Thursday, Dec. 23

Countdown: only two more days.

Slept til 8 a.m. this morning, but did a treadmill session and weights exercises after breakfast, anyway. Mother came over around 9 a.m. and chopped onions and gathered other ingredients for making salmon chowder.

When I finished exercising, I put the chowder together and simmered it for the required 30 minutes. After that, I got ready for the day, and then made fruit salad. Hubbie cut a couple of the hybrid squashes that volunteered in the compost heap, and we baked them for Christmas dinner.

Then we sat down to watch a Trans-Siberian Orchestra DVD , "The Ghosts of Christmas Eve."

For lunch, we sampled the chowder. Later, Hubbie and I made a final (I hope) trip to the WDCS for last-minute grocery items. Wow, what a crowd! It was wall-to-wall people...some, no doubt, were doing last-minute gift shopping, but I'll bet others were stocking up on bread and milk in anticipation of a possible white Christmas, as hinted at by TV meteorologists. I'll be surprised, though, if we see a single snowflake.

Today, besides groceries for the weekend, I was interested in stocking up on fresh fruit...can't eat cookies and candies all the time, even if it's Christmas. I picked up a large bag of oranges and some bananas, but there wasn't a single grape to be had. So before we headed home, we stopped by a grocery store, where we did find grapes, but in limited supply. What's up with the grape shortage, I wonder?

It was about 4:30 before we got back home. I noticed that Mother had spooned the squashes out of the shells and put them in quart Ziplock bags for the freezer. She'd forgotten that we baked the squashes for Christmas dinner.

Later, she and I put together a supper of whole wheat pancakes, with turkey bacon. The pancakes were ones we'd made for the freezer several weeks ago.

After supper, we hopped in the van for a driving tour of Christmas displays around town. Usually, we do this on Christmas Eve, but just in case the meteorologists are right about the possibility of snow coming in tomorrow evening, we decided to do the tour tonight.

The city and the downtown association have outdone themselves this year. Judging by the number of lighted displays, it's hard to believe there's a depressed economy. But then, maybe we need more Christmas in times like these. Lots of homes in residential areas are also ablaze in lights this year.

We spent about an hour and a half touring and listening to Christmas music. On the way home, we saw a spectacular natural lighting display...a large, three-quarter orange moon blazed in a clear sky. Mother went to her house when we got back, and Hubbie and I watched the movie, "The Santa Clause 3."