The family in the kitchen, and other randomness

[mellicious]

aet was talking about families in the kitchen, and as it happens, I have a few pictures taken in my grandmother's kitchen - although like both Aet and columbina, we always went elsewhere for "formal" pictures. But my family is generally a pretty informal bunch, and we never particularly minded having pictures taken in the kitchen, any more than anywhere else.

When my grandparents were alive, their house was the designated place that everybody gathered for holidays. This is my mother and sister (ever the ham) baking chocolate meringue pie:



and this is my grandmother holding down her usual spot in the rocking chair across the room. I'm pretty sure this was her last Christmas - 1999. She was 89, and she died the next May. She was not actually living at home by this time - she was living in a nursing home. But my mother and Art came up every couple of weekends - for several years! - and took Grandma home for the weekend. Or in this case, for the holidays.




Seems to me I have seen some other kitchen photographs around. And all of this makes me think that I need to start working on sorting out photographs again; I still have - literally - thousands of them floating around in various boxes. (OK, the floating part is not literal. But the thousands part is.)


I suppose all those free shipping offers we were discussing before do work, because I spent about $150 (total) at two different online stores today, both of which had free shipping. In both cases these were things I could have bought at stores in the area - in Houston, at least - but I thought, well, the shipping's free, so I might as well save myself the trip! (Although in fact, I am still planning one trip into Houston to shop before the holidays are over, in any case. It wouldn't quite seem like Christmas if I didn't go.) One of the gifts is for my mother-in-law, and it's being shipped to me, so I'm still going to have to turn around and pay to have it shipped to her, which kind of negates the savings, there. But there were two gifts in there, that was the problem. I am assuming they wouldn't ship to two different places for free. Although you never know - maybe I should've checked!


The other "news" of the evening is GuildWars-related: I finished Eye of the North! Somebody wrote on the forum today that they needed the "Heart of the Shiverpeaks" mission, which is the one that leads to the end, and they were going to do it at 6:00 Eastern. (Our guild/alliance is spread all over the English-speaking world; we have big contingents in the US and Canada, Europe, and Australia, meaning that people may be wanting to start doing something at any time of the day. You never know.) Normally 5:00 would be too early for me, of course, but as it happens, I was leaving work early to go to the optometrist, and that went fairly fast and I got home at 20 til 5. Just in time. And we whipped through HotS and kept right on going through the next two missions to the end. Or the "official" end, anyway; there is still another whole quest sequence that comes after it. But I'm not worried about that part right now. I'm just happy to have finished! (Which means I can do Hard Mode now. Eww.)

The optometrist visit was because I lost my prescription sunglasses, and then somehow I managed to lose my back-up pair, too. Interestingly, it's the first time since I started wearing the prescription sunglasses 10 years or so ago that I've lost any of them. But I was intending to get another pair this year, anyway, so I just have to do that a little sooner. (And I have plenty of money in my medical flex account, so I can pay for it out of that.) I ended up getting Ray-Bans, which is also a first - but not the traditional Ray-Bans shape. I didn't even try that shape on, but I'm fairly sure they wouldn't've have suited me. Besides, I would feel like a cop or something wearing those!


I have had sort of an inspiration about what to do about Holidailies; I was worried I would burn out on writing daily before the end of December. (Although I won't really be able to write daily the whole month anyway - I'm not intending to try to track down a computer while we're on vacation!) I'm still not swearing I'll actually post every single day, even before the vacation - but I thought of a category of entries I can write that I've never done before, and hopefully that will keep me interested enough to keep posting. It's something that I've been thinking about writing lately anyway - and no, I'm not going to tell you what it is!



Pizza Hut ad I saw today:

A CORNUCOPIA OF CHEESE!!
(That means a whole, whole lot!)

It just makes you despair.

Comments

Pizza hut

[(Anonymous)]

Oh, this is sad.

[crickwooder.livejournal.com]

what is sad is that I got frustrated with my laptop, wondering why I couldn't click the cut tag. I need to put the internet down for a while. Reality is beginning to fog.

[mellificent.livejournal.com]

Hee. (There was a cut tag, though, or there was supposed to be - wasn't it working?)

[crickwooder.livejournal.com]

oh, yeah, the real one was fine! but the bold parentheses in the Pizza Hut quote had me thinking it was a cut-tag, because Livejournal has eaten my brain.