Footprints on the Moon

That’s the question of the hour… well, in 3 1/2 more hours anyways. I brought my lunch all last week, and had planned on doing so this week as well, but I didn’t bring one today. Of course, when I got down to the cafeteria, they didn’t have this week’s menus out yet, just last week’s. Whatever was cooking didn’t smell too good though… I just hope they have something halfway decent to eat because the greasy grill side that I usually opt for when the meal options are not so good is just not an option. Maybe they’ll have some chili… it’s good chili weather.
I need to get to the grocery store so that I can bring my lunch, but there are two problems with this. One is that I do not get paid until Friday, and that does not help me buy groceries on Monday. The second is that the stores are insane! Unless the furniture stores (about the only stores not swarmed with millions of crazy people) have mysteriously started selling groceries, I’m not sure I want to touch that with a ten foot pole. I guess I’ll either brave the crazies or figure something else out, won’t I?

Did I ever come back and tell you that I was officially done with my Christmas shopping? I know I told you that I was still waiting on my dad to give me ideas. First all he could tell me was he wanted a new cell phone. Ha! I can’t even afford to replace my old, dying phone! Hey, while I’m at it, how about I buy him a new truck bed liner, and a big screen TV! But he finally did give me a few ideas of things he’d like, all well within my budget, so I ran out and secured a couple of them. I still have to wrap a couple of presents, but mostly I’m ready for Christmas now!
I had planned on doing some baking, but I don’t know how much I’m going to do. I’ll probably make some peanut blossom cookies, and the pie I promised to take for Christmas with immediate family on my mom’s side. (This would be the same pie that was supposed to go on Halloween but I failed at. Miserably. Wish me better luck this time!)

I was getting ready to finish shutting everything down to go to bed when I realized that I had taken pictures today, but I hadn’t yet posted them. Oops. So here’s a picture of me, not all that long ago, when I finished getting ready for bed. I decided to stand on top of my computer chair so you could see my Christmas tree in the background. I also blow dried my hair when I got out of the shower… as you can see, the curl is not quite ready to give up the fight yet. *sigh* I’m beyond ready for my hair to be straight again, but my hair has to grow another couple of inches before I can cut the curls out. Kudos to all you naturally curly women out there… I don’t know how you do it day after day after day. I can’t imagine having to take care of curly hair indefinitely!
Well, enough about my hair! I’m going to try and get to bed now, I’m going to have a lot to do in the morning between digging out my car from the snow, and putting gas in my car so I actually make it all the way to work. At some point, I’ll go over to DigiCass and see everyone else’s lovely faces.

This morning, I decided to brave the elements (and the crazy crowds of people) and get the DVDs I wanted. I was after Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, and Lost Season Three, both of which came out on Tuesday. I stopped and picked my mom up on the way. Of course, the crowds were absolutely insane, but we got in and back out in record time as we found a checkout lane that was almost completely empty. We stopped off for lunch, and by the time we got back to her house, the weather and road conditions had really started to deteriorate.

I knew we were supposed to get a pretty good winter storm this weekend, but they were expecting most of it to come overnight tonight. When the snow started to fall pretty heavily, I decided it was time to head back home before the roads got any slicker than they already were. Now I’m home, safely ensconced in my warm apartment, probably until Monday morning. I’m not venturing out into the winter weather unless I have to. So in the meantime, I’ll be here, hopefully getting a little cleaning done tomorrow, but for tonight I’m crocheting and watching movies.

I have Order of the Phoenix on right now, and I have to say, for the first hour, I was seriously less than impressed. I feel like they’re trying to shove too much into a short amount of time. Movies are never quite as good as the books they’re based on, but I feel like this one is missing a bit more of the finer nuances that the earlier four movies still managed to capture. It’s almost like they were more worried about making the movie into a neat, barely more than two hour package than they were about really telling the story. Ah well, it’s a decent enough movie, but it does make me worry a bit about the next two movies as those books are considerably lengthier and more involved than this book. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see!

