much either. I can't buy any non-essentials, and I can't waste gas going out if I forgot to get something.

So I'll be looking at what I can make for dinner and thinking that the stir-fry would be better with water chestnuts, but I only have a few left, and I should save them until I run out of the other stuff. And the soup would taste better if I had another can of tomato sauce. Stuff like that.

So I'm cleaning, and I found five cans of water chestnuts, four cans of tomato sauce, and a few other things. I guess that I was so tired the day that I bought them that I didn't finish putting them away.

Cool.

Not as cool as if the bees were back and I was getting lots of squash, but cool anyway.

Luxuries

I have recently had a discussion with someone who didn't get it that a Monday thru Friday 9-5 job was a luxury. Somehow that wasn't a luxury because he "worked his ass off" to get it.

Well, you are supposed to earn your luxuries, aren't you? If you want something, you aren't supposed to just wait around for someone to give it to you. Just because you worked for something doesn't mean it isn't a luxury.

After a bit of argument on the subject, I was told that my conversation was no longer welcome.

Fine.

Anyway, that discussion and the current economic situation has had me thinking about luxuries. It occurs to me that a lot of things that I have just taken for granted are luxuries, and that there are things that we have earned that are luxuries, even though they have become such common place things that we tend to not think of them of luxuries anymore. But really, they are not necessities, so they are luxuries. The TV, the phone, and now the computer are things that I have had for so long that I would have trouble living without. And at some point, I earned them. I wonder if at some point I might not have them.

It now occurs to me that I have some luxuries that I didn't earn. I live in this time and place totally by accident. I am lucky that do not live in the past or some other country where I couldn't have these things.

So while I am forcing myself to drink two liters of water per day, it occurs to me that I have the luxury of tap water. And that isn't something that I earned, I just have it. While having safe water is a necessity, having pipes bring it right to the house (and usually even to the particular room that I need the water) is actually a luxury. It just happens to be a luxury that I've never done without. But there are still millions of people who don't have it. They have to go to a lake or a stream or a well, and they have to take several gallons of water from the water source to their homes. And then after that they might have to boil it or do something else to it before it is safe to use.

I don't even have to pay that much for it. In my particular situation, I suppose that I have to pay something for it, but it isn't even a separate bill, so I don't notice the expense. I have not only this two liters per day that I am forcing myself to drink, but also just gallons of the stuff for cleaning and such, and in addition to that I have all the water I want to water the plants in my garden.

That's a pretty cool thing to have when you think about it.

And thanks to a gift from my grandmother, I also now have the luxury of a washing machine in my home. For more than twelve years I used a laundry mat, and I got used to do that. But the past few years I haven't had to do that. I have had the luxury of doing the laundry whenever I want it done, and not having to schedule a time to drive somewhere else to do it.

Speaking of the luxury of time, I've had a lot of that lately, though you may have noticed that I am not particularly enjoying it. When you are sick or unemployed, you have the luxury of time, but usually not the means of doing what you want with it. I should make more efforts to use it better.

Today is a good day to die...

...by eating too much candy.

Target has 75% off Halloween clearance stuff today, including lots of candy. I have bought enough chocolate to get me through Christmas.

I would go back and buy more, but I think that I'm about out of money again.

Gas is 2.27!

We bought gas today, and it was 2.27 a gallon. Still not quite what it was two years ago, but, wow, 2.27!

And it wasn't like we just got really lucky, cause on the way home we saw at least four other places where gas was 2.27 a gallon. The price of gas is not something that I really keep up with, and I'm never that person who waits in line for a hour to get a good deal on gas, even though I will get up an hour early to go to a sale to get a good deal on just about anything else. But, really, 2.27 a gallon!

2.27!

Did I mention that I saw a bunch of places that had gas for 2.27 a gallon?

Okay, back to your regularly scheduled nonsense.

Yesterday didn't suck too bad

We started the day off with the usual watching Sunday Morning, while eating apple pie for breakfast. I don't remember anything special about the show yesterday, as most of what I liked was a rerun. After that we watched an episode of the British show, Life on Mars. After a bit of an argument about him spending too much time on the computer, we went to lunch at what was for a long time our place.

One of the reasons that this used to be our place was that it almost almost had buy one get one free coupons. So we found a coupon that was buy one get one for $2 and decided that was close enough. He had wanted to go someplace else, but the place he wanted to go didn't have food quite as good, was an all you can eat buffet (which I am trying to avoid), and in my opinion it costs too much and you don't even get to take home leftovers because it is a buffet.

