Last week our administrative assistant sent everyone in our department this e-mail:
Get into the Spirit of the Holidays…
All next week is junk food week
Bring in your favorite candy, cookies, snacks, appetizers, etc.
to share with your co-workers
Now I ask you – how is anyone supposed to stick to a diet around here?
Today I turned the kitchen into a factory to make Christmas gifts.
I just realized that I made cookies for gifts one year before I even had a mixer. I have no idea how I managed to mix up the dough for 60 dozen cookies that year (yes, that’s right, I made 60 dozen. Baked for days.) I was much younger then.
I just took these right out of the oven. Yum!
After they cool a couple of minutes in the pan you have to let the cookies cool completely on the rack so the bottoms get nice and crisp.
After five dozen cookies I decided to stop and see the latest Harry Potter movie. Very good!
Now I’m ready to play Santa’s helper! My friend and next-door neighbor Kim got the first bag. She sampled them all for you. Her eyes rolled back into her head when she took that first bite. Then she groaned. I think that’s good.
So, all you lucky cookie recipients – you have a great present coming to you!
“Spring passes into summer and through summer and autumn into winter. Only the more surely, by its ultimate return, to triumph over that grave toward which it resolutely hastens from its first hour. We mourn over the blossoms of May because they are to wither. But we know withal that May is one day to have its revenge upon November, by the revolution of the solemn circle which never stops. Which teaches us in our height of hopes ever to be sober. And, in our depths of desolation, never to despair.”
– Cardinal Newman
Eleanor Powell trained her dog to dance with her in her living room:
Click here for all the pictures:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2098013&id=1431549560&l=c77ca70944
Just a few for starters:
I got back from a fantastic Caribbean cruise celebrating my parent’s 50th anniversary and find myself sick all week! I went to the doctor for antibiotics and left work early after I met a deadline. (That’s the only reason I drug myself there in the first place.) Now I know why I’ve been sick. Here’s author John Derbyshire’s explanation of what happened to him after a cruise:
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“Cruising for health A cruise ship is the healthiest place you can be. Imagine an outbreak of, say, stomach flu on a cruise ship. With a high proportion of oldsters on board, there would likely be a death or two, and consequent lawsuits. Even without that, the cruise line would lose millions from the publicity.
Those in charge are not going to let this happen. The crews on these ships are trained rigorously in hygiene. All surfaces are scrubbed and inspected constantly. Food with the least mark of unfreshness will feed the fishes. The air quality is likewise closely monitored: Legionnaires’ Disease is another nightmare for the owners.
So strong are these obsessions that seasoned cruisers whisper dark tales of people taken ill on board ship who mysteriously vanish — hustled away to an airtight room somewhere in the bowels of the vessel. I haven’t yet heard a version in which the invalid’s cabin itself disappears, as in one telling of the classic Paris Exposition urban legend, but if there is not currently such a story going round, I am sure there soon will be.
The downside of all that hygienic purity is that one’s immune system, seeing that there is nothing for it to do, does an automatic power-down. It’s still slumbering when you reach dry land at the end of the cruise and get on a plane to go home. Now, the cabin of a plane is one of the least healthy places on earth. Passing from cruise ship to plane cabin is like going from an iPod assembly room to the Congo basin. Result: I spent much of the post-cruise week moaning and coughing in bed with a savage bad cold.”
This makes me feel better. Cruise pix to follow.
Notes from Aunt Gem 