Kids grow up too fast as it is, I think we all know that, but today I’m almost wishing Killian was a little bit older. Almost, because this little man is shooting up much faster than we’re all prepared for already. There is a website I’d like to keep bookmarked for a couple of years though, and it’s called Letters From Santa. They will send your child a personal letter from Santa with their name on it, 3 of the things that they’re wishing for, and 3 of the things they’ve accomplished this year! Parents can also include their own personalized P.S. in the letter.
Best of all, the letters are mailed from Santa Claus, Indiana (woohoo, Indiana is actually cool once a year!) so they get the special Christmas postmark available only from December 1st to the 24th. They’ve even got many different letters available, so you can get a letter from Santa for all the kids without having the same exact form letter with just the names changed. It certainly seems like they’ve got everything covered, and I can just imagine how excited the little kids would be to get a letter from Santa a few days before Christmas! Oh, and if anyone wants to send me a letter, I still believe in Santa.

Someone who used to work here just came in with “the Christmas dog”. She was actually just dropping another person off for work, and picking up a picture from someone else. Why bring your dog with you? Yeah, the dog was cute, but it really doesn’t belong in a place of business. And I just don’t like clothes on animals. It’s one thing when you have the little teeny dogs that need a sweater just to go outside to pee so they don’t freeze to death, but this dog was plenty big and furry enough to not need a Christmas sweater. Grumble, grumble.
Felt bad for the dog too… when she came in, she opened the door really hard right into his head! I could hear the thunk from my desk. Seriously though folks, if you’re not blind, leave the dog at home. Or, if people want to see your dog so badly, they can come out to your car and see it. Bah Humbug. LOL

This is really a post that should probably go over on Jenn Cooks, but right now this blog has the larger audience and I’m hoping for some feedback. So let’s take a break from blogging about things like assisted living software and talk about some food, okay? Desserts to be specific.
I get a free publication from Kraft called Food & Family, and it has all kinds of recipes including one for Mint Thins made out of Ritz Crackers. I’m just wondering if anyone here has made these, or something similar. I knew someone who made a toffee-like thing out of saltines that was supposedly really good, but I don’t know… it seems to me it would just taste like a cracker dipped in chocolate.

I’m just wondering how many times NBC is going to change the time of their programming? The Biggest Loser’s only been in like 3 different time slots so far this season. First there were the two hours premieres starting at 8. Then there were the 1.5 hour shows which started at 8:30 after the Singing Bee. Then they were back to the 8pm two hour format. Last night, 8 o’clock rolls around, I switch my TV over to NBC to discover…. Deal or No Deal. Okay, seriously? There are only two or three weeks left of the Biggest Loser, and NOW we’re going to change the time again. I’m not a big fan of Deal or No Deal anymore, so I watched a little bit while doing other things, and set the VCR to record the Biggest Loser before going to bed.
I haven’t watched it yet, having other things to do when I get up at 5:30 in the morning… like showering, eating breakfast and packing a lunch to take to work. So please, don’t tell me what happened or who went home last night. I just wanted to express my annoyance at the scheduling changes. I just want them to get all their HDMI switches in order, or whatever they need to do and put my show on at the same time every week. I shouldn’t be surprised when I tune into NBC at 8pm on Tuesday nights.

I didn’t post at all yesterday… partially due to guilt over not posting a Self Portrait Sunday. Guilt is not the right word, but I kept putting it off thinking I might clean myself up and taking a picture and I never did. So what did I do all day yesterday?
Well, I watched movies for one. Or had movies running in the background while I did other things. Laws of Attraction, the Upside of Anger, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End, How the Grinch Stole Christmas. One of those may have been Saturday…
I also did this:

There are still a couple of gifts unwrapped, but for the most part, that’s everything. I got my card table just in time– it was so convenient for my little wrapping party yesterday!

Okay, so it’s not the first day of Christmas, but I did get my first Christmas present today!! From my mom and Harold. They got me a really nice card table and chairs set. It’s black, and the chairs are padded! They didn’t want me to have to try and get it home from our Christmas gathering and up the stairs by myself, so Harold brought it to me today! I’m very excited. I have a small one bedroom apartment. It’s not very big, so there’s not room for a traditional table and chairs.
I do like to have people over for dinner though, and it would be nice to have some place to sit and eat, or play games. We like to play cards and board games, but that’s not exactly something you could do in my living room! But now we can! The best part about the card table and chairs is that when they’re not in use, they’ll fold up quite nicely to store behind the couches or the TV stand. I’d take a picture and show you, but we got them up here and set them up and I promptly buried the table under a pile of stuff. See, it’s useful already!
Thanks Mom!