So after stopping somewhere to get the paper so we'll have a coupon, we head to Campo Verde. On the way there we pass a Vietnamese place, and my husband says something about getting sandwiches there.

You must be really hungry if you want to stop for sandwiches on the way to a Mexican restaurant. Though I can totally be talked into the sandwiches instead of the restaurant since that would be a lot cheaper.

No, I meant on the way back, for later.

That's fine.

The bill came to about twenty dollars, which is almost twice what we used to pay back when this was our place. The prices have gone up, the sodas are way too much (but you have to buy two or you can't use the coupon) and the coupon is now for a $2 dinner instead a free one, so I guess it adds up. My husband rarely notices such things, and I'm sure he gets overcharged for stuff all the time when I'm not around. But this time he asked me if that was right, and I'm pretty sure that it was. So we spent almost $25 with the tip, and I feel a bit bad that I talked him out of the place he first wanted to go which would probably have been about $20. But at least it wasn't a buffet, and we have leftovers. Besides, we like the place, and we hadn't been in a while.

After that was a not very productive visit to Half-Price Books, and then we went to Thrift Town and Goodwill. Despite my recent wish that my life were not so much about things and accumulating even more things, I managed to come home with two costumes. The bad thing is that one of them is too small and will never fit me. But it was only four dollars, and I would like to try to make another one like it, so it seemed best to go ahead and get it. I only spent $4 on it, and after I'm finished looking at how it was made, I'm sure that I must know someone else who would like to have it. The other costume is sort of a back-up costume, so I'll have a simple witch outfit if I don't have the time or energy to do something else. It's a black dress with silver moons and stars and the top, and it does fit despite my recent weight gain. I already have a black cape, and I have hats (though I'm thinking that I might make another one for the occasion), and I think that I have spiderweb nylons. A corset would be nice, but not totally necessary, so I'll be on the lookout for that and as always, shoes.

Then it was home to watch more Life on Mars. We're nearly to the end of that. And then we watched Eureka and Stargate Atlantis with my brother.

At some point we got a call from his boss, and I thought it was going to be something interesting, like maybe a trip to Florida. But no, just one day of work Monday around here and then back to having no work for a week or two.

Free Movies and TV

About a week ago I got an email from a friend of a friend telling us all about a website that linked to free movies we could watch on the computer. Cool. Sometimes the quality isn't so great. Sometimes it's a copy of a copy. And the recent stuff probably came from someone who copied the movie with his cell phone. I'm not watching that stuff. But there's some stuff that I have missed, and some stuff that I haven't seen in a really long time. It's been fun.

So this site is mostly movies, and I was wondering if maybe there was something that had old TV shows. I thought that I found something that had The Bionic Woman, but then it turned out just to be the remake. Rats.

I looked around a bit more. This time I tried looking for Otherworld, which was about ten episodes of something that would have been like Lost In Space, only without the space. And, lucky me, I found it here.

Sometimes, the Internet really rocks.

Thinking about Spring Break

No, I'm not thinking of getting mostly naked and heading to a beach to get drunk. (Though I got a weird look from my husband when I brought up the subject, like I had suggested exactly that.) I am just thinking that I have next week off, and wondering what to do about it.

Let's see, what are my options?

I could just stay home and clean house. Well, we've seen how well that's gone recently. I don't really think that my chances of actually getting much work done are going to improve much just because it is spring break. It will be the same as any other week, minus the time I am in my actual scheduled ceramics class, minus Friday when I try to spend most of the day at school and minus the occasional Monday or Wednesday when I spend a couple of hours in the lab because there is something I have to do that just cannot wait for one of the other days that I'm already there. Mostly, it will just be the idea of spring break, and knowing that I absolutely cannot go to school no matter what I imagine I might get accomplished.

If I stay home the usual stuff will happen, and except for class there will be the usual excuses for not getting anything done. In the morning it is too early, and I will read or blog a bit until I decide that it is not too early anymore. Then if there's anything interesting going on in the blog world, I will waste time on other people's blogs writing comments and such. I might waste a whole day having a discussion about some post that I didn't even write.

