All the socks were knit, and all the recipients at least pretended to like them. I made two doggie sweaters on Christmas Eve for my father-in-laws chihuahuas. Paul thought he was getting a hat and was a little disappointed with the sweaters, so I'll whip out a hat once I'm done with Moses's neckwrap. The eyelash yarn hat for Carla was a flop. It wound up being way too big. Fortunately I didn't see her, so I have a little extra time to come up with something.

After I finish those projects, I need to start on a stuffed bunny for my niece's first birthday. I haven't been able to find a pattern that I like yet. So far they've all looked . . . amateurish, I suppose. The arms & legs are stumpy and the ears aren't floppy. When I graduated from high school, I received Hoppity the Beanie Baby. I like his proportions - he looks huggable. I just need him to be bigger. So I've decided that if I can't find an appropriate pattern by the end of the day, I'll go to Hobby Lobby and purchase a sewing pattern for a stuffed bunny. I think I can work out how to knit the individual pieces and stitch them together. Simplicity has a decent design. I like the yellow one on the front left.

All three pairs of socks are now done, as are a pair of mittens. I started a hat yesterday with some eyelash yarn that I was given, but I didn't realize there was only half a hat's worth of yarn in the skein. It looked much bigger than it was. So I braved the crowd at Walmart, and they didn't have it. Then I braved the crowd at Hobby Lobby. They had it, and all the lines were ten people deep. And, let's face it, HL is not known for its speedy cashiers. Hopefully I managed to get the right color. If I didn't, well, Carla is just going to have a two-tone hat.

Next, hubby wants a pair of socks and I've decided that we both need neckwarmers because it's frickin' cold when we get up to walk Max the Goober Dog. The neckwarmers will be good for using up some of my stash. I'll also work on building up my baby blanket supply so I won't be rushed the next time everybody we know has a kid all at the same time.

It's really, really, really foggy here today. I can barely make out the treeline on the other side of the parking lot. This morning at the house, I could see the line where the field is plowed, but I couldn't see anything beyond that. I'm not sure I've ever seen fog stay put for this long before. This is the view of the elementary school playground across the street. There are houses on the other side. Really, there are.

Global warming, my butt! It's 28 degrees outside, with a windchill of 16. In Texas. We don't usually see this kind of weather until the middle of January. Al Gore must be near.

1. There is no "Office of the President-Elect"
2. There is no "President-Elect" until December 15 when state legislatures convene to cast their electoral votes.

I was just reading a post about head lice in a forum that I frequent. The woman was talking about getting rid of lice in her daughters' very curly hair. They tried this and that, and the lice kept coming back and the products damaged her kids' hair. Then she found some miracle product that she could use "as much as [she] wanted because it didn't have any chemicals in it!"

Uh . . . .

Did it contain water? That's H20. That's a chemical.

Table salt is a chemical.

The air you breathe is a chemical.

Barbecue sauce is a freaking chemical, people!

So don't run around saying that something is free from chemicals. It may be free from harmful chemicals, but I can assure you that you will never be in a chemical-free environment. After all, you're composed of chemicals!

At what point did society forget how to leave a message? Or, more to the point, when did the companies that program voice mailboxes decide that we've forgotten how to leave a message? It seems like almost every time I call somebody and it goes to voice mail, there's a long list of instructions after the message. "To leave a message, wait for the beep. To page this person, press 1 now. For more options after you leave your message, press 2. To sell your firstborn to us, press 3. To hear these options again, press 4. [Thirty seconds of silence.] Beep." Really, all I want to do is just leave a message. If I wanted to page the person, I'd have called their pager. Who really uses the paging option on their cell phone anyway? And doesn't the missed call feature do exactly the same thing? Unless you're one of those twerps who has your phone number blocked so that you can see who's calling you but nobody can see when you're calling them. (I'm looking at you, Dad.)

Our post office amazes me.

Today I went to check our mailbox and the key didn't work. I double checked to make sure I had the right box, and I tried it a couple of times. I started to wonder whether our box rent was due, but I hadn't seen a bill come through lately, and hubby said he hadn't either when I called him. So I went through the line and told them that my key magically stopped working. Sure enough, the rent was due on the first. If the post office can't even deliver a notification within their own building, should I really be trusting them with my monthly bills?

Yesterday we sent out the office Christmas cards. This year we had the return address printed on the flap so we wouldn't have to put an additional sticker on each envelope. What did we receive today? A card delivered to the return address. Not because of an invalid recipient address, but because they ran the letter through the machine backward and mistook the return address for the recipient address. I just wrote our return address in the corner and dropped it back in the mail. I'm not looking forward to having to do this for 500+ cards.

Once again, I went out a-Black-Friday-ing. Mom and I were at Walmart at 5 a.m. I think we nabbed the very last parking spot at the far edge of the lot. I nabbed a $20 crock pot and a pair of $4 fleece-lined clogs. Then on to Lowe's where I picked up a utility cabinet for $40. I'd been wanting one of those to store towels in the bathroom. I also used an old JCPenney gift card to get some new dress pants & a button-down shirt.

Moses, being a typical guy, went the gadget route. He brought back an MP3 player, an inverter so we can charge the laptop & other stuff in the van, and a cordless drill.

The cats have had fun playing in the boxes. The dog doesn't care as long as he gets a treat.

