28 December 2010

Holy Innocents Day (Childermas)

This is the day on which King Herod ordered all the male children of two years and younger to be murdered, in order to kill the Messiah. It is considered bad luck to start a project on this day, so I ended one instead.

In the past my bank has sent numerous additional check cards to our house, some in James' name, because his name is on my checking account. Mine is on his, too, for emergencies, but neither of us wants each other's cards. Just recently five, count 'em, five, new cards arrived, some bearing my name, some bearing James's, and then the cards were followed by letters saying they had to be activated by January 15. What the heck?

So I took the whole caboodle of them to the bank this morning and had the woman cancel ever single blessed one of them except one, which will serve as my new debit card (old debit card was supposedly good until 2012, but they are changing over debit card affiliations from Visa to Master Card, so we get a new one). She cut up all the cards and those are out of my hair.

I went by the library to turn in this year's book donations, and also to pick up one of my two (cross fingers) interlibrary loans. I have read eight of the ten "Camp Fire" novels that Hildegard Frey wrote online (they are out of copyright), and wanted to get the other two. I got Larks and Pranks today, number five, the volume which explains a lot of references in the remainder of the books, like where "the House of the Open Door" (their converted barn meeting-place) came from, how Katherine Adams joined the group, and just who the heck Veronica was, not to mention how they met the boys from "The Sandwich Group" and got their pet donkey, Sandhelo.

From there I went out to Wild Birds Unlimited to see if they had another Christmas mailbox wrap. Forlorn hope, I'm afraid. I did get a nice backyard bird book for half price and got a window feeder with a discount.

Then made the mistake of going to Borders. :-) Four bargain books later...three of them are British! One is Dawn French's memoir, and there is also a book of humorous anecdotes and an adventure novel, plus a novel called Flygirls, about an African-American young woman who is "passing" and joins the WASPS during World War II.

Stopped at Trader Joe's on the way home for a few goodies for the New Year, since we can't spend it celebrating with friends, and came home to watch a few old Christmas shows: the episode of The Famous Jett Jackson where Jett heals a rift between his great-grandmother and an old friend, So Weird where Fi finds herself going back in time, and "Yes, Punky [Brewster], There is a Santa Claus." Then I had a hankering to watch The House Without a Christmas Tree again, so I did.

By then James was home, and we had barbecue beef brisket with baguette on the side, and a few of Emma's cookies each for dessert, and are now watching an old Boston Pops concert I had found on one of my videotapes and converted to DVD. We miss seeing these so much! They used to air on A&E every year, with Jack Perkins and Mary Richardson as hosts, back when A&E had interesting stuff like Christmas Past and rebroadcasts of stories like Flambards instead of a mess of useless reality shows. Their broadcast of Pops Goes the Fourth was sure better than CBS's abortion that never shows the "1812 Overture" (since it's more important to show some overpriced celebrity "singer"). This Holiday at Pops featured Conan O'Brien doing "The Night Before Christmas."

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