Then, on a day when there doesn't seem to be anything going on, when there don't seem to be any distractions, my mother will call. On a good day she will invite me to lunch and ask if I want to go with her to run some errands. On a bad day it will just be the phone call, which starts out pleasant enough, but then gets rather long and usually ends up on a couple of subjects that I've already made it clear I don't want to talk about since talking just upsets me and doesn't change the situation. So if I spend a nice day with her I usually get back home and decide that I don't have enough time left to do anything useful and spend the rest of the day reading or on the computer or watching TV. If I have one of those long phone calls I'm usually too upset afterwards to do much of anything.

So on my most productive day of trying to clean the house I will first decide that it is too early, then decide that it is not too early, then try to get something done and possibly do both laundry and dishes but probably not much else, then have to take a couple of breaks to eat and possibly to cook and clean up the mess caused by the cooking, maybe realize that I've run out of something or for some other reason have to leave the house on some errand, do maybe a little bit more before I decide that it is now too late to do much of anything and then either read some more or watch TV. That is what most Wednesdays are like, unless I have to go to school for something, or unless maybe my mother calls. So if I stay home with the plan of cleaning house, it will probably be a whole week of what seems like Wednesdays, and probably having a whole week of Wednesdays will still not result in a nice clean and orderly house.

Okay, so the idea of staying home with the plan of cleaning the house is not so great.

There are other things I could plan to do while I am home. If it doesn't rain or freeze again for a bit, the backyard could use a lot of work. I usually want to have a garden, and you'd think that by this time I would have done something about it. This year I haven't really even given it much thought. I go out once in a while to see if any of the perennials are going to come back. I expect that many will not since I was so inattentive last year. I didn't even do half of the things I had planned to do in the last two years. So the place is quite a mess, and I'm really not looking forward to any major projects this year. But shouldn't I do something? Shouldn't I at least turn over last year's beds and get plants for the containers that I already have and stuff like that? Maybe. The thing is that after I've planted something I worry about going out of town. The plants will probably die while I'm out of town. If I have plans of going out of town after April or so I should just not plant anything new so I don't have anything to worry about.

In theory, I could take home a couple of ceramic projects and work on them. Except for the relief sculpture, which I have not yet selected a design for, this usually causes some problems. Like where to put the thing while I'm working on it. If I totally clean the kitchen and dinning room area first, and then have no plans to cook anything for about a week, I can work there.

Then there's the problem of worrying that my husband doesn't quite understand that he must not disturb the area at all for any reason whatsoever. Stay out, period. I don't care that you just wanted a piece of toast. Next time tell me and I'll get it for you. If you decide you need toast when I'm not around, then you'll just have to do without.

And then there's a bit of a mess to clean up, and while I do make an effort to clean up most of the mess I make at school, at school there is someone who is paid to deal with the rest of it. At home, the only person dealing with the mess will be me, and possibly the husband who might not understand that he still must not disturb the area until after I tell him that it is safe to do so.

Then there is the problem of getting said ceramic project back to school once I have done whatever I brought it home to do. The project can only travel in the leather-hard stage (except maybe for the relief sculpture), and it must be carefully wrapped and packed away in a sturdy plastic container. I cannot move the piece if it is too wet, because I would be unable to wrap it and move it without damaging it. If it is too dry, it will crack, and it will be difficult (if not impossible) to repair at that stage.

So taking home a ceramic project is something to think about, since the husband will probably be out of town that week.

Which brings me to what I will probably end up doing with the week off. I will probably go out of town with my husband. We like to get out of town once in a while, and fortunately he has a whole week out of town at the same time as I have a whole week off from school.

Unfortunately, it isn't anyplace far away or particularly exciting. It's a place that we used to like, but since it is so close we have been there a lot over the years, and by now we are rather tired of the place. It still has a few things that we like to do, but going there just isn't a big deal anymore.

So what I will probably do is pack up the knitting machine and see if I can knit a scarf and maybe a couple of baby blankets. Those are things that should be done before May, but if I don't manage to do them while I'm at a motel, they probably won't get done in time. Around here, knitting projects would have to compete with school and housework for my time. At the motel there will be knitting and cable TV and not much else. No responsibilities. Knitting, cable TV, lunch with my husband, more knitting, more cable TV, possibly a swim, maybe a nap, dinner by myself, followed by more knitting and more cable TV, and a day ending with one of those "how was your day dear" talks and then possibly more cable TV. Sometime during the week maybe a trip to the zoo, maybe a walk through the park, but not much else. Just a relaxing week doing mostly nothing and a bit of knitting.

