The Big DumpTruck

In my long past, back when I was working for Information Mapping, we used to go nuts decorating our cubes and offices for the holidays. At some point, someone (I am not positive who said this, although I have a couple of people in mind) looked at one garish display and declared it "F'ing Festive" (with the full word in place of the apostrophe). The juxtaposition of those two words gave it an instant place in the hall of fame. I cannot praise it enough. So fast forward 7 or so years, and I still use this phrase, especially when things are over the top.

You know, I started writing this a couple of hours ago, and I can't remember what I was going to describe to you. Probably the way the house looks from the outside, because I believe I did use that phrase with Mr. Dump the other night. He has the background on the phrase and appreciates its appropriate use.

The Doginator hasn't tried to eat the tree or any of the ornaments that are sort of kind of within his reach, so that's good. He doesn't need to supplement his diet of the buttons off my LL Bean coat anyway. That's right, buttons with an S. I was kind of wearing it anyway, with the one button gone from the bottom, but apparently the coat fell off the coat rack the other day and he ate another button off. (They are attached with a bit of leather string, and he gnaws through the leather. He hasn't actually eaten a button, as they are huge. So now I just can't wear the coat any more, which has me seriously bummed out. I won't have money to replace it until at least after Christmas. Bah, humbug.

Did some Christmas shopping over the weekend. I was in evil step-monster mode and dragged the poor children to the mall. I have been told that I must announce a momentous occasion here in the dump: My step-daughter and I agreed that an article of clothing was cute. Can you believe it? This hasn't happened in years. She'll be 14 in January, and I have no taste in clothes whatsoever. Granted I can't fit one leg in the skirts at the stores where she shops. So she did pick out a few things and I got all evil and said they were being put away until Christmas. Bwa-ha-ha-ha!

Oh, but she got me back. I am currently obsessed with SuDoku and I showed her how to do it. We each got on a computer and loaded the same puzzle from www.websudoku.com and she beat me at finishing it. Ratzen fratzen kids these days.