Happy birthday Allyson!

Megan sends lovely Lush gifties. Bath fizzies are ALWAYS welcome in my house.

Oh, I love the Lush bath fizzies like pancakes. Just not the lavendar ones. I guess I tend to enjoy the food scents more...lemon, vanilla, cinnamon, etc.

Hm. Perhaps I should loudly praise the wonders of Lush in the presence of the lavendar givers. There's a plan.

London synagogue auctions off celebrity underwear. [link]

Actress Emma Thompson’s black stomach-flattening Spanx came with the note that reads, “These are the knicker equivalent of Fort Knox”. Songwriter and poet John Hegley’s briefs feature a poem about ants and pants. The singer Fergie of the Black Eyed Peas sent in gold, metallic boy shorts. And writer Nick Hornby and his young son adorned a pair of boxers with stickers and a feather.

Undergarments apparently from actress Helen Mirren, actor Daniel Day-Lewis, and illustrator Aline Crumb are also on the block.

It's to raise money for a center for asylum seekers.

Awesome, megan.

It seems like spendy soap would be a good gift. You know, the kind of thing they wouldn't buy for themselves. But not if the reason they wouldn't buy it is they won't use it.

In my news about me, it is snowing! Really heavily snowing, with accumulation on the ground and the whole bit. Dave planted a new grapevine and within a half an hour it had dropped 15 degrees and was coming down like mad.

I'd seen the clouds, so I'd been scrambling around getting the rain barrels set back up after the wind (this time with concrete blocks in them) and it was freezing. Crazy since we'd just been checking out our little private lake and it was probably low fifties. But there's no doubt about the snow now.

I am annoyed with myself that I opened a gift of bath fizzies last Christmas, because I will never use it, and now I can't re-gift it! I love fancy soap gifts, though.

Why don't you just use the fizzies, Jesse?

Ford Escape Hybrid...total ideal car for me. Except you know, for the price. In general hybrids wouldn't be that great for us because 95% of our driving is highway at 75

On the trip from Denver to Yellowstone and back last summer, there were four of us plus a full load of luggage in my uncle's Escape hybrid 2wd. Total distance was about 1300 miles, most of it at freeway speeds, and the average MPG for the trip came out to 31.8

If you really don't want to use them, for some reason I can't imagine, you can always put them in another container...like a nice basket...with an additional something nice...like bathtime reading, a calming cd or that loofah that someone else gave you and which you will likewise never use.

t /unrepentant master regifter

I don't like baths, is why. At some point, I will investigate the re-gifting potential -- but now I'll have to remember not to re-gift any of you people! Or I could just give one of you the semi-unwrapped business. Anyone want it?