Oops, Sorry About That

My last posting here was in early August and then, as far as anyone could tell, I just dropped off the face of the earth. I didn't, really. Instead, I discovered facebook and started posting all my news there, as well as in alt.fans.cecil-adams, leaving myself with nothing new to say here.

So, let's see. I knitted a baby blanket and an afghan, for my favorite baby and his grandmother, respectively. I've gotten pretty good at making navy bean soup in my pressure cooker. I've done a lot of reading on the Kindle DX. I discovered Woot.com and Wine.Woot.com and have spent too much money on gifts and bottles. We're down in Palm Desert (we got here a week ago) and Gordo the Wonder Collie is settling in, although he did fall into the waterfall pond on his first day here.

My beloved cousin (well, she's actually my cousin's wife, but I love her as if she were a sister, so there's no single word to describe the relationship) will be here in a couple of hours, to stay until the day after Christmas. The rest of the family will show up a little later. Her husband (the actual cousin) and their daughter get here on Sunday and their son shows up three days later. The kids' arrival dates are functions of their college and high school schedules. Her sister lives just north of us, as do his father and his sister and her husband.

I spent two hours at the supermarket earlier today, trying to fill in my pantry and have some nice fresh produce for her. I went to Stater Bros. (for the first time ever) and discovered that they have a very extensive La Brea Bakery product line. I went a little overboard and will have to do a little freezing before bedtime. Nice produce and a nice service butcher, too. There was a customer at the butcher counter looking at beef roasts and he asked to look at the other side of every roast there. I know why he was doing that, but it's excessive when it's a rib roast from the middle of the piece. Sort of like looking at both sides of a center-cut pork chop.

I'm having Christmas dinner this year for all the California members of my mother's family. That's not very many people, though. There's us, my uncle, and his two kids and their families. As I wrote above, my uncle's son has two kids. His daughter has one son, who lives in the Pacific Northwest. He and his wife won't be here because they bought a house and the escrow is closing on the 23rd or 24th, so they had to stay there. They're going to have a baby in the spring (I already bought a present on kids.woot.com). So this year there will be nine of us for dinner on Christmas Eve. I'm hoping that this becomes a family tradition, now that three households are so conveniently close.

I'm sure there's more to tell, but I've got to go put the rest of the groceries away. I'm going to light some candles to greet my cousin, too. Festive is my watchword this year.