Today was my lucky day, sort of

Well, I started off the day having woken up at around 7:30, which was a pretty good time to start the day with my planned schedule. Lately, I have been waking up an or hour two earlier, blogging or something to pass the time, and then blogging a bit too much and getting a late start. So this was good, except that the reason for it was waking up a bit in the middle of the night, but that was alright since I got back to sleep within a reasonable amount of time.

So I'm about ready to leave when I realize that I don't have my tool box. And it doesn't seem to be in the car either. And I'm pretty sure that I didn't leave it at school, because there's all sorts of other things in the car that I wouldn't have bothered to take home if I didn't also take home the tool box.

Right. So I'm asking my husband if he's seen my tool box. No, he hasn't. But apparently he doesn't even know what it is that I'm looking for. He doesn't ever remember having seen a clear plastic box with tools and maybe a cookie cutter, about the size of a shoe box, but with a hinged lid. And I've used this tool box now for over a year, since this is my third semester back in school. So much for his photographic memory.

So, I can either go on to school and see what I might be able to work on without the tool box, or I can sit home and cry about it. I decide to go on to school.

I've pretty much confirmed that I didn't leave it on my shelf at school. So there are a few possibilities. First, I have probably brought the tool box into the house and then accidentally covered it with a sweater or a stack of newspapers or something and just can't find it. Second, I might have left it in the car and then did something like accidentally cover it with a coat or a box or plastic bag and just can't find it. The third possibility is less likely and less pleasant, since if I left it in the parking lot while I was loading the car, I am very unlikely to ever see it again, while if I just can't find it right now it will probably turn up in a few days. The fourth possibility is that someone just took it from me, and that is very unlikely.

So I started getting out all of my stuff and letting the pieces dry out a bit, wondering what I should work on while the tools were missing. A friend offered to let me use any or all of her tools. And then I remembered that my vase had probably been fired. So I went to get that, sanded it a bit, rinsed it, and then started applying wax resist around the edge. The wax resist will help keep glaze off of the parts of the piece that will actually touch the kiln shelf. If the bottom of the piece has glaze, the firing process will glue the piece to the kiln shelf and ruin both items.

Then the professor told us that he would prefer us to wrap up whatever we were doing in time to hear a guest artist give a lecture. So most of us did that right after I was able to apply one coat of glaze to the inside of my vase. And then after the lecture there was free pizza and soda and cookies. One of the nice things about being in the art department is there's free food once in a while. Then we went back to class, and I had time to apply a second coat of glaze inside the vase, so I'll only have to do one more coat on the inside and three coats on the outside before it is fired again.

So it wasn't a wasted day at all. And after the free lunch at school I didn't have to rush home to eat lunch and got to run an errand. While I was out, I bought my lotto tickets for the week. If this is really my lucky day, maybe I'll win the lottery.

Of course I still have to find my tool box. Unless I win the lottery and can buy a new one. Of course, if I win the lottery, I'm probably going to buy a whole new studio.

Now I feel all warm and fuzzy

This was just supposed to be the opening for this week's Freaky Friday. Only it got kind of long, so I decided that it needed to be a post all by itself. I will still try to do the Freaky Friday thing a bit later.

Okay, so my husband is a serious blogger. He is under the delusion that someday this silly stuff is going to make him some real money. That's what he thinks about a lot of things, and he's usually wrong. Anyway, I don't know if he enjoys the blogging anymore, but he's seriously obsessed with it and won't stop doing it even though it upsets me very much. And I was already pretty upset to start with.

One of the things that he does is submit absolutely everything that he has ever written to Digg and Fark and a bunch of other places like that. Not that this takes as much time as actually writing posts, but it does take some time, and it adds up. So he gets a lot of Diggs and some Farks and some other stuff and that one time he made the front page of Fark. For all of this effort he makes about a dollar and a half per day, and once in a while he writes a post for someone and makes about ten dollars. I'm thinking that if he does this during every spare moment of his the day, he might make about half of the money that we spend eating lunch.

Anyway, I don't do any of that. Blogging is supposed to be fun. I think some people make money blogging, but for the most part, that ship has sailed. You have to be in the right place and the right time for that sort of thing to happen, and we weren't. For the most part, if you just sit around trying to think of ways to make money, it just isn't going to work out. Sometimes you think of something that helps you or helps someone you know, and while you helping yourself you might as well see if other people are interested in what you're doing or what you've made, and sometimes this becomes a business opportunity. And sometimes you are very lucky and make enough money that you can quit your job. But even then, when you have a good idea that could help people, it just usually doesn't work out like that.

