Today is the official start of the Christmas holiday season despite the fact that Christmas carols have been playing since Halloween. So today is also the official start of my climbing in bed and pulling the covers up over my head. Please do not disturb me until the airwaves are safe again.
It’s still no worse than my other investment strategy
And at least with the penny slot machines, I get to be amused for the afternoon. I find nothing amusing about Wall Street and how those greedy bastards stole my future. I’d rather just stick pennies in a slot.
Holidays
The true test of the mettle of any family…or maybe it’s the true test of its level of insanity…is coming back together year after year for holiday meals despite it all. It gives new depth to the meaning of the phrase, “If you can’t stand the heat, stay out of the kitchen.”
Bet you didn’t make anything this much fun
Bet you didn’t have any cookies this good at your Thanksgiving table. I do have very interesting relatives who actually take the time to make these things. Eat your heart out, Martha Stewart.
Pass the turkey leg and forget the politicians
Since I’m not really what you would call a holiday kind of person, if forced to choose a holiday to celebrate, I always choose Thanksgiving. It’s about food, family, insane after dinner board games, and a long night of sleeping off a turkey high. No gift shopping involved, no strange looks from the gift recepients. What’s not to love?
As I left for my Thanksgiving trip to the lower 48, I wondered how this one would differ from others now that Alaska’s governor has become a media superstar, almost eclipsing the omnipresent Paris Hilton in adoring coverage by magazines I
The penny slots
It just takes one day at the penny slot machines to remind me why my first retirement plan is much the better one. Yep. I’m buying me a lottery ticket tomorrow.
There really is nothing like family
Most of my family was waiting up for meat my sister’s house when I got East on Saturday night. They were back at my sister’s house less than 12 hours later for lunch (we are Italian, after all). They are a pretty wild bunch considering how conservative they are. When people ask me in amazement who the heck are the 24% of Americans who still think the BushCheney monster was good for this country and think they will someday be viewed as one of our greatest presidents, I ask them if they’ve met my family. And yet I can still
A snail by any other name….
Normally I love French cooking, especially the rustic French kitchens. But no one is ever going to convince me that escargot is anything but a slimy snail that has been drenched in enough oil and garlic to try to disguise their real texture. It doesn’t work. They are still slimy snails no matter how good the word sounds in French. And really, who was the first person desperate enough to dig one of them out of a shell and eat it? Ugh!
My sister, my mother…the wash day queens
My mother was the queen of washing. She washed clothes just about every day of her life, even when all the kids were gone and dad had died. And everything was washed differently, with different soaps and bleaches and cycles. Things came out of the wash at different times in the cycle, some to be draped over the radiators, some to be hung to finish drying by the drip dry method, some to be blessed and put in a capsule for Mars for all I know. My sister inherited all those genes.
I don’t use bleach at all as the
California
California is the home of some of my favorite people. And yet there is no doubt in my mind that of all the places in the world I might ever live, California would not be on the list. I can’t explain it. I generally like every place that I visit in California. And yet I wouldn’t want to live here. Weird.