I’m pretty lucky. My shopping list for Christmas is pretty short. My sisters and I draw names, so no one has to shop for too many people. It’s pretty nice.
I still intend to take advantage of the internet. I probably won’t have to ship any gifts on my family’s side since we’re all getting together in my area, but there will be shipping involved for my husband’s side. For that kind of shopping I definitely love using the Internet. No standing in long post office lines!
I have two favorite resources for online shopping - Amazon
and ThinkGeek
. In my family, those two work very, very well. Considering the range Amazon carries, it works pretty well for a lot of people.
I’m very grateful to have a short shopping list. It’s shorter this year than it has been in the past, and that was a bit painful. Removing my grandparents’ names from the list because two of them died this past year was very emotional. Made a difference in how I handled the name draw too.
If times are tight, instituting a name draw is one of my favorite recommendations for saving money. Most adults really don’t need that many Christmas gifts. And despite how much fun it can be to find the perfect gift, a shorter Christmas shopping list is really nice too.
Technorati Tags: christmas shopping, christmas shopping list
I don’t care that winter’s coming and that things are cooling off. That’s the beauty of spas - you stay warm. But the thought of climbing into one and just relaxing sounds great to me.
It’s been a busy day. Just one of those run, run run mornings. It’s only now quiet enough for me to dedicate myself to working and posting.
But who am I fooling? If I had a spa, I’d probably be plunging in, instead.
They’ve long been on my husband’s wish list too. He’d even take one of the little portable ones, just to have one. But, as I keep insisting, they aren’t practical for our life right now. We’d have to have a very good cover, such as the spa covers of superior quality at HotTubWorks.com, and even then have to watch to be certain that it was in place.
I’ve seen how important a good spa cover is, and the ones offered at HotTubWorks.com look really good. A good cover means the hot tub stays warmer with less energy used and it is much harder for someone to fall in accidentally. As a mother that second part really matters to me. Their cover has locking tie-down straps, a feature I can really appreciate.
Really big. In fact, you won’t believe… oh, wait. Too much Hitchhiker’s Guide in my mind right now, and I haven’t even read it recently.
I’ve been paying attention to what people are saying about Comet Holmes lately. It’s a pretty interesting critter, and now its diameter is bigger than the sun’s diameter.
It’s visible to the naked eye. Sky and Telescope has a nice chart showing you where to look for it shortly after dark. It’s closest to Perseus, but for many the most familiar constellation it is near is Cassiopeia. Perseus is pretty much between Cassiopeia and the Pleiades.
I’m hoping to finally remember to check this out on a clear night. When it first started growing we had a lot of cloudy skies, and I haven’t checked for clear ones lately. Considering how beautiful the days have been here lately it should be perfect tonight.
Technorati Tags: comet holmes, bigger than sun, astronomy, comet
Yes, we’ve taken the kids to a lot of tide pools. Most of these, however, were taken either in La Jolla, California or near Haystack Rock in Oregon. It’s a lot of fun spending time watching the kids discover the various animals.
The Haystack Rock tidepools are particularly delightful. The starfish are so big and bright. You aren’t supposed to pick them up there, but they’re still a lot of fun to look at. And of course all kids seem to enjoy sea anemones once they get past being nervous about touching them.
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It’s getting disturbingly close to the time that people start putting up Christmas trees. Not me - with small children in the house generally aim for about a week before Christmas. We have to move furniture around, so having a more crowded living room for more time than that is just too hard.
Many times we find that one string of Christmas tree lights has burned out. We have excess due to buying them on a clearance sale some time back, but eventually we’re going to need more. And that’s when I figure on making the switch to LED Xmas lights.
They’re significantly more efficient, coolor and look really good too. Only reason I’m not making a switch is due to my feeling that I shouldn’t be replacing something that still works just fine. We don’t leave our tree on all night or anything, so the power savings will be a bit less than it might be if we had them on more.
The BBC is reporting on a study that shows that women with curvier figures are more likely to be intelligent than women with fewer curves.
Amazing how much silliness there is in the world.
The study claims that the larger the difference between the hips and the waist, the higher the average intelligence. A part of the idea is that the fat includes more omega-3s, which are believed to good for the brain.
This study doesn’t delight me, nor does it delight many others. But it also wouldn’t surprise me if there’s some serious misinterpretation of the data coming from the BBC, as the article is very short and simple.
Quite simply, I don’t like using physical appearance and trying to correlate it with intelligence. It’s a risky game, and too often the results of one study flat out contradict another. There are a lot of highly intelligent people of all weights and figures. Even when you consider that this kind of thing is talking about averages, I find it improbable.
