I have 64 Christmas CDs

It's like a weird sickness, I know, but I just love Christmas music. And not the same old stuff every year, I am on the lookout for the unusual but good, every year. But I am trying to limit myself to 2 new ones each year because, well, this is getting out of hand.

These come in all genres, some of them even defy a single genre. Jazz? I've got traditional jazz and smooth jazz too. Country? Yeah, some modern country and several western swing style discs too. There's classical and pseudo classical (What if Mozart Wrote I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Clause?). There is one reggae, two tejano and three rockabilly discs.

Twenty years after the original It's Christmas Man!, Brave Combo has a new, live, Christmas album. That's one of my 2 for this year. I wonder what other one will grab me.

Oh, and it's really hard to take a good photo of CDs on the dining table indoors. And it's raining so I couldn't take them out back.

I'm having an odd craving for gingerbread cookies...

I didn't remember I'd seen it before.

The kitchen sink that is.

The backstory is that my sister selected a light fixture for her guest bathroom that is the same as the one in our brother's/sister-in-law's guest bathroom. She didn't make the connection, she just knew when she saw it in the store that it was THE ONE.

I did the exact same thing with his kitchen sink. When I picked mine out I drove 30 miles away to Ft. Lauderdale to the European sink outlet store and spent hours looking at all the sinks before finding just the right one: stainless steel, 2 bowls, the left one being bigger and deeper, and the right one being smaller and easier to reach the bottom of. I've picked out kitchen sinks before but this is the first time I've gone with the one I love rather than the one that fits and is cheap. And I love it.

So, I don't remember seeing it in my brother's kitchen, but I know I must have, because it had been newly remodeled the Christmas of 2006 when I was there, and I bought my sink in June of 2008. I didn't make the connection until I looked under their sink recently and saw the brand name in the inside of the bowl. Blanco. Nice sink.

Now if we could explain why my sister-in-law and I have the same silverware pattern...

I liked it so much I bought it twice

My new juicer I bought on eBay, that is. I had one before, in my previous life that I left behind. Both times I hung around eBay and put my bid in the last few seconds and got good deals on this well-rated juicer.

Even though they are identical, this one isn't as efficient. The stuff that comes out isn't as dry for this one. I'm not sure what I expected for 19.99 plus shipping, so I won't complain. I do like the juice, and I know it's good for me. If I stick with it maybe I'll get a better one next year.

On a crazier note, apparently the toaster oven caught on fire twice yesterday. No matter how they explain it, the fact remains that these things never happen to me, only them. The toaster oven is in the trash and I won't be replacing it until they are gone. Kind of like the ironing board.

Anybody want to buy two 25 year old roommates, cheap? Any takers for free? Anyone?

[Crickets]

Meet the car from hell, and his little brother.

It's the car from hell, and it's not really the car's fault. Not really. It's just a fact of life when your owner has no money you will break down more often. I think it must be some kind of Murphy's law or something.

We won't discuss how "they" bought 2 pieces of junk cars instead of one decent one. After all, a gift of money is a gift and "they" decided that this was a better value for them. BUT, and here's the big but, this only is a good value if the original principals still apply. If you have to move in with Mom due to financial restraints, you agree to her fine print. The fine print says in this neighborhood you can't do car repairs in the driveway. The big print (me) says no you can't have my garage for your repairs either.

I've had 3 letters from the homeowner's management company about my violations of the repair rule. I could be fined up to $1000. My son-in-law wants to argue with them. Excuse me, but who do you think you are, a homeowner or something?

So, where do you tow the car so you can do your own repairs? Around these parts you need to know someone with a garage (business) that will let you use their facilities, or you need to be on good terms with someone who lives in a neigborhood where this is allowed.

In the case of my daughter and her hubby, they actually have one place like that, but that spot has been occupied for almost a year by the second car from hell.This car has been in her Dad's back yard for almost a year now while they tried to scrape up enough money to replace the engine. It's almost done, now they have to figure out how to pay for the registration and insurance which they let go when it got broken. (Which had been paid for by yours truly, but who's bitter?)

Her Dad, by the way, wants that space in his yard back for his new boat.

Preoccupied with clean cement?

When waxing philosophically about the differences between south Florida where I live now and central Florida where I grew up, the priorities on the front of the house strike me immediately. Some things are the same everywhere, like attractive landscaping, maintaining the actual house (paint, etc.), and individual decorative touches like house flags, special mailboxes, or seasonal wreaths.

In my neighborhood, the homeowner's association pays a part-time maintenance guy who uses a lot of his non-emergency time cleaning the sidewalks. Really. There is this big machine that looks like a commercial floor cleaner that hooks up to a water source and scrubs concrete clean. Since most of the sidewalks are under oak trees, they do get dirty and stained, but where I grew up this wasn't an issue. Sidewalks got darker, so what? In my last trips to Deland and Leesburg, driveways and sidewalks were naturally darkened everywhere I looked.

But in my community, and others around here I've heard, concrete must be painted (only terracotta here) or cleaned. So here I am out pressure cleaning my driveway. This is a big deal for me since I have to plan around the absence of cars, if you know what I mean. Until I lived here I never paid too much attention to little stains, but when you clean up the dirt the rust spots and mystery stains stand out. IMO, it's just one more thing to obsess about. I think I'll go make a cake instead.

Worse for you than most cookies

I almost called this post "Heart Attack on a Plate". I succumbed and made the chocolate chip bacon cookies I read about last week. Yes, bacon in cookies. Before you gag, try eating a little bacon and chocolate together. It is surprisingly tasty.

They are very good cookies, but IMO it is a waste of perfectly wonderful bacon, since the cookie and chocolate part overwhelm the bacon part.

Do you suppose I ate too much of the bacon before I put it in the cookies?? Hmmm.

I got the recipe on craftster.org.

Yes, I made a pan of plain ones for Nina, who doesn't eat bacon. Smart girl.

Nina and the big chocolate cake.

The dad of Nina's friend let them use his truck to haul around an engine. Don't ask. Anyway, to thank him for the use of his truck, she made him his favorite cake, German Chocolate, from scratch.

This is a first for her, her previous cakes have been from mixes. This is a big production cake, let me tell you. The first step was a trip out to Jo-Anns in Wellington to get another cake pan. (I only had 2 matching pans.) The Boynton store is kind of disappointing, so we went right to the good one.

After we got home, we discovered that not all nine inch round pans are really nine inches across. The new pans did not match the old pans, so she had to do it in two layers after all. Nothing like an extra trip out to Wellington, heh? I think Nina just got herself a new set of cake pans. My old ones are just fine for me.

The cake turned out well, very well indeed. The delivery of it was delayed because Nina doesn't have her own car and is at the mercy of others.

Did I mention an engine that was being carted around? Oh, I said not to ask, didn't I.