Just stickin' my head in the door before I have to run out of here (stupid job wanting me to do actual work and not just sit and chat all afternoon!)

Hey P-C, nice to see you! (Says the gal who keeps forgetting that she has barely shown her own "face" around here lately).

Skipping to the front to ask a question Emily's making me ask.

Do I have to have dinner? I had a good lunch at 11:30 and a few snacks since then. I'm not hungry. Nothing sounds good. It's almost bedtime.

Ice cream should do me, right?

Protein and calcium. Sounds like a nutritious meal to me.

A 'lil bit of a meara

You are brilliant! I can do this and sell my CD's! You just saved me from hocking my TV! I love you!

I love you too! I made 40 dollars for a biggish stack of cds, two dvds, and a PS2 game. The sorting was the only hard part. Well, that and refusing FIFTY dollars in store credit. But now I've got gas in my car and dinners for the week.

They were sold at stands and in little shops and while ham and butter on bread sounds lame, its french ham on french bread with french butter (and sometime little french pickles) and it tastes OUTSTANDING and I cheerfully ate them every day.

That sounds nummy. I'm probably happier with the cheap stuff anyway. Also, my friend just called. We'll be in an actual hotel in Italy for two nights (as she will be seeing her boyfriend, and they'll have been apart for a while. Ahem.) We are going to bike around vineyards in Tuscany!!!

Going up the Eifel Tower, for example, was prohibitively expensive.

I just want to walk BY the Eiffel Tower. Sit by it for a bit.

As far as gifts, Nilly taught me the BEST policy ever-- magnets, bookmarks, keychains.

My mom wants a pebble from everywhere I go. That is all.

After walking around looking at all the beauty we stopped in a little shop and got several pasties and a drink and then walked over to a park and had an impromptu picnic.

This would make me every bit as happy as any restaurant.

She is your friend, and she will understand, or she will have to understand, that no matter how much you care about her, you have priorities that are a universe apart from spa treatments in Vegas.

Listen to Nora's ass, for it is wise.

Ice cream should do me, right?

It's my plan. That or beer.

I compromised. I'm having a salad with cheese and then ice cream.

If it makes you feel any better, Sparky, it sounds like your friend's wife may have some mental health issues. Sometimes people just need to get a clue, but if someone regularly makes these lame excuses (Christmas!), then it sounds like they're covering for something else, or at the very least have some strange co-dependency issues.

Of course, I don't know either of them, so could be talking out of, um, well, you get the picture.

I need a video camera in this house y'all. Oz (who likes carrots BTW) was practicing his basic obediance stuff. He's not great at it, being only 4 months, but we work on it anyway because it's great me paying attention to him time.

So I'm sitting there on the couch practicing sit. He's doing it pretty well, so I figured I'd move to lay down. Max has been watching Oz get treats for doing this stuff she knows how to do. So my next sit command, she comes over and sits next to Oz. I go to lay down and not only does she lay down, but puts her forearm over Oz so that he goes down when she does.

She does that to him a lot because she doesn't like him running around while she's laying down, but to see her make him follow the command was pretty cute.

Oh, God, Heather. That's just too cute for words. You need to get one of those digital cameras that makes videos and put them on the web for us to see. I'd watch it every Christmas!

ION, I had to go tell our lovely neighbor downstairs to turn down his music. It got very, very quiet after my little visit.

I think he's afraid I'll call the cops on him again. Hee!

ETA: It's like I have this card I can pull out at any time. It's the yeah-well-remember-the-time-you-were-on-my-fire-escape-at-2-am? card. It's a good one to have in the back pocket.

Mr H has a phone that will do video, but only about 15 seconds, and I never know when they're about to do something adorable. If I did, I'd have video of Max training Oz, the great animal freakout of 2005 (for amusement), and Oz coming over to snuggle Max when she was freaking out during a thunderstorm (possibly only cute if you know that they usually chase each other and fight like cats dogs and much younger dogs).