So I have this blog, which I don't think will ever make any real money, and it is way too much work to get a blog to make even pocket change. So I don't read books on how to increase traffic to my blog and all of that. And I don't submit stuff to Digg and Fark and all of that. And if I ever do submit anything to Digg or Fark or something like that, I'm certainly not going to submit every single thing that I write, unless I cut way back on writing.

Anyway, the thing about Digg and Fark and such isn't necessarily that you wrote something really cool. It's just that you've found something really cool. Maybe the really cool thing is something you wrote, or maybe it's just something you happened to come across while surfing the web. So you can find an amateur movie review from some college guy who got sneak preview passes to some movie you've really been looking forward to, or you really like someone's post on the greatest vacation spot, or whatever. And you think that's just so cool, and you think that other people will think that it's cool, so you submit it to Digg or whatever. Or you can have a whole blog of stuff that you didn't even write. You can just copy or link to something you found, and as long as you give credit and you weren't asked not to do that, it's probably okay. Flattery will get you...well, as least a word of appreciation.

Okay, so I have a link on this site, which I don't think I'd ever heard of before, and I don't think that I know this person. And I'm pretty sure that the post doesn't really fit in with the rest of it. But there it is, and it was submitted to Digg and got five Diggs.

Isn't that sweet?

On the same day I also found out that my post about going to the state fair was copied and translated into German. I'm afraid that I don't get why, and it wasn't that good of a post, but it's still kind of cool.

There was some other stuff I found that were supposed to have links to my blog, but then they either just didn't seem to work or they had been deleted. Maybe someone linked to my posts because of the name, without actually reading them, and then later decided they just didn't fit.

Christmas Lights, Robots, and I Feel Bad About My Neck

I recently went on a business trip with my husband. During the drive we listened to this audio book. It is written by the screenwriter of When Harry Met Sally. It is one of those non-fiction books where the author pretty much complains about all the things in her life, but somehow it all ends up being funny.

To start with, the woman doesn't like her neck. In fact, all of her close female friends hate their necks. They look good for their age, except for their necks, so they all wear turtleneck sweaters.

She talks about other things that you have to deal with as you get older, like your eyesight isn't what it used to be and how you don't know or even care who the new musicians are and how you don't really like the new electronic stuff cause you can't even get half the stuff on your cell phone to work. She then goes on to talk about cookbooks and getting various jobs and renting apartments. She was married several times, and she was more attached to her apartment than any of her husbands.

I very much enjoyed this book, as did my husband.

After spending most of three days alone in a motel room, I noticed some lines on my neck. I'm sure I'd seen them before, but I just hadn't really given them any thought. Well, that's not entirely true. When I'm making a costume, I think about my neck and where the wrinkles and bulges are. But the rest of the time I don't dwell on that sort of thing much, and my neck usually isn't high on the list anyway.

But I'm alone in this motel room, and I'm looking at myself in the big mirror that most motel rooms have over the sink with the bright overhead lights. And there are these lines on my neck. And I don't like them.

I am nowhere near as old as the woman who wrote this book. But I think that I should like to go out and buy a bunch of turtleneck sweaters. But that really isn't the problem, is it? I like turtleneck sweaters. I especially like black turtleneck sweaters. I can go out and buy a bunch of black turtleneck sweaters and be very happy with them. But I can only wear them until maybe March. Someday I will have to move someplace where I can wear the turtlenecks year-round.

Anyway, I went on this little trip with my husband, even though except for the drive I didn't actually spend lots of time with my husband. So why did I spend most of three days knitting and wasting time watching cable when I have all of this stuff to do at home? Mostly, I just had to go because my husband was taking this little trip to the town where I used to live, and it happened to be on the last days of the season when the Christmas stuff was still up at the college. When I was little, we used to go an look at these decorations every year. But we moved away just before I became a teenager, and I think that this is only the third time that I've been in the area at the right time since then.

It's mostly silly stuff. I'm guessing that most of this stuff was originally bought in the sixties, or maybe even the fifties. Perhaps it is not that impressive today. You cannot see the lights from outer-space or anything like that. It seems like there's some Disney stuff and there is a nativity scene and some stuff from A Christmas Carol and several displays with Santa.

