Randomtastic...

1) I made copious amounts of cookies over the weekend, which are now boxed up and ready to be distributed to the cookie-deprived masses. (The "cookie-deprived masses" being Eric and Faisal... can two people constitute a "mass"??) And I am ashamed to say that I've accidentally eaten about five-sixths of the copious amount of cookies I made, so there are only about five left. (Eric and Faisal -- you each get two and a half cookies. You're welcome.)

2) On our way back from Las Vegas, I ended up behind possibly the slowest people to ever go through airport security. It was a sixty-something (I'm guessing) couple from New York City (they were very chatty with the TSA agents), who required no less than EIGHT plastic bins for their random personal items. Just when I thought they'd retrieved their last bin and I'd attempt to reach for the ONE plastic bin I needed, they'd grab another one. I've never seen people go through airport security with so much stuff -- they had coats and sweaters and scarves and shoes... bags and belts and hats... necklaces and bracelets and watches. They each had about fifteen layers of random accessories to remove before they were finally ready to go through the body scanner. The only good thing about this was that they were causing such a back-up in the line that by the time the TSA agents got to me, they were herding people around to the plain old metal detector to move things along more quickly.

3) I was quite happy to get back to Chicago after several days in Vegas -- not that Vegas isn't fun... but the last day we were there, it suddenly hit me that even though Christmas was less than two weeks away, there was nothing very Christmas-y about Las Vegas. Here in Chicago, the buildings are lit up red and green, the trees on Michigan Avenue are outfitted with white lights, random decorations are everywhere, and holiday music is piped into every store. In Las Vegas, things seem to stay relatively the same all year round -- the lights on the Strip are always bright... the music in every store seems to be geared toward dancing in a club... random decorations are few and far between. In fact, our hotel didn't even HAVE holiday decorations -- we stayed at the Cosmopolitan, which was a really nice hotel, but perhaps trying a bit too hard to be "modern." (Or maybe I just like modern every time of the year except Christmas... :))

4) For some reason, Rick has been added to the subscriber list for a magazine called "Black Enterprise." It now comes in the mail regularly. He has no idea why he's been receiving this magazine lately... but it's probably for the same reason I've been getting "Asian Small Business Monthly."

5) We're getting ready to head down to Austin for Christmas. I would lament the fact that I have no chance of having a white Christmas this year, except Chicago has been sorely disappointing in the snow department this season. I woke up to falling snow a couple days ago (which may or may not have resulted in some sort of happy snow dance in my living room... yeah, let's just say it did NOT result in that...), but after about an hour, the falling snow retreated into billowing flurries, which faded into nothingness... And since it's been rather warm (for December, at least), the snow that DID manage to fall didn't stick around.

6) I'm off to eat lunch and then jump on the treadmill for a while... I ate FAR too much in Las Vegas... I'll be burning off those calories until January...