A small dash of serendipity struck this afternoon. Kat and I are going to make arrangements to go to Birmingham sometime soon—probably next weekend. She needs a particular facial cleanser from a store whose closest outlet is in Birmingham, and we both want to see Hedwig and the Angry Inch. We'll combine trips.

Like today; we combined forces at Costco. Costco, like Sam's, sells everything in bulk. (Need a metric ton of crackers? They've got them.) Since we both live in small households, this isn't always useful for us. We all know that meat is significantly cheaper there, but the packages are so large that they're not terribly useful for us. It occurred to me a few months ago that if two of us were willing to combine forces, that we could split some purchases and come out with a lot of meat for the less-than-horrific amounts that we're accustomed to paying.

I chose to keep my mother entertained this weekend by keeping her busy. The original plans for Saturday consisted of Kat and I taking Mom out to Boaz so that she could do some shopping at Boaz' outlet stores.

In attempts to imitate my walk and talk, there are two proper facial-expressions to assume while shopping: the absent-minded-professor look, and the kamikaze-shopping-trip look. I tend to favor the former; it requires less effort, and people don't glare at an absent-minded professor as a twentysomething power-shopping for groceries in fifteen minutes or less.

Welcome to the psychedelic end of the rainbow. I ask that you pardon my incoherency and just roll with this for a day or so; it'll all make sense in a moment. This is me trying to make sense, and something tells me I'm not doing a good job of it.

I started feeling very strangely this afternoon; my throat felt like it was trying to close up on me. Then I was tired, very tired. I listened to the changing weather reports throughout the day. Snow? Sleet? Rain? Ice? No one seemed to know.After work, I went over to Heather's. She drove me to the surprisingly-empty mall, where I picked up a badly needed new pair of jeans (medium blue and utterly boring) and finished up all but one last gift on my Christmas shopping list.

A sign of how my day is going to go today, and a quick flash of dry AndyWit[tm] to boot. I had a coupon for $50 off of a large order at Amazon.com. That, and free shipping. I only had a few days to do it before the coupon expired. So I was going to order myself a Handspring—because, quite frankly, if there was a person with a busy enough life and enough to-do and to-purchase lists that could use a PDA, I'm that person.This morning, I had a flash of insight:

"Cats and Christmas trees don't mix well.. baubles are a constant fascination, designed, of course, for cats. The pine needles are perfect for scratching cat's backs as well (again by design, naturally) and the lower branches will thus be bare within a few hours ;-)"
—Gareth