Was It Something I Said?

Along with the chocolate and a candy cane or two, my Christmas stocking always held a banana and an orange. It’s a simple way to get kids to eat breakfast on a busy morning.

Photo from clipart.com

When I was little, it was a Christmas tradition to find little bags of chocolate coins in our stockings. Yum! When I saw these at the grocery store (perfectly positioned for impulse buying), I couldn’t stop smiling.

Photo by Rosemary West

I was moving some things around in the kitchen, and left this cupboard standing open just for a couple of minutes while I was busy at the counter. While I wasn’t looking, Bob decided it looked very cozy.

Photo by Rosemary West

Even on a cold, rainy day like this, the pool still has to be serviced. Paying someone to do it is so worthwhile!

Photo by Rosemary West

It hardly looks like December, even in South California. Temperatures in the 80’s are perfect for a visit to Lake Balboa.

Photo by Rosemary West

It was about 80 degrees outside when we stopped at a fast-food place for a cold drink. This woman was wearing Christmas-themed toe socks (patched on the heels with bright blue) with camouflage-striped flip-flops, blue crop pants, a ragged gray-green tank top and a sleeveless, beige cardigan. She caught our attention with her nasty cursing when the counter girl made an error and sold her three drinks instead of one. Neither of them was a native speaker of English, but they were forced to use English because it was the only language they had in common.

Photo by Rosemary West

These seagulls at Lake Balboa seem to be standing in formation.

Photo by Rosemary West

BookMooch is an online community where people exchange used books. You list the books you want to give away and search for the books you want to receive. You get a point for each book you give, and spend a point for each book you receive. It costs you nothing but the postage to mail your book (normally less than $3.00, sometimes less than $2.00), which is still much less than you’d pay for that same used book on a site like Amazon. So far I’ve given away 26 books and received 19. If you enjoy books and don’t want to spend a lot of money on them, it’s definitely worth a look.

www.bookmooch.com

Photo from Clipart.com

During the past several years, every street in this neighborhood has been resurfaced, except the one where I live. This has been very frustrating to everyone here. This street gets a bit more traffic than most of the others, because it offers a direct route between the neighborhood entrances at the top and bottom of the hills. Uneven, lumpy, pitted and cracked, it had reached the point where it was becoming hazardous. When I called the city to ask for help, they sent a pothole crew the next day, but they repaired only one pothole. Apparently they realized the scope of this job was beyond their resources. Several other neighbors had also called asking for repairs. Finally, we got our wish. Work started on Tuesday. Years ago a job like this would have taken several weeks (the notices we received form the city warned it might take as long as four weeks). But modern equipment (consisting mostly of enormous, specialized machinery on wheels, each vehicle driven by one man who is assisted by others on foot) makes the job go much faster. I was impressed by how much progress they were able to make in just a few hours each day. On Thursday, the first layer of asphalt was laid.

Photo by Rosemary West

I just used a dangerous tool to open a nearly impenetrable package that was about three times bigger than it needed to be. High-tech devices have some of the worst packages, gigantic displays made of unconscionable quantities of petrochemical products and cardboard. They do not have tabs, zippers, flaps, dotted lines, escape hatches, or any other means by which to open them. Scissors are usually inadequate. Stabbing at them with knives is dangerous, both to the consumer and the product within. I use a small box cutter, something that would get me kicked off an airplane if I tried to transport it in my carry-on. Sometimes the density of the plastic packaging causes the razor blade to bend.

So I was very pleased to learn that Amazon.com is working with manufacturers to put and end to wrap rageby introducing non-frustrating packaging. The plan is to create packaging that is easier to open and that doesn’t produce so much waste, and to eventually use this packaging for everything in the Amazon catalog. Of course, over time, retailers other than Amazon will have these packages, too, as manufacturers are unlikely to operate a two-tiered system in which the same products sometimes appear in friendly, low-waste packaging and sometimes in frustrating, wasteful packaging.

I like this videothat shows one person struggling with the package while the other one is already playing with the toy.

Photo from Clipart.com