I’ve been more than understanding, Trey, in letting you leave your decrepit Cut-Dog parked in front of my house. I have called the City and if you don’t come get it soon they will impound it as an abandoned vehicle.

Wednesday night (Christmas Eve) as I was getting the ham on the smoker and prepping the ingredients for my famous pineapple-upside-down cake-in-a-skillet I realized I would use up all the butter and brown sugar in the house — leaving us in the lurch for Christmas Day. So, I ran over to HEB…which was already closed, so I had to go to Fiesta which was open for 25 more minutes. I gathered my items, including more non-alcoholic beer for my father-in-law, and headed to the front register with a crowd of others.

Ah… Here’s an article that brings back the Christmas spirit. These items should have been on my wish list:

• 2004 PRIUS … Actress Lucy Liu; she just ordered one.
• INMOTION SPEAKERS … These battery-powered, paperback book-sized speakers are the iPod’s dream home.
• $20 BILL … The subtle peach and blue hues, the ghostly second image of Andrew Jackson, and the Lilliputian yellow 20s drizzled across the back make this the best-looking—and most secure—greenback ever.
• SCANJET 4670 … It’s the first transparent scanner (both sides are made of clear polycarbonate). And because it can scan standing upright, it takes next to no room on your desk.

p.s. My birthday is only 4 months away, people!

Now that the holidays are over, it’s time to continue the slash and burn.

The formerly secret documents reveal the Defence Secretary travelled to Baghdad 20 years ago to assure Iraq that America’s condemnation of its use of chemical weapons was made “strictly” in principle.

Has anyone in the current administration (many/most of whom were in W’s daddy’s administration) admitted that the U.S. has a history of supporting evil people? that the real revolution of the war in Iraq is that it’s a 180-degree about-face in U.S. policy (that looks to some people to just be hypocrisy)?

Earlier this year, Mr Rumsfeld and other members of the Bush administration regularly cited Saddam’s willingness to use chemical weapons against his own people as evidence of the threat presented to the rest of the world.

Sigh. My Christmas spirit is all gone, now.