Author: The Jody

2nd night with a fire in the fireplace. The driveway is shoveled, I’ve eaten dinner, and I hit the 25,000 mark in the novel. I have no plot, but I have 25,000 words! Woo hoo!

I just got in from shoveling the rest of my drive. I had hoped all the snow would melt today because it was supposed to be rainy and in the low forties, but when it’s 3pm and everything is the same, you start to get worried that it’s going to freeze up into major ruts that you need dynomite to remove. Plus I heard a rumor we’re going to get a few more inches tonight. So I bundled myself back up and went out to get rid of what was there. Back-breaking work, my friends. It was all slush. For those of you who are smart and live in a non-snow area, this means each shovel full weighed about 40 pounds. I used a push shovel, which is supposed to help but really, I don’t know that it did. I think it just uses different muscles, in the middle of your back (right at the bra strap line for those of you in the know). That doesn’t mean it feels any better. There wasn’t enough to use the snow blower, or so I thought. Next time, I may use it anyway.

Off to write. I’m boiling up some hot water for a winter beverage. I’m not sure what I’m going to go for yet. I’ll have to browse the cabinets.

I won two prizes in the Hallmark Keepsake Sweepstakes, according to the little pull-tab entry things I’ve been receiving in my People Magazine. So I went down to pick them up…I got a little box of chocolates, and a copy of the 2-tape set of Gulliver’s Travels (the Ted Danson Version). Well, I’m not looking a gift tape in the mouth.

Oh MAN the store has such awesome Christmas stuff in it! I could have spent all day and hundreds of dollars in there, I swear. And the smell…there’s nothing like the smell of Christmas, even if it’s just Christmas candles and potpourri. Mmmmm. I’m really in a kind of a holidy mood now. Helping on that score is the fact that it’s flurrying outside, and that there’s a Tony Bennett Christmas special on TV tonight. That’s right, a Christmas Special. We’ll ignore the fact that the Peanuts Thanksgiving special isn’t until next week.

Hot Cocoa, anyone?

Somehow, my hiding under a rock for the past few months caused McDonald’s french fry recipe to slip by me undetected. What the hell were they thinking? I don’t go there for health food. I go there to eat fries. The best fries on the planet. The fries you can no longer get at McDonalds. Gah, the flavor is all gone. And to make matters worse, I tried a bite of Junior’s chicken nuggets tonight and THEY don’t taste the same anymore either. For goodness sake, what the hell are they thinking? It’s enough to make me never go back again. We’ll ignore them screwing up my burger (“Okay, do I need to say it in a foreign language? JUST KETCHUP!”). But if the fries don’t taste the same, what’s the point? I certainly won’t have cravings for them anymore, which in the grand scheme of things, is probably good.

But I’m still angry about it. Maybe they should have called CocaCola first to ask about that whole New Coke thing.

As a nine-year-old who watches a little too much of the Weather Channel told me this morning, tomorrow is going to be a “mixed bag”. Woo hoo! I hope it includes a lot of heat and wind! What? No? You mean ice and snow and rain? Well that’s not the kid of “mixed bag” I like.

Oh, and I’m going to give you ONE warning…if you get an email from paypal-ebay.com telling you you need to give over some financial info? It’s a scam. I don’t think the site is up anymore, but I’m warning you just the same. If my research last night is correct, it’s some college wanker who set up the domain about 3 weeks ago. “Somebody’s going to Ja-il.” I can’t wait to read about this in the news. I sent everything off to ebay as soon as I got it. The funny thing was looking up the email address the guy used to register the domain. He posted to a CGI programming group that he needed someone to write him some financial software and that “money is no object” or something like that. Didn’t it occur to him that he could be traced?