And there's a robot. This is a fifties-type robot that looks like the one from The Jetson's, only more square. He's supposed to blow bubbles, but that wasn't working the day we were there.

So I went on this little trip, because I doubt that I'll ever get to do it again. It is difficult to schedule stuff like this in December. And I don't know how much longer the college will continue the tradition anyway. I think the college has had the decorations since about 1971. But the decorations are older than that, and they won't last forever.

The day after we saw the lights we went to a clearance sale and bought chocolate and a few decorations and some other odd things. And I bought a pencil sharpener that looks a lot like that robot at the college. I never can find a pencil sharpener when I need one. I buy lots of cheap mechanical pencils, because not only can I not find the pencil sharpener for regular pencils, but then I can't find the refill lead for the mechanical pencils either. So I just keep buying new ones. If I have a pencil sharpener that looks like a robot, then maybe I won't lose it. Maybe.

The summer that I met the real Santa Claus

Everyone seems to think that his name is Nick. They're wrong. His name's Rick. I don't remember his last name, but his first name was definitely Rick.

Rick didn't have elves. I heard that he had a bunch of kids, like maybe ten. I never met the kids. I don't know if they were really his kids or step-kids or foster kids. Maybe a combination. Or maybe they were all grown up by then. Anyway, I never met the kids, but I heard that he had a lot of them.

I worked one summer at an arcade that had lots of skeeball machines. Rick would come in and play skeeball several times a week. He didn't have a beard or white hair, just brown. He was tall and fat. He always wore suspenders to hold up his pants.

He was a very friendly guy who did nothing but play skeeball. A lot of skeeball. Like twenty dollars a night.

Some people play skeeball for fun. This guy played to win toys. He only occasionally looked up to see how much he'd won. He won a lot. He played some perfect games of 450, a lot of near perfect games of 410, and occasionally only a 370 or so. You win tickets depending on how high your score is, and sometimes you win extra stuffed animals for perfect games. Every time he came in he got one of those extra stuffed animals and spent enough tickets to buy between three and six more stuffed animals. And every time he came in he gave away a stuffed animal, or maybe two, or maybe three. He took home at least three stuffed animals and a bunch of tickets.

The stuffed animals he took home were stored until Christmas. In December he brought back the rest of his tickets and bought pretty much all of the cool stuff in the prize counter. Then he took the stuffed animals and other stuff and gave them to some orphans for Christmas.

Once in a while we'd have a slow day at the arcade, and there weren't really any kids around when he got ready to leave for the day. A couple of times he didn't see any kids he thought needed the stuffed animal, so he gave it to me instead. I had two stuffed animals given to me by the real Santa Claus. I don't have them anymore. I'm afraid I must have lost them when we moved from Fort Worth.

The mall with that arcade isn't there anymore. I wonder where Santa Claus moved to?

I know that it's Monday, but

I don't especially feel like writing a Monday Morons post today. The big moron this week is my husband, or maybe it's me for putting up with him, but in either case I don't feel like writing about it. And the other thing that I had decided to write about earlier just doesn't seem worth writing about at the moment. Maybe later when I have more on the subject to write about.

When I started the Monday Morons thing, I said that if I ever had a Monday that I didn't have anything else to write about that I would write about the Homewrecking slut. But I don't feel like doing that today either. Maybe later.

I have noticed that lately I haven't been writing much during the week. I write Monday Morons, and then I write Freaky Friday, and there aren't many posts in between. If I have something good to write about the weekend, I tend to put it off until Tuesday so that I can write Monday Morons, and then sometimes by the time Tuesday gets here I don't bother with it. So there's Monday Morons and Freaky Friday, and those posts don't really say anything positive.

So I'm going to write about my weekend instead. Actually, I've already written about most of it. Friday involved a lot of shopping, and coupons for Bath & Body Works, and lunch at Jason's Deli. Not much happened on Saturday.

Sunday we spent fifty dollars on a brunch buffet. Now that's something we just don't do. We wouldn't just go someplace that was going to cost fifty dollars unless it was a special occasion, or we had a coupon, or someone else was paying. But about a month ago my husband was reading this foodie magazine, and he read about this place, which wasn't that far away. So we were planning to go.

Except that he couldn't remember the address. And he couldn't remember the name of the place. And he lost the magazine.

