I am running errands (actually managed to drag stuff to donate, exchanged soda stream, waiting on pants to be hemmed). But to wait while they were hemmed I thought I'd get a pedicure, an it was possibly the worst one I've had. Not coming back here. Humph.

I am finally getting my paper written, which is good since the panel is on Thursday. Oy! I feel like a total fraud right now, like I have nothing to say beyond the absolutely obvious.

smonster, you and StW look adorable together! Such a cute couple. (Which may be obvious, but it's the kind of thing that bears repeating.)

I have to do some grocery shopping tonight, but I can't decide which is the lesser of two evils, taking my kids to TJs at 5 pm to do some shopping, or waiting until they have gone to bed and trolling the barren aisles with the other laggards.

Erin, I think it's the 3rd Downton Abbey tonight. They are showing up on PBS.com as soon as they air, I heard.

Thank you, Burrell!! I think so, too. We're also pretty well matched in dorkdom - when I suggested a cheesy prom-style picture he was all for it.

Lord, I hate losing all that time to the laundromat. And I only folded a third or so of the laundry! I did talk to my brother for almost an hour, it was nice to catch up. But despite my snacking, I ended up at the grocery store hungry and bought 2.5 lbs of ground beef, among other things. I'm making burgers right now (STARVING), and I figure I'll do batches of chili and spaghetti sauce to eat and freeze.

I was going to cook when I got home from work , but someone went home sick so I stayed until close (from 11:00-8:30 ish), so instead of cooking I went to the grocery store and stocked up on diet cokes and frozen dinner.

Tomorrow I'm cooking ...I'm not sure what it's going to be, but I'm going to roast some garlic, mix it with oil, saute kale in that, cook a chicken quarter and breast, add lemon juice and zest, and cook some rice.

And I'm cleaning tomorrow and staying in the house b/c FedEx is supposed to come by and I need to sign for it, and all the note said was it would be delivered before 7 pm. I'm also taping a note to the door - Dear FEDEX Driver. I am HERE!! Please knock loudly and give me time to get to the door. Thank you!

Because they came by on Thursday, and I heard knocking,b ut I thought it was for the neighbor and by the time I checked no one was there.

Okay, I'm going to do 10 minutes of dishes, and open my mail, and then as a reward I'll watch the finale of Footloose on youtube.

Oh and there was a ton of clearance stuff at work and i ended up buying 2 paint sets with wooden carry boxes, a kids art set with small easel/carrying case , 2 sets of mini canvases w/paints (99 cents each), which were 90% off and going to be off the shelves tomorrow. Plus 2 small canvases. And the other day I bought some nice colored pencils and pastels. All combined I spent about $22.

It's still a long way until spring and I figured playing around with colors and being artistic (even badly) would help me feel better.

I previously bought student drawing pencil set and some paper and everything was so cheap I'm not worried about "messing" up anything or wasting anything.

What a great idea, askye!

That sounds fun, askye.

Dinner turned out fantabulous. I'm definitely making it again and asking localistas over (it makes tons). As it is, venison stew is probably in my future, which is perfectly fine. It was very much a "food of my people" kind of meal, as Grandpa use to grow rutabaga and hunt deer on his farm in the UP (upper peninsula of MI).

I wish I knew this stuff was going to be on clearance otherwise I'd told every body to try to get to Michael's but it all happened today (I think). I knew the XMas stuff was 90% off but not this stuff.

This morning one of the supervisors kept showing me stuff - "this is $3! you should buy it!" or "look what I found -- it's 7 cents!"

There was also coupon good on sale prices and some people got pissy they couldn't use it on clearance.