The skinny and updatishness

* I know I'm not the only one, but dang do I love that show Glee. And the music! I just had to have Golddigger and Hate on Me. When we were in Massachusetts, I picked up the CD for the music only to learn that a second CD will be out next week. Anyway getting the CD was great because all four of us immediately ripped it to our computers. Itunes makes that kinda difficult and I was actually going to buy it on Amazon, except that they don't sell MP3's in Canada. Amazon had a three dollar coupon which I wanted to use on an import that is $27 at the store but only $5 on Amazon.com. Whenever I try to shop there from up here, they tell me they can't sell to me (hear that music industry? refusing to sell to people, excellent business model!) because I am in Canada. So imagine my surprise when they still wouldn't sell to me when I accessed the site from the states. I fired off a letter - I am an American Citizen, using a US bank credit card but I still get refused. Turns out they won't sell to me because the billing address for the credit card is in Canada. So lame, I can walk into a shop and buy any music without divulging my residency, why would Amazon do that? Makes me not want to shop there now. My friend let me use his card though so I still picked up that import for two bucks. Maybe I'll give them another chance.

* Thanks everyone for pointing out the correct location of Benjamin Franklin's grave. But you know, Ben was big in Boston too, born there in fact, so one naturally assumes that the big monument to Franklin in the cemetery is his grave.

* Having lived up here for 9 plus years now, it is surprising that I have never once eaten at one of the middle eastern food chains. That all changed last night. Serge is always chastising me for my tendency to always want to do the same things, eat at the same places etc, but whenever I cave to his mix-it-up pep talks, I usually regret it. In the place I went, called Amir, they had pictures of everything but it all kind of looked the same. I decided to try the thing that looked easiest to pronounce. It was called Shawarma, which I imagined to be named after some arab version of Jeannie from I Dream of Jeannie. I didn't hate it, though I suspected the red thing was beets that was in it. Not a big fan of the betteraves, moi. It came with garlic potatoes which might have been more aptly called potato garlics. My poor students in the class I taught right after that.

* It's already December and the Christmas cards haven't even been started on yet. We've been trying to get some kind of holiday picture done to include with the cards but we are having a rough time of it because Georgie refuses to hold a pose of any kind. We're toying with other ideas for the picture now. Here's a failed attempt:

* The tree is up but it's not a real one. I finally decided that it would be better to have an artificial one so that when we go away, we don't have to worry about watering it. My only complaint is that it's too perfectly shaped. That doesn't seem real to me. I might tweak some of the branches to give it a couple flaws. Oh and a little pine odor spritzer so I can pretend to have a live tree. (Why do I want to say "be having" instead of "have" there? It can't be right but it sounds more like what I want to convey.)

* Okay the news. We're taking off next week to undisclosed Caribbean location. I'm super excited since it's another place, country in fact, that I've never been to. It's a gift which is wonderful. We're lucky to have such generous people in our lives. Anyway, I can't really talk about where we're going in detail because, well, you're just going to have to figure it out. Think Desi Arnaz. A week of tropicality and cocktails, woo hoo! Now I must go and work on the Christmas cards. Happy hump day peeps.