Shout outs

During this intense time of shopping and commercial crazy, I have had the absolute pleasure of receiving, sometimes unexpectedly, incredibly responsive and top notch customer service.

Hats off to you Keep Calm Arsenal, Akiseo, Watchung Booksellers, Toys R Us, L.L. Bean, and Hanna Andersson.

And a very special mention goes out to Jerry's Artist Outlet.  Once a year, I venture out to this wonderfully well stocked art supply haven for stocking stuffers.  Every year I wonder why I don't come to the store more often.  I had a lovely, lovely time wandering the aisles last week and picked up some inspiring items.

Thanks for keeping it humane and spiritful.

'Tis the season

My hands hold up my head...I is tired.  Today was a day of errands.  

My glasses are in the shop.  The good news is I finally brought them in to the eye doc who confirmed that, indeed, there were perfectly circular marks on both lenses.  Apparently, from when the lenses were made.  My lenses have various coatings so they're going to have to be remade.  The bad news is that I won't have my glasses, probably till after the new year.  The good news is I still have my old glasses and so far they are not giving me a headache.

The car could not be seen at the shop.  This means we have to decide whether to buy new tires before our trip to MA next week without knowing whether the repair done two weeks ago has, in fact, resolved a much larger issue...an issue which would actually make or break our keeping this car.  The tires are pretty bald...but the thought of spending the money on new tires and labor for a car we may not be keeping much longer...

I have been quite successful in avoiding malls this holiday season.  Since deciding to give Amazon my cold shoulder, I have shopped locally and quite happily.  It's getting to be down-to-the-wire time (Cap and I once stopped in at a mall in Braintree on our way down to celebrate with his sister and dad...our hope that the mall would still be open at 6pm was severely dashed).  

This morning I made numerous calls trying to locally source a certain type of stuffed animal and was thwarted.  So, for the first time ever, after consulting with Cap, I plunked down the dough for express shipping from an online store (that was not Amazon).

I did brave a trip to Barnes and Noble this afternoon and it wasn't too bad traffic-wise on the road or in the store.  Thankfully, I was able to go sans kids.

Dishes keep piling up in the kitchen as my attention goes elsewhere.  I was happy to see that leftover Chinese eggplant with spicy garlic sauce paired pretty well with Mediterranean feta salsa from Whole Paycheck.  I did manage to make a meat sauce for the kids and restock on watermelon and berries.

Off to fold laundry, watch the season finales of Homeland and Dexter, and write, write, write holiday cards!

The good, the bad and the ugly

camp making in the backyard.

:::

Noting to self the unreliability of online shopping during the holidays.  Truly one more reason to shop local.  So far, I've had two online orders canceled (after my money was taken, natch) for gifts for the kids.  So much for thinking I was done with their shopping last week.  (This dovetails nicely with my growing desire to reconfigure future Christmases to make them less consumeristic affairs.)

:::

The Kalua Pig was way overcooked/dry.  I salvaged what I could out of the center of the cut.  Big disappointment after waiting 16 hours.  I'll go back to the recipe and read the comments to see if others had this problem.  I'm not giving up on the recipe yet.  I will try to figure out how much to shorten the cooking time.  The inexpensive cut of meat will allow for experimentation.  On the upside, it was not too salty.