I’m not sure I have that much to blog about this morning. But suffice to say that this weekend I was anything but a couch potato. I wrote, partook in a Thanksgiving feast, spent some cash, and turned the house upside down then right side up for a new TV I bought a week before. It was supposed to be delivered today, but on Sunday morning I got a call from the store and they said they were on their way. Okay I thought, why fight it? So by mid morning I had lovely 50′ plasma on my wall. Now, there’s a whole other story about getting the TV that I may share in a later blog post but let’s just say I didn’t get all the important information I really needed from the store clerk, like maybe it was a good idea to purchase extra cables because this thing eats wires and cords for snacks. Anyway my super-duper-discounted TV looks great and once the cable people come and switch out my regular cable box for Hi-def I’ll be in good shape. Now it’s back to work so I can earn the coins to pay off the new addition. Happy Monday!

No, I did not wake up at midnight to get ready to hit the stores but as I’m listening to the radio this morning I see a lot of people did. Instead of the traffic report they are talking about all the shopping going on. The malls opened at midnight, and some of the big name stores opened at 4am. I actually woke up at 8am this morning and I guess Black Friday is almost over. I don’t think I’ve ever seen it this crazy. It makes me want to go out and shop even though I don’t need to. <g> The rain has moved in too with a little bit of thunder. Let’s just say I already spent my Christmas cash yesterday, donating my funds to Roto-Rooter. The plumbing decided to go on holiday too and not only did they have visit afterhours but I got the holiday special as well. It was a tough clog to fix as it was under the house and not the main line. I then had the wonderful experience of cleaning up my floor and shower. But the day got better as I had a wonderful Thanksgiving dinner with friends with all the fixings. I was so stuffed afterwards I could barely eat pie later. Hope your Thanksgiving was wonderful.

Contrary to what’s showing on my sidebar I’m now reading Twilight by Stephenie Meyer. I really want to see the movie in the theater. I don’t want to wait for the DVD to come out in six months so I figured I better get busy.

This book is good, really good. Once again I find myself lost in a super good story by an author who I’m happily jealous of. Ms. Meyer’s writing voice is smooth as butter and even the sometimes long descriptions that would normally be summed up in a transition are so well written that I feel transported from my Lazyboy right into Forks.

Again this book is written in first person, which I’m coming to admire because it’s done right. For a young adult novel there is enough meat that makes us adult’s enjoy this story too. And if that wasn’t enough the description of Edward Cullen and his reaction to Bella had me turning the pages so fast I’m sure I left burn marks on them. But by ten o’clock my eyes were getting tired and sleep was calling my name so I regretfully dog-eared the page and put Forks, Edward, and Bella to bed. I just may slip Twilight in my purse and sneak away for lunch today. I just need to make sure I come back.

This time of year I get in a weird mood. Sometimes I’m reflective looking back over the past year to see what I’ve accomplished, other times I’m enjoying the holiday spirit. I also battle the elements fighting allergies-the wind, the constant change of temperature. The ‘routine’ gets changed up. People are going out of town (including me eventually). There are less people at work. The people on the morning radio show (that I listen to Monday-Friday) start taking vacation and I’m listening to re-runs of the ‘best of’ episodes. The TV shows are wrapping things up so they can go dark by the time Thanksgiving comes. It’s almost as if everyone is wrapping up loose ends then taking a breather after winding up a long exhausting year. It gives me too much time to think. Of course my attention should be on other things and it is, but every now and then a little piece of reflectiveness shows up and makes me think and ponder. Did I get everything accomplished that I wanted to? Yes and no. Did I grab hold of every opportunity that came my way? Yes and no. Did I recognize how blessed I am with friends and family? Absolutely-Yes.

Sailing, sailing, over the bounty waves… Yippee-Ki-Yay I’m going on a cruise next month. I’m so excited. It came up at the last minute, the price was right, and the folks and I agreed celebrating Christmas early was no problem. We don’t exchange gifts and haven’t for several years. Especially since it’s all about seeing and enjoying each other’s company. And the best part is I have a room with a balcony. Looks like we’ll be heading out of MCO and going to Mexico, Cayman’s, and Jamaica mon’. I’m so overdue for an escape! So to get in the spirit of things, I looked through some photos of past cruises and found these awesome pics of an excursion I’d taken in St. Lucia. I thought I’d share so enjoy!

