My husband got me seasons 1 & 2 for Christmas.  I zipped through those and had to buy season 2 on Amazon (it was only $19.99, whereas at the stores it’s more like $40), and then once I was done with that, since it’s currently on the season 4 run so I can’t get it on DVD, I bought a season pass for that on iTunes and am already caught up and waiting for the next episode… which doesn’t air until January 15!!  Agh!  Whatever am I going to do until then??  I may replay the episodes from this season again, or maybe start over on season 3, I’m not sure yet.

I’d forgotten how much I liked that show until I started watching it again when hubby got them for me for Christmas.  We used to watch Smallville a lot too but stopped watching it around the same time as we stopped watching Supernatural, and while I do have some of the later seasons of that on HD and BluRay, I haven’t been watching them since I am feeling like that show is probably getting too hokey and probably jumped the shark once Lex & Lana left – and I haven’t even seen the episodes when that happens yet!  I’ve read here and there on the show’s website about some of the stuff going on currently, and it just seems… Meh.  I am wondering if it should have ended back when it was originally rumored to have been ending… like at the end of season 5.

Maybe after we get home from lunch tomorrow I can finally relax for more than an hour.  Eesh!  I’m really glad I had this week off, I never would have gotten even a quarter of what I had to do, done, if I had to work.

Well, off to wrap gifts.  Happy holidays!

It’s a very pretty scene, isn’t it? But this is something we can’t see where we live unless we drive north for an hour at least. Snow is a once in a very rare blue moon kind of thing here, and even if it does get cold enough to drop snow, it doesn’t do much more than a dusting, and certainly does not stay on the ground.

I’ve always thought that part of the reason it really never quite seems like Christmas around here come December, is that we never see snow, at least not like in that picture.  When I was young we lived in Kansas where it did snow, and I remember there being snow drifts six feet high or more.  If I recall correctly, I think one year my dad even had to dig out a walk way from the front door with the snow piled up at least three feet high – at the door.

Granted it didn’t always snow by Christmas, but the chances were far far greater of it happening there than where we live now.  And if there was no snow on the ground at Christmas, it was not likely to be very long before there was some later.

Sometimes I see pictures like this and a small part of me misses seeing snow up close and personal.  But then I remember just how cold it has to be for there to even BE snow, and how I can’t stand the cold almost as much as I detest the summer heat here, and then I don’t miss it quite so much.

Although that has not stopped me from pondering what it would be like to move away from here, to somewhere where there could be a greater possibility of getting snow, and where it doesn’t get quite as hot as it does here.  I had my eye on the Portland, Oregon area for a while earlier this year, and even contemplated planning a weekend visit there at some point to get an idea of what it is like.  I have heard – and observed with my weather tracker – that it rains quite a bit there.  I don’t think I would mind all that rain, to be honest.

Rain is another rarity here, although we do actually get rain now and then, but not like in the Pacific Northwest.  Our rain comes in fits and spurts, often the most vicious storms in the summer time, which we call our monsoon season.  And then usually there are a few rain storms spread out over the fall and winter, but unlike the PacNW where it can rain for a couple of weeks, although it may be light, we get ours pretty much all at once over one or two days.  Flash flooding is not unheard of here, and I think the state had to enact the “stupid motorist” law where, if someone got caught in a wash (where a road is normally perfectly drivable when dry) when it was flooded, then that person is required to pay for the expenses of the fire department for rescuing them.  Especially if the person was dumb enough to drive past signs that clearly say the road is closed due to flooding.  Duh!

But anyway. Back to the topic of snow. As I said, in order for us to see snow we have to drive about an hour or more north to higher elevations that get snowfall.  We even have a couple of ski resorts up north, although I am not a skiier so we don’t visit them.  But now with our daughter, we may find ourselves visiting up north somewhere that has snow so she can at least experience it while she is still young enough to think it is a blast playing in it.  Maybe not this winter, but probably next winter.

