May 9, 2010 at 7:11 pm
One of my favorite and most popular photos ever was featured today on Rand McNally’s “on the road” blog:
I took that photo on Mother’s Day, 2006, and it’s been used several times on different sites.
With that in mind, Happy Mother’s Day to all moms who follow this blog for some reason. We had a nice day today here at Casa McGee. After church, Cari did a little shopping. I installed a new screen door off our family room, so we have a nice breeze coming in again. I also bought four little tomato plants; put two of them into a Topsy Turvy Planter and the other two in the ground. Now we’ll see if either set of plants will actually produce tomatoes. If so, it’ll be a Mother’s Day miracle.
December 8, 2009 at 6:55 pm
Every year around this time, I wonder what the mailman is thinking. And the UPS delivery guy/gal. And the FedEx person, too. Because every year at this time, our house has to be one of the busiest stops on their routes. This picture, for example, is just a sample of what was delivered to our house today. Two more boxes came after I took this shot.
We had four deliveries in all. Just today. I’m expecting more tomorrow, and some later in the week. We had deliveries on three separate days last week.
Does the mailman think we’re shopaholics? Does he think we’re bad parents that spoil our kids and buy them everything they want? Does he think we have no self-control?
None of the above is true! But we have two darn good reasons that there are so many deliveries and packages arriving in December:
- In addition to Christmas, both of our kids have birthdays in December.
- The kids’ grandparents ask us to do their shopping for them, and then they send money to cover whatever gifts we bought the kids on their behalf. We shop for my parents, Cari’s mom, and Cari’s step-mom.
So not only do we have triple the amount of gift-giving occasions to shop for this month, but we also do the shopping of four times the number of family members. That’s like … what? … 1,200% more gift-buying that we have to do than the normal family that has just one holiday and shops only for their own gift-giving? (Something like that. My math is rusty.)
Maybe one of these days I’ll put a sign on the front door explaining this so that the delivery people can understand why they’re constantly bringing gifts to the house in December. It’s the craziest month of the year around here.
November 27, 2009 at 8:25 am
It used to be that Black Friday sales started at 7:00 am the day after Thanksgiving. Then stores started opening at 6:00 am. Then it was 5:00 am for a few years, and then some started opening at 4:00 am in the last year or two.
This year, some stores at the Columbia Center Mall opened at 3:00 am. But no one beat Toys-R-Us, which opened the minute that Thanksgiving was over.
How’d you like to be one of the employees there? You probably had to show up for work 4-5 hours early to start setting up for the crowd. So much for Thanksgiving evening with the family.
What’s next? Stores opening at 11 pm Thanksgiving night? 9 pm?
Meanwhile, I noticed a lot of online retailers didn’t even bother waiting for Black Friday. They were pimping big “Thanksgiving Day-only” sales online, maybe hoping to get shoppers to spend a lot of money in a turkey-induced haze.
Thanksgiving — the holiday itself — is becoming an afterthought. Black Friday is killing it, and quick.
But we did our best to celebrate it this year. Our good friend Tassoula came to visit and enjoy a great Cari-cooked meal with us. Dee-licious!
Hope you had a great Thanksgiving, too!
December 3, 2008 at 7:36 pm
I’ve always thought that nutcrackers are creepy, but this year’s holiday stamps just drive the point home beyond any shadow of a doubt….
November 14, 2007 at 8:40 pm
This is part of what came in the mail today. Yes, eight Christmas catalogs in one day. One day!
(I’m also posting to test photo sizes on the new blog. Shhhh….)
July 4, 2004 at 11:17 pm
“Sometimes … they’re up in the sky … it’s like stars.”
– Tara, having been woken up by the loud noise of 4th of July fireworks tonight, and seeing them outside her window for the first time in her young life
June 2, 2004 at 11:46 pm
Memorial Day 2004 is (finally) over. Our final visiting guest, my wonderful Mom-in-law, left today. It’s been a great week with lots of company visiting. The kids had a good time, the adults had a good time, the food was great, the weather fantastic … just a great holiday overall.
But it was also possibly the last holiday we’ll ever have like this.
The biggest news of the weekend is that my brother-in-law and his family are moving back east soon. When that happens, our nearest relatives will be my other brother-in-law, whose family lives 4-5 hours away in Boise. And when that happens, it’ll be the first time since 1994 that we’ve lived without family in the same town or relatively close — close enough to get together on holidays.
It’s an odd feeling, being all alone. I feel like we have no anchors holding us here anymore. Sure, we both have jobs. But for the first time in a long time, maybe ever, we’re both doing “portable” work — work that can be done anywhere, in any city in any state. When I was in TV, I was tied down. There were so few job openings that you didn’t dare consider moving somewhere because you wanted to. You only moved if you had a new job lined up. Likewise when Cari was in retail — she was tied to moving to cities within the company where openings existed. If we had wanted to move to, say, Seattle, we couldn’t until Cari could get a similar job in her company. No freedom in that.
But I can do web development and SEO for anyone, anywhere. And Cari can get her real estate license in any state. And the kids aren’t tied into a school system just yet. In the little quiet time I had over the holiday, I actually gave serious thought to the idea of moving. Maybe to Pennsylvania to be near my family. Or California to be near Cari’s mom and dad. (Then I shuddered at the memory of the cost of living in California….) Or somewhere else……