I have a suspicious charge that keeps showing up on my bank statement. It’s from Family Donuts. It’s only about 4 to 5 dollars and started appearing once or twice a month. Now it’s once a week, sometimes more. Who has access to my bank account and what is their obsession with donuts? I know-my  sugar loving, icing licking evil twin!  ;-)

Happy Friday.

Is two weeks a habit? I fell asleep on the couch last night-second Wednesday in a row. Actually I’ve been sleeping better on the couch, even though it’s the smaller of the two in my living room. My head is raised and it’s firmer than my bed. And the best part is I don’t have to make my bed. The only problem is I have these weird dreams. Can I tell you what they are? No. But I can say that I wake up with a weird feeling and think about whatever it was I was dreaming about.  I’m trying to decide what to wear to work this morning. I have an important meeting and the temp is going to drop all through the day. I guess another cold front is moving through and this week it’s only supposed to get in the 50s. So that means it will be warm earlier and then boom, cold front. It was very noisy in the neighborhood this morning. Two loud planes flew over the house then neighbor decided to take his mufflerless motorcycle to work. Alright I’m up already!

I’ve been asked by a few people if I’m on Facebook and the answer is no.  I really have no interest right now taking the time to make a Facebook page, maintaining it, and gathering up enough people to make it worthwhile. Maybe later  Facebook and Myspace will have a place in my life, but not right now. This year it’s been all about simplification and cleaning out clutter. I cleaned and organized the garage, fixed up the front yard and sold half of my CD and book collection. I really need to tackle my filing cabinet next, but before I get to that I have a computer I need to pay some attention to. It’s a mess. I need to sort my entire story outlines, character charts, and scenes that I’ve written into something manageable that I can work with. I think motivational speaker Jack Canfield called these Attention Deficits- stuff your brain processes through your subconscious that hold you back from doing other things. They’re like little pieces of a puzzle that make up attention deficit disorder and this year I’ve had a bad case of it. The good news is I’ve had small but frequent breakthroughs where I can sit and task for longer and longer periods of time because I’ve removed some of the big chores my brain keeps telling me need to get done. Of course I can’t remove every single one, that is impossible, but it’s good that huge chunks that were important to only me aren’t taking up space in my head and nagging me. I know this post may sound strange but it’s something I felt I needed to write, and now I feel better. Do you go through periods where no matter what you want to do you’re held back by something you feel you should do first?

Yesterday I set out to support the economy. I had the urge to spend. Yes that’s right. I wanted so desperately to spend money so that’s what I did. In fact I shopped until I dropped. I got good friend Lore in on it too. Sometimes no matter how tough things are you have to say WTF and just go for it and have a good time. And that’s exactly what I did. We headed first to the gas station because I was on E and when I filled my tank for $19 I knew then it was going to be a great shopping day. I love that gas prices are now below what they were last year.

We then headed off to the library because I had to return a book that I didn’t get a chance to read and couldn’t renew because someone else had put it on hold. The library was out of the rest of the books in the series so I decided to head on out to the bookstores-a shopping opportunity I couldn’t pass up. We ended up at Half Price Books. I found a couple on the bargin shelf but my big score was finding The Crow DVD! And Lore - she found more than a couple of books for herself. One was on knitting, she’s decided she wants to get back into it again so our next stop was Joanne’s.

But first we stopped at Barnes and Noble because I was still on the hunt for more Charlaine Harris books. There was one copy left of Living Dead in Dallas which I hastily grabbed, along with an RT (Romantic Times Magazine). We stayed long enough for coffee and desserts at the in-house Starbucks, then headed to Joanne’s for yarn. Oh my goodness I think everyone else had the same idea we did. All three stores were bursting at the store seams with wall to wall people. Let me say that this weekend there was no recession. I repeat no recession, nada.

The lines to check out in Joanne’s stretched almost halfway back into the store so I knew it would take Lore some time to finally get to the register. I told her I was going to peruse Office Depot and for her to meet me there. My legs and feet were so tired by that time. We had been on the go for around 3 hours. That’s when I made the mistake of heading down the notebook computer aisle. And that’s when I fell in love the little computer pictured above. Yup it came home with me. It’s an Acer Aspire 8.9 widescreen notebook computer. It comes complete with wireless, 1GB memory, a 120GB hard drive and the operating system is Windows XP. It was $350.00 and it only weighs 2.19lbs. The best thing about it-it fits in my purse. It’s so light I even downloaded the rest of the Sookie Stackhouse series and now, not only do I have an extremely portable computer that I can take anywhere, I have an eBook reader that I can store tons and tons of books on. I scored yesterday and there was no shopping remorse.

What a day indeed.