We put up our outside lights this past weekend and noticed that no one else seemed to have any up.  Then I saw this on my way out this morning.

Now, in theory, this should convince people to put up more lights, but somehow I think it's just incentive for people to actually put up lights.  I mean really- there are 1500 houses in our neighborhood (I still get lost driving around), and maybe 200 of them have up lights.  Really?  As someone who loves Christmas, I think that's just kind of sad.  On the up side, maybe it means that we'll win!

Call me a dork, but when this

came in the mail today, I was pretty excited.  The yarn is called Cherry Chip and is shades of brown and dark red.  I'm working on making a blanket for my mom.  It was supposed to be for Christmas, but that isn't going to happen, so I am shooting for her birthday in February.  I couldn't find the yarn in any store around here, so I had to order it online.  I'm a bit miffed because when I looked for it online it was $2.50/skein (yep- we're talking real quality stuff here), but when I got around to starting the project and ordering it a couple weeks later it was up to $4 a skein.  Rats.  At any rate, it's going to be beautiful. 

What the heck happened to my post? 

We'll try this again.

I ran the Freedom 5K and it was the most fun race I've ever run.  The race was in honor of the Army/Navy game and so each person had to pick a team- either Army or Navy (as a side note, the Navy bibs were printed in Blue and said Go Navy). 

Much of the course was lined with little American flags, and around the 3-mile mark people were handing out mini flags to the runners so you could carry one to the finish.  Not only was the course beautiful, but it was a little bit road and a little bit trail, so it was intereseting.  The top 100 finishers got a commerative dog tag (if you care, I was 74th overall and 3rd in my age group), and the first "team" with 50 people to finish won the race overall.  In this case, it was Army (yea!).  So everyone with an Army bib gets some cool free stuff- a t-shirt (the race gimme was a knit hat), running socks, pizza, popcorn, coffee, etc.  Nice!

I'm sitting here trying to ignore my kids, who are currently upstairs complaining because I didn't let them do what they wanted.  When asked why, I told them it was because I was mean.  Funny how easily they accepted that. 

I want to apologize to my mom, for all these moments that I gave her when I was younger.  She keeps telling me that payback's a bitch, but of course she's much more polite about it.  I can only hope my grandkids (which will magically appear when my kids turn 30, and even then by immaculate conception) give my kids as much grief as they give me on a daily basis.  And why do they do that?  Is it genetically imprinted in kids to annoy their parents?  They ask for/to do something and automatically get pissy when they don't get the answer they want, but when I give them the long drawn-out explanation as to why things are that way, they lose interest and don't really care.  I am going to revert to that old standby- "Because I said so." 

See this poor little basil plant?  I've been trying to grow it since we got here.  I love basil, but it's so darn expensive in the store that I usually just grow my own.  It works much better in the ground then in a pot, so I plant it in the spring and use it fresh all summer, then dry it and use it all winter.  Well, I'm alsmost out of dried (the horror!), so I thought I'd try to start a new pot.  We tried to grow basil ijn a pot when we lived in upstate NY, but it was way too cold and the summers were too short, so it never amounted to much.  The problem is that it likes warm weather and sun.   Before moving here we lived out West, where it's sunny all the time.  But here?  I'm not sure they even really have sun, because I've hardly seen it.  So this poor little pot gets carried around the house chasing the sun.  I checked yesterday and we have 1 sprout, so maybe it'll work. 

Ah.....  Isn't it beautiful?  The sale was finalized today (i.e. the buyer closed on the house today and it was recorded as an official transaction in the country records).  Yea!

I heard on the news this morning that Black Friday and Cyber Monday shopping was up from last year.  Estimates were something like 15-18% up from last year.  Does that mean the economy is recovering?  I remember was back when I was in high school (hey, not too long ago.  We haven't had out 20-year reunion yet!) I was in an economics class and we were learning about the last recession in the 80s.  My teacher told us about how President Reagan lied to the public and gave a speech on how the recession was over, which caused consumer confidence to rise, so people went out and spent money, so that spurred the economy to recover faster.  Now is that true? In college I learned that it was somewhat true, but what I've taken away from that particular lessons, all these years later, is that the economy won't grow or recover unless there's money put into it.  While I didn't get up and go shopping at midnight (or at all) on Friday, we managed to our share of holiday shopping.  I think Black Friday is blending in to Gray Weekend (trademark pending- don't steal my catch phrase!), so with all the great deals out there, how could you not buy those things you were going to buy anyway but are now not only on sale but have free shipping?  So how much did you do to help the economy this past weekend?