I just can’t quite put my finger on it.  Maybe I’m just picking up on every else’s mood?  I don’t know.  All I do know is there is a little over two weeks left before Christmas and I haven’t even begun my shopping yet.  I am usually a procrastinator but even last year I had most of my shopping done by now, or at least it was ordered and was en route to my house if I bought it online, which most of my purchases were.

I think it partly may be due to that on Sunday I drove 20 miles with the item that would net us the largest amount of cash in one purchase, and waited for 20 minutes for the guy to show up and he was a no call / no show.  He hasn’t even responded to the email I sent later asking what was up.  Communication just completely ceased.  At worst maybe some unfortunate incident happened, at best I hope he was just a flake.  I haven’t heard anything from him so I offered the item to the next person who inquired, so hopefully that person will not flake out.  It really puts a damper on my mood when that happens.  The extra money was going to go toward getting some extra things for the Kiddo and maybe pad our limit for everyone else’s gifts, too.

Originally I had tried setting aside any leftover money out of my weekly lunch allotment, but I have maybe half as much as I should since I ended up spending some of it at a fall festival we went to in October, and another sum went to some new fall clothes for the Kiddo in November.  Ah well, we can make do but the extra money off craiglist sure will be nice.

Now to pull myself out of this funk and at least get SOME shopping started or risk stuff not arriving before Christmas…  

We participated a couple years ago when the Wii was especially hard to find, and we won the opportunity to buy it, and got it for my husband’s brother as a Christmas gift.

This year they have a choice of three PS3 bundles – each with a PS3, a game and a movie, ranging in price from $199 to $229 (the $229 version actually has 2 movies, I think, both of them James Bond movies).  So whichever one wins the vote will be available to 500 people to buy (I think the purchase limit is one per winner in these deals).  The other “rounds” have other different products, round 3 has a 46″ Samsung HDTV for $699 (should it win, of course)!

Not every one will win of course, but hey it’s worth a shot if you’re eyeing one of the products as a gift to someone, or even to yourself, and that product wins the vote and you get drawn to be able to buy it if you want… so go visit Amazon to participate in the voting… You never know, you may win the chance to buy a great product at a super low price! But hurry, the first rounds end soon – as of tomorrow!

Since I picked a generic domain name that has the word “review” in it – any blog I create would be review related. So I could set up any number of blogs reviewing pretty much anything.  I was thinking about setting up a blog for reviewing Apple products, and a generic gadget reviewing blog – both of which would be written by my husband and me.

Once they’re up and running I’ll include their links over in my sidebar so if you’re interested in the type of reviews those sites will be doing, you can easily find them and hop on over to read.

Anyway, with the addition of those blogs, I got to thinking, I should set some goals for the income I hope to eventually start bringing in between all of these sites I’m setting up.  My hope is that if I post them somewhere for both myself and anyone reading to see, it will make me more accountable for trying to reach those goals.

First and foremost, the greatest percentage would be going toward our accumulated debt.  I constantly feel like I’m carrying a huge weight on my back, worrying about how much debt we have, how long it will take to pay it off, not to mention HOW we’re going to pay it off, and constantly in fear that our checking account will start creaking under the strain and fall into the red.

Second, would be the percentage to set aside for taxes, should we make more than $600 before the end of the year.  If we make under that, then I will consider this percentage to be a boost toward Christmas gifts, or a head start on saving for taxes for 2009.  I’ll have to mull that one over.

And lastly, a small percentage to use to buy a small number of things that we NEED.  For instance, we could really use a new shower curtain, and I want to stop buying vinyl curtains – both for our health, and for the planet’s health.  I found a decent hemp curtain somewhere online (I’ll have to see if I bookmarked it), but it costs around $100, which is more than we can afford to pay for out of pocket right now.  So I think this will be one of the first things on my list of extras to get with this extra money.  Another item on this list would be a new kitchen faucet.  The one we have now leaks when it’s running, so it really needs to be replaced.

There are probably more “needs” I could come up with but I’ll save that for my goal list.  Right now I need to punch out a few more tasks at the day job before I can take the time to compile my goal list.  I don’t want to slack too much, ya know.  Gotta make it look like I’m doing something work related while I’m sitting here.