You HAVE to check this out!

This morning, I woke up to find that my parakeet, Penelope, had passed away during the night. I am sad. I buried her behind the garage and carried her empty cage straight to the trash. She was a good bird, but I don't plan to ever have another one. A few weeks ago, the lady at Petland told me that I must be doing something right because Penelope was nearly 5 and that is pretty old for most petstore parakeets. I'm glad that, apparently, I was a good parakeet parent. I'll try to post a picture when I get home.

Ladies and gentlemen, it's that time of year again - ARKALALAH is coming!!!! This year's theme is "Seuss on the Loose" - a theme with lots of potential, which, unfortunately, may not be fully realized if the logo is any indication (Mom and Dad, either of you could have done WAY better!!!). I even had to trim 2 inches of empty white space at the bottom before posting it. Sheesh. . .

For those of you planning to attend the street games, it is important to note that the tricycle race is strictly bring-your-own tricycle, the sack race is bring-your-own sack, the terrapin derby is bring-your-own box turtle (no water turtles allowed!), and the broom riding race is bring-your-own broom. The Big Parade, however, is not bring-your-own float and/or band - unless of course, you want to be IN the parade. Bring your own whatever and come on down!

Well, today was busy if not terribly productive. In fact, it actually resulted in several more projects. I slept late and left the house around 11:45. I started by hitting Goodwill, then proceeded to Michael's, Towne East Mall, K-Mart, Towne West Mall, Pier 1, the other Michael's, Hobby Lobby, Best Buy and Petco. All this on top of Barnes & Noble, the other Barnes and Noble, QuikTrip, Wal-Mart and Borders on Sunday. Most of the stores were about halfway through putting Christmas up - I was like a kid in a candy store! I've been a bit bored with my Christmas tree for the past couple of years. . . it's Martha Stewart from top to bottom, so it looks great, but is rather bland. This year, instead of the huge bow that I use as a tree topper, I found a giant snowman head (it's better than it sounds). For the body of the tree, I'm switching mostly to silver. My tree is huge and sits on a rotating base (it's awesome), so I bought a lot of mirrored things to hide in the interior of the tree - that way, when it spins, the lights will sparkle even more!

That's it for tonight. . . tomorrow, it's back to work!