It's the most wonderful time of the year
...or so the commercials would have us believe. I spent most of my day Christmas shopping and also buying various things that we needed at home (toothpaste, etc.). I failed to find some of the gifts (my own fault for saying "I'll just look around and see what catches my eye"... that just never works) so I'll be doing the Loop circuit sometime this week to finish up. Bad thing about shopping downtown is I'm limited to what I can carry on the El. Or maybe that's a good thing. The malls were insane of course, and I had one near-accident (oops) trying to escape a left-turn lane that wasn't left-turning anytime soon. I treated myself to McDonald's for lunch, and was about to step forward and order when a middle-aged woman cut in front of me in line and said "Can I go ahead of you? I'm just ordering a hot chocolate." I gave her the universal "By all means, be incredibly rude, I don't mind at all" gesture (no, not that one, the other one!), and got many looks of shared incredulity from the people in the other line. Apparently waiting your turn is for chumps.

Got a lengthy sales spiel from a guy at Macy's, who waxed eloquent about an item made of "genuine Italian leather" and then had to admit that the illustrious item was in fact manufactured in Ohio. He tried very hard to make Ohio sound like the center of leather artisanship so I'll give him credit. I didn't buy the thing, though.

I did buy this to replace our dead dustbuster. It is SO CUTE and I am ashamed to be giggly over a vacuum. Hello, I am my mother, nice to meet you.

Speaking of my mom, we took her to see Phantom of the Opera yesterday. I was afraid it wasn't going to live up to my memory of seeing it in Detroit many years ago, but it was fabulous! I know the Broadway recording backwards and forwards and was pleased that the Chicago cast's interpretation was very different, less polished and more expressive.

Overheard at Bed Bath and Beyond, near some Christmasy figurines: "Oh, this one looks like Santa threw up! Isn't it cute?"

Christmas is in ONE WEEK. Yikes!!
- posted by Diane @ 9:03 PM