When I was a kid, I used to drink soft drinks all the time. This is mainly because my parents drank soft drinks all the time and didn't say that I couldn't have them. At some point a doctor told my dad that he needed to cut out the sodas. And since dad couldn't have them, nobody got to have them. So I got into the habit of drinking mainly water, with an occasional soft drink. Just about the only time I drink sodas is when I'm at a party, or if I order a combo meal that includes a drink from a fast food joint. When I order "just" water, nine times out of ten, the cashier will pull out a dinky little cup that's smaller than the kid-sized cup. I got one today at Panda Express, and I had to get up twice to refill my cup. Do restaurant managers think that people who drink "just" water somehow drink less than people who order sodas? Or that the rediculously overpriced meal I just ordered doesn't cover the price of one of their precious paper cups? If that's the case, just charge me the whole nickel it cost you to buy the cup in bulk and let me have my tall glass of water!

I don't have a Roomba, although I desperately want one. With two cats and cement floors, you frequently see pet-hair tumbleweeds blowing across the floor. It's a little bit gross, actually. So I'd love to have a Roomba to automagically pick up all the cat hair in the afternoon before I get home so I don't have to look at it.

Of course, I would probably have to contend with this:

Time for another Monday morning grocery update! This time I took a picture of all the stuff that I got for free or ridiculously low prices:


Pictured above:
1 jar O'Sage Pimentos - FREE (Regularly $0.69)
6 cans Carnation evaporated milk - FREE (1.19)
4 cans Quaker Instant Oatmeal - FREE (1.50)
2 50-ct Reynolds Baking cups - 0.04 each (0.79)
7 Suave shampoo & conditioner - 0.28 each (1.29)
8 cans Swanson chicken broth - 0.37 each (1.09)
2 bags Veg All frozen vegetables - 0.45 each (1.79)
2 cans Pam cooking spray - 0.95 each (3.19)

So basically, I spent less than $8 on all the stuff pictured above. The shampoo & conditioner will go in the shelter box for a donation, and the evaporated milk goes to hubby's grandpa. I'm not sure what I'll do with the pimentos. I'll probably mix them in with something and make hubby eat it.

Overall, I saved $63.02 with coupons & sales yesterday, and I spent only $42.58 on actual groceries. That's a savings of 59.6% this week. Since I started thegrocerygame.com this summer, I've saved $1104.62.

Yipes! Stripes!

I finished the first pair of socks from my Christmas knitting extravaganza. They're just a little too big on me, so I think they'll fit my mom just fine.

Today is payday, so that also makes it bill-paying day. After putting together about six bills to mail out, it seems to me that an envelope company could make a ton of money by making the glue taste better. I guess they'd rather charge an extra ten cents for a peel-and-stick envelope instead though.

I had a few bills to hand-deliver since I'm not using a stamp to mail it across town. I have one check that's gone missing. I had to re-open all my envelopes, and it's not in there. I went through all the papers on my desk, and it's not mixed in with them. It's not still in my checkbook, and I did write the check because I have the carbon copy. And I can promise that as soon as I start to write a replacement check, the lost one will turn up. :-\

The weather is wreaking havoc with my sinuses, and I have a feeling that I'm coming down with my annual sinus infection. If I don't feel better on Monday I'll find a walk-in clinic. Might as well since I met my deductible in early January.


Max the Goober Dog was pretty good last night. I took him for his walk and then he stayed inside for over an hour before he started misbehaving. The secret? A Beggin' Strip shoved inside his Kong. He'd chew on it for a few minutes and then get frustrated and come to me, and then get all excited when I stuck my finger inside the Kong. After he got the bacon out he startedd to get aggressive and tried to chew on my hands. That's what earned him a trip outside.

It's time for Monday's grocery update!

I use thegrocerygame.com to match up local sales with coupons so I pay as little as possible for my groceries. Part of the strategy is to stock up on items so instead of buying 1 widget for 90% off, I get two or three months' worth of widgets fo 90% off.

Here's this week's highlights:

• 5 Pedigree GoodBites doggie treats - FREE (Regularly 3.62 each)
• 2 cans Carnation evaporated milk - FREE (1.19 each)
• 6 bars Dial soap - $.20 (.50 each)
• 2 bottles Dial liquid soap - $.20 (1.50 each)
• 3 cans Quaker quick oats - FREE (1.50 each)
• 9 3-Liter bottles of Ozarka water - $2.25 (1.29 each)
• 3 tubes Colgate toothpaste - $.75 (2.09 each)

Overall, my savings this week were $124.19. I spent $81.91, so I saved about 60%. My savings since starting the game in July are just over 46%.

I've decided to start collecting items for the local battered women's shelter, so that's where the toothpaste will go, as well as toothbrushes and whatever personal care items I can get for rediculously low prices.

I've been knitting like a fiend the last week. I decided to give socks for Christmas, and to finish them all I have to knit in almost all my free time from now until then. I just finished the first sock of the pair that I'm giving to my mom. This is the fourth pair of socks in my knitting career, and I've discovered that I much prefer toe-up rather than top-down. My problem up until now has been binding off. I made a pair last winter, and I have to be very careful getting the cuff over my heel. On this pair, I used this bind-off method, and it seems to work very well.

Max the Goober Dog finally managed to dig his way out of his pen. Truth be told, I'm surprised that it took him almost five months to figure that one out. He dug out right over the water line, so I'm thankful that he didn't destroy that, but he managed to make a huge mess. He played tug-of-war with the water hose and broke that into about twenty pieces. Then he went after the trash can. We only had one bag in the can, but it was pretty full. And it was extremely windy, so a lot of it wound up in the neighbors' yard. Moses's dad said Max was sitting on the truck tailgate surveying his damage. He put the dog up and put some firewood in the hole to keep him from getting out again, which worked better than I would have thought. Moses has filled in the hole with a bag of concrete, so he won't be using that particular hole again. We've also started stacking up firewood along the outside of his pen so that he can't make another break for it.

On that note, we're asking for Home Depot gift cards this Christmas.