Merry Christmas, and congratulations on your fabulous gifts from Santa!!

I'm taking a brief break from gift opening, and am pouring through a number of books I got. In a little while, I'll start our dinner.

I hope that everyone is having a perfect day.

I'm practically catatonic today, took three extra strength tylenol already. My parents turned up 3 1/2 hours late yesterday. Vanessa smashed a snow globe into a billion pieces all over the coffee table, so every last bit of the before nibbles had to be thrown out and we had to move up to the living room because there were far too many shards of glass on the family room floor to clean up without making a tremendous upheaval. Then my mother "misplaced" all the envelopes my father had carefully assembled with the family presents inside, so Dad sat in the den with Ted for an hour trying to write cheques to replace the cash. Then everybody stayed until almost 10:30, including Tony and the kiddies.

Today is my favourite day of the year, the furthest date from Christmas for another 12 months. Janice is on her way down from Bolton for her martini, had to skip Wednesday as she had no ride. Marilyn will be here at 5 for a glass of something. If anyone in this house gets hungry today, they are on their own.

Hope all had a wonderful day. I am going back to bed for an hour.

Hello all, I hope you all had a great Christmas. Kae I hope your day got better, what a mess. Though my sister has a snow globe in her bathroom that I have been afraid that Jolene was going to drop too.

Anyways, I am just popping in to say hello and let you all know that things are going well for us here. Am enjoying the little bit of warmth they have down here. I think that CT still has snow on the ground from last weekend's storm. Yuck.

Anyways, the kids all had a wonderful Christmas and at this point I am kind of thinking the same as Kae, thank goodness we don't have to do this again for another year. I feel bad for everyone who has birthdays in January. I don't even have to do b-day gifts for a few months. I am tired of shopping.

Well if I don't get back on here until after the new year I wish you all a safe and happy one.

Moore I am headed up next Saturday. If you might be interested in maybe meeting for a dinner or something send me an email. I only plan on going a few hours that first day and then driving the rest of the way up on Sunday so wouldn't mind stopping in your neck of the woods for the night. Would be nice to meet one of the board family for a change...

I'm just beginning to come around, lol. Argh, quell ordeal this Christmas business. Anyway, I ate that piece of chocolate cheesecake leftover from Christmas eve for breakfast today and it felt really good going down.

We watched 2 movies last night, Iron Man and then Made of Honor. As much as I like RDJ that movie was a bit much for me and I watched about a third of it from under a blanket. Made of Honor was fluffy and silly but a good antidote to blown up stuff.

Instead of running off to get my cell phone today, I'm going to veg until dinner when parents are coming to help polish off the leftovers from the 25th. I must be riddled with guilt (for nothing) because I've had quite the belly-full of them for a while, but my father is so needy when it comes to the holidays and mother is next to impossible now. She still can't remember what she did with the $900 my father had in cash for the envelopes for gifts, but Dad thinks she may have given it away to one of the home care people, and he's probably right. sigh

Shelly, stay safe on the road. (You know that any time you're up this way, there's a guest room here with your name on it.) Jojo, I'm so glad your Christmas this year was merry!

Time to make up the shopping list for groceries. It's Saturday but days seem to be running all together as the holidays jumble them up. Anything newsy going on with you guys?

Has anyone heard from Jessica lately? Is she taking another one of her three month breaks from the board? I don't think she's popped in since November.

Eeesh. I hope you make it through the evening ok Moore!

Kae, I haven't heard from Jess either. I don't know where she is. Busy with the kiddos and work I suppose.

And does your mom have one home care person? I would hope that $900 in cash would raise the eyebrow of that home care person, and prompted them to ask your mother if she meant to give it to them.

I took Jackson to Wal-Mart today so he could blow his Christmas cash. He found a few video games and toys. (My brother gave him his Grand Theft Auto game when he gave him the playstation...have you all seen that game? GAH. Shooting, naked chicks. ARGH. I promptly took it away, and therefore had to go let him find some replacements.) I talked him into a nice game based on the Madagascar movie. Hehe.

