What are these “real lives” you speak of?
Purple I don’t have quite as much disdain for. It is at least close enough to a holiday colour that it can pass without any significant complaint – you can at least get purple by combining red and blue, two of the primary Christmassy colours. Pink on the other hand has absolutely no business messing about in the holiday palette.
In recent years the mall that I live behind has put up the most hideous decorations. They’re not festive at all – at least not in the way Christmas is supposed to be. While most of the holiday colours are indeed there, though purple is prominently featured (and in context looks horrid) they are presented in a manner that in no uncertain terms scream “CLOWN PARTY!!” Imagine elongated, roughly-triangular pennants in red or purple or green and speckled with 2" squares of golden confetti hanging from curlicued brass limbs on the ceiling at either side of the halls in regular intervals. Between each are square posters of similar colour and style prominently featuring the mall’s mascot – a stylized paper shopping bag with handles and a smiley face caught in jolly mid-leap. Periodically, every two or three rows of ghastly party-favour-themed decoration hang strands of white icicle lights. These aren’t too bad. And then there’s Santa’s little village where the children go to sit on his knee. (Really, they actually brought that back instead of having a love seat where children could sit beside him) Again, Christmas colours, but around the little cul-de-sac are tall towers are gleefully grinning elves with bells on the ends of their caps and the toes of their pointed booties, all balanced on top of one another like a circus performance and slowly rotating on a revolving base. It’s like the Ringling Bros. couldn’t decide between wearing riotous show gear or Christmas attire so they wore both and promptly exploded all over the place.
Gah. The designer should have coal in his/her stocking, preferably while they’re still wearing it.
I wish it was only the holiday prepartions keeping me busy.
Somebody kill me. RoundBoy is explaining the concept of the Amish Rumspringa to Mandy the martian. I think he got the word “Amish” right in the whole thing.
She looks like a mini mountain lion, like dogbutler said. She looks like she’s about to pounce and kill for that bowl of cereal (?).
My baby is home now, too. I drove up and retrieved her this morning. She had a small suitcase of regular clothes and a huge duffle of dirty clothes. :rolleyes:
I have an orthodontist appointment tomorrow morning and then it’s off to start Christmas shopping. I know, I’m bad, I haven’t even started. I’ve been busy.
Hopefully tomorrow I will get some news about getting these daggoned braces off, too. I was supposed to get them off right around now, but things were not moving as quickly as expected. I’m hoping for next month or February.
Gotti, are you working on/at the Dickens Fair? A co-worker of mine goes every year and loves it.
The boss was by earlier with a little plate of nasty cookies. Sometimes I wonder what people keep in their homes, that their food tastes so nasty and chemical-ly. A co-worker who decorates cakes as a hobby always produces beautiful cakes with a nasty after taste, too. Color me 
I always make sure that my ingredients are fresh and aren’t contaminated by say, storing garlic with the cake flour. Or next to the bug spray.
Oh, do tell! :dubious:
Yes. I’m behind the scenes with Cuthbert’s and DH plays Ralph Nickelby in various vignettes throughout the day.
SIL and her husband were with us for the weekend, and she’d had no good notion of what the Dickens Fair was. From the moment the curtain was pulled back after the opening tableau, exposing the streets of London, she was absolutely gobsmacked at it all.
She’d been thinking it was some sort of quasi-educational thing like where they put the kids in a tram and roll them past museum displays and animatronic robots act out skits or whatever. :dubious:
What could be farther from the truth? We’re all bundled up against the cold, (it is December in London, after all!) there’s (theatrical) snow on the ground, Ebeneezer Scrooge is meeting with the sprirts, the Nickelby family is having its issues, chimney sweeps rove around, Fagin and his crew are about and it’s over two acres of immersive theater in the round, with sights, sounds and smells to make you forget you’re in California.
Oh, nothing really funny. Just him droning on in his “I know something you don’t” voice, and Mandy is eating it up. I wish I could dump some of the stuff I have to get done today onto them, but I’d end up doing it all over after the fact.
The good news is I have shipped out my out-of-state Christmeas prezzies today. Oh, the joys of having daily FedEx and UPS pick-ups, plus a company that let’s you use the shipping guy to handle stuff like this. We just have to pay the freight.
Last week’s hijacker must side with this week’s hijacker, especially since he waited patiently until 8… unlike some insomniac I know.
I’m still ick. That’s all I got for right now.
Cute toes 
Yay, page two!
(just another useless post)
yay, page two… !
Huh?
Oh.
I found this and thought of swampy.
We have 2 exciting new developments at work. One, they’ve recreated the secretarial pool, to “improve efficiency”. That means that the partners are tired of sharing their admins with lowly managers, who will now be relegated to using the pool, with strict limits on what services are available. Two, starting in January, we will have daily, mandatory, 15 minute quality meetings each morning. Woo and hoo. My joy knows no bounds.
Well, maybe YOU have a real life, but I sure don’t.
I just watched some 6 Feet Under. There is an episode called “The Invisible Woman” (Emily Previn). I swear I am her–or will be once I’m old. If I dont’ post here for a week, would someone do something about it? (barring goodbye threads, banning and things of that sort). I can just see me being put out with the trash…
What a depressing thought. I blame the cold medicine. But it’s true-some days I go w/o speaking to anyone (and somedays I crave those days). <shrugs>
Off to find appropriate Xmas pics for calendar…
So far today …
At least five people have ordered a camera that the website explicitly says is not in stock. As per our procedures, I sent an e-mail to every one of them stating that the item will be sent as soon as it arrives from the manufacturer, which will likely be in 4-6 weeks. Three people have called to “make sure” the camera is in stock without checking their e-mail. Each one of these people has also berated me for “letting” them order it when we didn’t have it.
My roommate has informed me that she has to work till 7 every night this week. Which, in addition to how much that sucks for her, means that she will come home every night this week cranky, screaming, no fun, and entirely unlikely to help me clean the house for the party on Saturday. In addition, she will have no time to shop for presents until Saturday afternoon, which means I’ll also be doing the grocery shopping and setup alone.
One gentleman called to say he received a thousand-dollar camera he never ordered, which I find amusing given that I’m staring at the order he placed right now.
And I bought my roommate Moon Shoes. That’s the good part of today.
Oh by the way, thanks for all the kind words from Friday’s pic. And Bumba, I’m in my mid-forties, so that does make me middle-aged. Even if it’s at the low end of that range.
I’m sure much concern would be expressed, and **swampy ** would probably say something about getting your paper done… But I personally wouldn’t know how to find you IRL, so I’d worry, then my bad memory would take over and I’d forget all about you. Sorry - it doesn’t mean I don’t luv ya, it just means I’m old and forgetful…
You *were * the one with the paper to write, right???
All of her is cute - she’s *MY * baby after all! 
BWAH! My first out loud laugh of the day–thank you!
(hell, I’d forget about me, too…)
AND I FINISHED THAT DAMNED PAPER.
Think I’m just feeling the head cold blues. Still have to go buy one last present-I ran all my errands and completely forgot to do that. Damn.