pre-orders

holidays
I've pre-ordered a brined turkey from New Seasons for Thanksgiving. I'm in the process of pre-ordering our Christmas tree and arranging for delivery. I decided to get a real tree this year. I don't know why except that I'm tired of our plastic tree. The fact that I could pay $25 to have it delivered to the house is definitely a factor. I don't have to go pick it out (though I could have opted to pick it out myself) or figure out how to get it home. I got a grand fir because it's the most fragrant.

Mom will be joining us for Thanksgiving. D volunteered to cook the dinner if I do the cleaning up. Done and done! Mom is, of course, assigned dessert duty.

Christmas dinner will be done with the G's. Location of that is TBD.


sandy
I'm reading some of the analysis of why Romney lost. One factor that keeps coming up is Hurricane Sandy. It very well may have helped Obama win. What I find amusing is that Sandy was declared by Christian extremists to be retribution for the US support of a homosexual agenda. So the fact that ultimate result of Sandy may very well have been the re-election of Obama means that God approves of the "homosexual agenda" (aka equal rights for all people). I always wonder how the crazy Christian extremist interpret the tea leaves of all this. Do they just assume homosexuality is always at the top of the list as to why we have weather events? What about adultery? What about all those coveters out there?

minutia
I spent the morning cleaning and getting things almost back to the way they were before the party. I've had plenty of opportunity to do this before now, but today was the first day I felt like doing it.

I watched Witness: Juarez last night. It's an HBO mini-documentary about a photojournalist's journey to photograph the situation in Juarez, Mexico. Two things stood out to me:

1. I find it hard to believe there's any real effort on the part of the Mexican government to battle the cartels. The "war" has claimed 100 Mexican soldiers and 19,000 Mexican citizens. Only 100 soldiers lost in a war with so many citizen victims? Even if a lot of those victims are involved in the drug trade, surely the army isn't actually attempting to physically stop the cartels?
2. El Paso, Texas is right over the border and is the 3rd safest city in America. Ciudad Juarez is the 6th most dangerous city in the world. 

Chris Matthews is an idiot who should be fired. Who says he's glad a storm of this magnitude happens? It's not a slip of the tongue, it reveals he really is glad the hurricane wreaked the havoc it did (and still is wreaking).

This Kenyan mother named her twins Barack Obama and Mitt Romney. WTF is she thinking? The poor kid who ended up being Mitt Romney is going to be all sorts of messed up. I guess maybe kids growing in Africa (depending up where in Africa, of course) have things a bit more challenging than their names to worry about, but still. It's like naming one kid Winner and the other Loser. Especially when you consider that Obama is so loved in Kenya. Weird woman.