They almost might as well not make the Black Honey gloss, since it's so often sold out when I go shopping for it. But thank god they do. I'd hate to be on a Ruby Meltish quest. I usually buy it in twos (one for the bag, one for the house), but next time I find it I'm buying four, I think. It's just the right colour, and my lips stay moisturised through almost a whole work day.

We need to send a fashion crew out to you (that Mizrahi guy obviously didn't go far enough) to mix things up a little.

Not so much for your benefit, as for ours.

Ha ha ha. You should thank Clinton and Stacy that I'm even considering that I could wear these brown pants with the maroon shoes and possibly a pink top. See, I'm trying to get better -- mostly I only wear one color at a time, and the rest is black.

Note to self: stop taking cold medicine. It never works out. I swear it was the stuff I took before bed that woke me up at 3:30 this morning, and the stuff I took this morning (different stuff) is making me nauseated. Not worth it.

'That end-of-empire feeling'

Mostly about economic stuff, like our huge budget defecit and trade imbalance.

It was 2 F when I got up this morning. I decided to wait a little while before leaving for work, see if it would warm up. After an hour, it budged up to a whole 3 F.

It's now 7 F. There's absolutely no wind. I think the wind froze.

No self-respecting engineering student would make the kinds of dumb mistakes that are built into us.

I've been saying this for YEARS.

Latest weather predictions include sleet mixing with snow. Which is not good.

And OH MY GOD, people make me crazy.

I'm startled to see that the hands site is doing half again as much traffic as the next site up, with 22GB in 5 days.

Teppy is not alone.

And you know from your referrer logs that the traffic is not all from me.

Teppy is not alone.

See, this freaked me out. Not *in* context, in context it's fine. More because my eye caught the sentence before reading the rest of ita's post. Sounded like a line out of a horror movie.

OMG, the text messages are coming from INSIDE THE HOUSE!!!!

Must work on presentation. Must!

But first, I wanted to share something from a travel ad in a recent New Yorker:

Jamaica is a bit of a dichotomy. Wrapped in a paradox. Smothered in irony. Which would probably go great with a Red Stripe.

Now, I think it's great, and clever, and I quite like the ad. But "smothered in irony"? If I go there, is everyone going to be sardonic at me?

Tom, it's the local Fox affiliate - 12 on cable/32 on broadcast.

I insisted on that particular cruise because I fell in love with a picture of Curacao in the brochure. It didn't hurt that we both really liked St. Maarten when we stopped there on our last cruise.

That sounds wonderful, as long as you get some time to explore each island. I loveg Curacao, and I have wanted to go to Bonaire for years. Do either of you dive?

eta: Shrift, that is gorss. You need to move to California.

No, we don't, Perkins. We're more the land-based sightseeing type. Though I think we have birdwatching planned on -- maybe it's St. Vincent.

The downside of cruise ships is that you only get one day at any port. And there's usually enough on any island to justify a longer stay. So a cruise is more of a sampler than a way to get to know any place. On the up side, warm enough to wear shorts in January.

We're still new enough to cruising to take the tours offered by the cruise line. (In Jamaica last time, we saw Rose Hall. Home to Annie Palmer, who became the subject of a Johnny Cash song.)