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.