So Friday when he wanted to go to lunch, I asked if he wanted to go to this place in Arlington, but he still couldn't find the magazine or remember the name of the place. Just wandering up and down the street in hopes of finding the place didn't seem like a good idea, so we headed for Jason's Deli instead. Jason's Deli is in a shopping center with a Half-Price Books and the Sluts R Us store, along with a lot of other stores and some other restaurants. And I asked if he wanted to try one of the other restaurants instead, and he looked around and said that he didn't know what most of them were, so we might at well go to Jason's Deli like we'd planned.

On Sunday, he managed to find the name of the restaurant and the address and so forth. And it was the restaurant in that same shopping center, on the other side of the Sluts R Us store.

So of we went to Olenjacks Grille. But when we got there, they were mostly having this Sunday brunch thing. And if you didn't want the Sunday brunch thing, you couldn't order stuff off the regular menu except soup or a sandwich. The buffet seemed rather expensive, especially since you don't get to take home leftovers, but we decided to do it just this once.

I skipped most of the breakfast stuff. I didn't go to the expensive restaurant to eat bacon and sausage and such. But I did have a bite of the cinnamon toast with blueberries and strawberries. And I had the white cheddar grits with poblano peppers and corn. Both of those were really good.

There were also Buffalo ribs, which my husband really liked but I did not care for. And there were collards or mustard greens or something like that, which are still not that great even in a nice restaurant, but I decided to try it anyway. There were two different pastas with shrimp, and I liked the one that I tried. There was a boneless pork-chop covered with sausage and onions and such.

And there were several salads. My favorite was tuna. This is not the kind of tuna salad that you make with Chicken of the Sea and mayo or Tuna Helper. This was avocado and cilantro and cucumbers and tomato, and some tuna that maybe wasn't dead yet. Add some rice and seaweed, and you could make sushi with it. Not something that I would normally eat, but very interesting.

Then there was the dessert table. I cannot tell you everything that was on the dessert table. I cannot even tell you everything that I tried. I had a couple of things that were very good, but I'm not sure what they were. I also had chocolate chip cookies, a brownie, and some cheesecake. The brownie and the cheesecake were good, but they were a bit much for me after all the other stuff I had.

I really wanted to go back and get more grits and try the other shrimp salad, but I new that we were both already close to the "I've eaten too much and I'm going to be sick" stage. So it was time to go.

The sad thing about eating at a buffet is that you can't take home leftovers. But the good thing about not having to take home leftovers is that you can immediately go shopping.

So we went to the mall to walk off some of the calories. I got more stuff from Bath & Body Works. And then we looked around at some other stuff. We thought about ice cream or smoothies, but decided it was still too soon after lunch.

Then I went to Sears for some more on-sale undies. I'd been there earlier, but I hadn't bought anything bright red. I don't think that I look especially good in bright red. But then I got the little red riding hood idea, so I need lots of bright red stuff. And now that I've bought half of the costume, I guess I'm mostly committed to wearing it.

Next we went to a bookstore, and then headed home.

On Sundays we usually go to my brother's place at about eight to watch The 4400. But last night was the club dinner, so I said I'd probably be a bit late. Too many of us showed up, and six of them had to sit at another table. And that was without about four people who always go to the club dinner but weren't there this time. And the pilot wasn't there, which wasn't a shock or anything, and K wasn't there, because K is never there on a Sunday because she's already depressed that it is almost Monday. Whatever.

So I really didn't feel much like eating, so I after I finished my soup I went to talk to the six at the other table. Then we sang happy birthday to "Mom" who is like eighty-five or something. One of my other buddies at the table also had a birthday this month, and he started to say something, and I'm like do you really want the ice cream bad enough to have the embarrassing song and such that goes with it? They were nice enough to "Mom", but that's just cause she's old. The rest of us might not be so lucky.

Then I almost left in time to get home by eight, but then I was talking to one of the newbies after dinner and it was eight-thirty before I got home.

But they weren't mad that I was late. They didn't even care that I was late. The Cowboys were on, and they cancelled the whole watch The 4400 bit.

I hate the Cowboys. I don't care for football or sports in general, but it is the Cowboys that interfere with life here.

Actually, right now I hate the computer more, but the computer is here all of the time and I know to expect problems because of it. I forget about the Cowboys and such for a while, and then they are back to screw things up when I'm not expecting it.

My eyes are still bothering me. If I tape one of my lids shut I don't wake up in terrible pain, but it's still annoying anyway.

Anyway, I was having a nice weekend, but now life sucks again.