There's lead in candy?
On another note, we exchanged our gifts in the library today and it was very nice. It was a big year for gift cards among the Colleague, the SCM and me. Our fourth member, the media aide, about whom I rarely write because she is just plain nice and is in an adjacent office and not up in all our faces like the other three of us are, gives actual gifts which always include food, generally Polish cookies or such because a) she is Polish herself and b) knows that we all start to drool when she gives us this stuff. I am generally annoyed with the SCM since that crap he pulled in early November, which was unfortunately when I shopped for him, but I had gotten him a fleece throw at Old Navy and he loved it. Even so, his bizarre penchant to do every possible thing early meant that he had left all our gifts on our desks before the rest of us got there, rather than wait the twenty minutes so we could all just give each other our gifts in person. So that drove me crazy, although that was probably an over-reaction on my part.Last night I talked to the FIL and he said he had a yen to watch Citizen Kane and did any of us have the video or DVD to lend him? I assured him that one of the four of us had to, but it turned out when I checked that none of us do. Surprise! And just like that, fate tells me what to get him for his final Christmas present. Sadly, this means that tomorrow or Saturday I have to brave the highway to get to BestBuy or Circuit City, since Amazon is pretty much out at this point. Ah, well.
It seems I have a new culinary speciality, which is still fairly mundane, given my cooking history: roasted fennel. I've been donating roasted vegetables to the Thanksgiving and Christmas table for some years now; I think the Christmas request is based mostly on the MIL's belief that I am incapable of preparing any other food. Sometimes I throw fennel into the mix, but this year I'm just making a whole lot of that. What I use is on this page; scroll down to the picture captioned "Florence Fennel." It has a slight licorice flavor, is sometimes called anise. Needless to say, this is another food that was unheard of in my mother's or grandmother's homes, but it's a staple of the Hubs' family's diet, where it is known by its Italian name, finocchio. I just had to look up that spelling, because I have always heard them all call it something that sounds like finookie. The Hubs puts in the turkey stuffing every year for Thanksgiving the way people use celery. That's a long paragraph about nothing.
We have a so-called half day tomorrow, but since they're cutting out two of the eight periods, it sounds more like a three-quarters day to me. After which I'm on the hunt for Kane and/or all the finocchio I can find, which may take more than one supermarket.
Tomorrow night I have to go to the Hubs' office party. Bah. Humbug. Hate that shit. I won't know anyone, and the strangers who start up coversations with me will have no idea that I'm nodding and smiling because I can't hear what they're saying. And by 9:00, I'll be nodding off. Yes, I'm a social wonder.
I need to eat Polish cookies now.
