Had Doug (who was staying the weekend) and family here for Thanksgiving Day, when we ate our selves to oblivion, and I lost a whopping 13 cents playing Tripoley that evening.

Friday took my car into John West Auto to have the PCV valve replaced since my Toyota dealership had recommended when I went in for the Prius’s 30,000 mile checkup to have it replaced, and it was only going to be $125. !!! So I opted to NOT have them replace it, took it to John’s instead, who pulled it out, took a look at it, said it looked nearly brand new and definitely DIDN’T need to be replaced, put it back and didn’t charge me a cent for it. Yay. A mechanic you can trust. Definitely WON’T be letting Toyota do anything to my car that costs anything over my prepaid 5000 mile maintenance anymore. Then Doug had brought over the Wii version of Press Your Luck, so we spent some time looking for Big Bucks and No Whammies, then I introduced him to the first movie in the Mummy trilogy.

Saturday we got up and went to Lowe’s and picked out our Christmas tree for the year. Then sat back and watched The Blues Brothers, which I’d never seen, and later that evening watched The Departed. And in between played RAYMAN RAVING RABBIDS TV PARTY, which I’d just picked up at Best Buy that afternoon, on the Wii. “Bwaaaaaaaaah! Daaaaaaaaah!” Absolutely insane game. Not sure yet, but I think it’s fun!

Also discovered that one of our cats – Lucy – apparently has a UTI, so we brought her to the vet for the official check on Saturday, and came home with a week’s worth of antibiotics and a few days worth of pain killer to give her until the antibiotics kicked in. Fun. Just LOVE medicating a cat! :-O

Today spent most of the day putting the lights and decorations on the Christmas tree, then brought in Dominos Pizza for dinner. Yum.

O Christmas Tree, O Christmas Tree...

Watched the 20th Anniversary episode of AFV then tuned in to the Amazing Race, then kicked Doug out and called it a weekend.

Parade bars Mrs. Claus – Nation/World – NewsObserver.com.

I couldn’t believe this when I read it in the paper this morning. They weren’t allowing Mrs. Claus in the downtown Raleigh Christmas parade, because ” it’s confusing for children to see two people in Santa suits”.

But John Odom, executive director of the Greater Raleigh Merchants Association, which runs the parade, said it’s confusing for children to see two people in Santa suits. He said it’s a policy that only Santa may wear the official outfit.

Parade officials even discourage people from wearing Santa hats, Odom said.

Oh, PLEASE.  Do they really think kids are that stupid that they can’t tell the difference between the guy in a red Santa suit and a woman in a red Mrs. Santa dress?

And to try to keep people from even wearing Santa HATS?!? What a bunch of Scrooges.

What little of the parade I watched on TV so far, I was pleased to see that in one of the marching band color guard groups, they were ALL wearing Santa hats. I looked at mom and whined “Mommy, I’m confused, are ALL those people waving the pompoms Santa Claus!?!”

Doh!

Highlight of my week so far? After having some jerk in an SUV cut me off on my way to work last week, causing me to slam on my brakes to avoid hitting him and having my nice full thermos of coffee go crashing into the dashboard. Naturally the thing shattered and well, didn’t the guy know I like my coffee black? No creamer, no sugar, no awful sounding shards of glass. Had to throw the whole thing out. >:-( And for those who know how much I love my coffee in the morning, know what a tragedy THAT was. It sounded AWFUL when I shook it, like, well, a container full of shattered glass and a now undrinkable beverage. *sigh*

Anyhoo, have been using a wimpy thermal pot that didn’t hold as much as the thermos, and didn’t keep things warm as well as the thermos, so was really looking forward to the arrival of our new replacement thermoses yesterday. Which arrived right on time. Yay. *did a little happy dance*

Not so fast. Tried to use them today. Would you believe BOTH of them leak? You pour the coffee from the top, and yeah, it comes out of there, but it also dribbles from out of the BASE. In several places. Including below the handle on the OPPOSITE side of the pour spout. Which makes no sense to me at all.

Took them apart tonight to see if we could figure out what was wrong with them to avoid having to send them back. Discovered that Inspector #13 in the Thermos Quality Control Department was apparently taking a mental nap when they inspected our thermoses for quality. The rubber rings that the glass part sits on in the base were very badly glued on, in that they were THISCLOSE to falling off the bottom of the glass, and they weren’t stuck on straight, so naturally the glass part wouldn’t stand up completely straight and make an airtight seal. Result? A leaky thermos, AND one that didn’t keep the coffee hot as long as it was supposed to since it wasn’t airtight.

So we took a crack at MacGyvering them in the kitchen tonight. Pulled off the bad glue job, and reglued the rings to the glass, making sure that they were actually put on STRAIGHT this time. Currently waiting for the glue to dry a bit more before reassembling all the parts, so don’t know if our attempts to fix them actually worked yet.

Either way, the folks at Thermos will be hearing from us. There was no excuse for sending something out with that shoddy assembly job. Thermos used to be a really good brand, but as usual, “the new and improved” things again, may be new, but are sure not improved.

EDIT: Well, several days and a few thermoses of coffee later, it looks like our dis-assembly and re-assembly of our two thermoses worked. Not a leak, not a dribble of coffee have we seen. Thermos is still going to get a nasty gram about it though. No excuse for that shoddy workmanship from a company like them. They should at least warn on the sales page that “some re-assembly required prior to first use.” LOL.

So while I had been all set to pick up the game at Target this week, where it was on sale for $34.95, I went ahead and ordered the direct download version of the game, using the $5 discount, and while the sale price was the same, the EA store doesn’t charge tax for direct downloads, and I don’t actually have to drive anywhere to get it, so it saves me some time as well. Nice deal. Had been kind of hoping that they’d make the direct download available before Tuesday, but apparently not. That’s okay, I’ll download this week and give it a play next weekend.

“

Love this quote:

He said it’s ironic that a guy who finished second is writing about people who finished first.

“It’s irrelevant,” Tedesco said of Aiken’s comment. “His words are invisible, like the name of the last song he wrote.”

Is it just me, or is there a certain “nyah nyah nyah” aspect  in those comments? A distinct lack of maturity?  Sounds like something you’d hear on a school yard someplace, not on a school board.  Seems like this guy just demonstrated exactly what Clay Aiken was talking about, IMHO.

So happy I don’t have kids. From Wacky Wednesday to bussing kids across town, to mixed year-round/standard scheduling within the same family, it just seems like things are being made a LOT more complicated than they need to be.

Already discovered that I can’t use my favorite plug ins like I use on the wordpress.org blog that I set up at the office, and I’m sensing that the photo and video limitations here might have me banging my head against the desk sooner rather than later,  but it’s a place to start.

Stay tuned!