Today is Sunday, December 17 and there are only 8 days until Christmas!  I can’t believe it is that close.  I have not started my baking yet!  I finally got my cards done just last night!  On the plus side, I have found the clams I have been searching for.  I hope you are further along than I am.  Today we remember the birthdays of William Floyd, Johan, King of Saxon and Makoto Moroi.  On this day in 1538 Pope Paul III excommunicated King Henry the VIII, in 1791 an NYC traffic regulation created the first one-way street and in 1903 the Wright Brothers made the first sustained motorized aircraft flight.  In Colombia it is Independence Day, in Venezuela it is Bolivar Day and in the US it is Wright Brothers Day and National Maple Syrup Day.

It has been a busy week, but I have not gotten some of things done that I should have.  I did take Barbara to her first Rockettes show, at Radio City.  It was a great show and we both enjoyed it.  One of the things that always amazes me is the tin soldier routine.  I watched it this week and while enjoying the whole thing I spent some time analyzing what was going on.  There are so many ways that the routine could fall apart that I was more impressed than before by how well they perform it.  If you have not seen the show, you should.

We went to the show with friends of ours and had a great time.  One mistake we made was going by the M & M store on our way back to the car.  We went in and I just stood there gazing hungrily at the huge tubes of M & M’s.  Some of the tubes were mixtures and some were all one color.  All you have to do is decide what you want. They know how to get you, too.  They have a number of smiling helpers standing all around the tubes handing out bags for you to fill.  It is all very simple.  You take the bag, put it under a tube of the kind you like, press a handle and the candy pours out into the bag.

The thing is that if you are not careful, you have a full bag before you know it and there is no way to return the unwanted ones to the tube.  I got a sizable amount of the dark chocolate ones and the new caramel ones.  We also got red and green ones for the holiday and Barbara got a bag of the minis.  We walked into the store, looked around, found what we wanted and just like that spent over $70 for candy.  We weren’t even in the store all that long.  I still shudder when I think what would have happened if the Hershey store had been open when we went there.

We went to a movie recently and planned the evening so that we would go to one of those all-you-can-eat buffets for dinner afterward.  We went to an early showing and I think we were the youngest ones of the ten or so people in the theater.  The place is one of those theaters that has the nice reclining seats.  If it had been a little later, I could easily have dozed off.  But I digress.  After the movie we went to eat.  As we were walking to the restaurant I saw something that I thought was interesting.  In the strip mall where the restaurant is, there is also a dollar store.  Just as we approached, I looked up and saw a woman in a full length mink coat walk into the store.  A mink coat in the dollar store!  A bit showy for my taste.  What made it better was the fact that her husband was dressed in grubby sweats.  I guess all his money was spent on her coat and there was nothing left for him to have a good wardrobe.

We went into the buffet, were seated and I waited while Barbara got her food.  I had a chance to sit and look around.  I have decided that there are four basic types of people who go to these places.  Type one is the person who has never been to one before.  They go and load up their plate and then walk back to the table looking guilty at how much they took.  They eat quickly and then go back for more.  They seem to be afraid that they will get caught taking more.  

The next type are the ones who go occasionally and get their favorites first.  After that, they graze, looking for other things they like (that would be Barbara and I).  The next type is the person who is there for the seafood.  This type loads up the plate with shrimp and/or crab legs and has to use one hand to carry the plate and one to hold the pile of food to keep it from falling.  I think these people would just stand by the food and eat if they thought they could get away with it.

The final type are the ones who go there all the time.  They are easy to spot.  They come in stretchy sweat pants and have to walk sideways between the tables.  They are also the ones that the service personnel know by name and know what drinks they prefer.  These people travel in herds and make an evening out of sitting around eating and talking.  There was one group that was there when we arrived and were still eating when we left.  They are the type of people that big and tall shops wait for.  They are also the ones that make me feel svelte, by comparison.

This week our fact tells us that when the x-ray was first discovered, a law in New Jersey was written forbidding the use of x-ray opera glasses.  Fortunately that law was removed and you could buy x-ray glasses from the back of almost any comic book.  I was never allowed to get a pair, but I wondered why you would want to see someone’s bones.  I am sure that some kids bought them thinking you would see people naked, but I knew better.  If you could they would have cost a lot more and they probably would not have been sold on comic books.