I just put groceries away, and it seems I'm still obsessed with trying new recipes. I saw a few things on food network today that I wanted to try. Some red potatoes sliced (not all the way through), sliced garlic in between the slices, with a sour cream mixture on top, and some gorgonzola cheese-bread crumb stuffed roma tomatoes. Yum, yum. I LOVE gorgonzola cheese. Love it. Which perplexes me, since I don't care much for blue cheese.

jojolin wrote:

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I took Jackson to Wal-Mart today so he could blow his Christmas cash. He found a few video games and toys. (My brother gave him his Grand Theft Auto game when he gave him the playstation...have you all seen that game? GAH. Shooting, naked chicks. ARGH. I promptly took it away, and therefore had to go let him find some replacements.)

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That is perhaps the stupidest move I've ever seen. I guess the big glaring M doesn't sway your brother to think that's a bad idea to get it for your son. I happen to like most of the GTA franchise but that's not appropriate for a kid Jackson's age. Heck I wouldn't recommend that for the majority of teenagers out there whose parents will buy it because it's just a video game.

I'd seriously question your brother's judgment going forward from this point. Yes let's buy the young boy that spends his time watching Spongebob and what not on television the game where you can kill prostitutes, run over pedestrians and blow up people for fun. That just screams young boy game doesn't it?


Hey Kae, 88 Minutes was all right. If you want to get a good make your mind think movie I'd try Inside Man starring Denzel Washington and Clive Owen or check out Traitor with Don Cheadle. Traitor's a little slow but the ending was worth it and Inside Man has an abundance of the f-bomb but if you can get past all that, still a very good show.

-- Edited by everbran at 12:39, 2008-12-28

Re: the game. My brother didn't actually buy it for him, per se. He gave him his PlayStation 2 console, and just divvied the games up between Jackson and Carter. (He has 2 of them). My brother has never played the ensuing GTA games, just the first, and I suspect he didn't much remember what the game was about. He did tell me to go through all the games before we left and he would keep which ones I thought were not appropriate, and I must have just missed that one. The rest are mundane games, like indy racing, football, basketball, etc. I think that one must have just gotten past us both.
The good thing is Jackson didn't play very much of it before I went into his room and realized what he was playing.

It was a WTF moment for me, but at the same time, am very grateful to my brother for giving Jack his PS2. Jack has been hankering for it for a while now.

Moore, I've never heard of Costello! I'll have to nose around for it up here. I'm lucky to be able to even get gorgonzola, LOL.

Midnight? Eeesh. Talk about exhausting!

Kae, my mother runs a retirement home (a bit different than a nursing home), and tries to be very careful where home health and care aides are concerned. My mother has no qualms confronting these folks, as the people in the home are more than happy to give things, including money, away. If she suspects things are amiss, she'll run an inventory check of their belongings.
But, if your mother loves to give these people things, then so be it I suppose. HOwever, when the things escalate to more expensive things, like $900, it's gets more alarming.
And perhaps one thought they may insult your mother by questioning whether a $900 bonus is accurate or not. I don't know. It's disarming to say the least.

And folks who take from the elderly they are supposed to be caring for? Don't get me started there...I've seen it a thousand times over...Uggh.

Hm, I don't recall ever seeing that before. I'll have to see if one of the stores here that sometimes carries different things like that has it.

And don't worry about it...I've thrown plenty of rotten tomatoes at my bro in my life, and was cursing him when I found Jack playing the game, LOL. No big.

So....I sprayed some oven cleaner in my oven last night, and cleaned it out this morning. It's all nice and shiny and clean. I went to pre-heat the oven a moment ago and it smelled like cleaner. Cleanser was all I smelled. Reading the can, I noticed I missed the fine print about not spraying on the heating element at the bottom. Oops. So, any suggestions on how to proceed? I've turned the oven off, and was going to just use a damp rag with a little mild soap to wipe down the heating element.