Presents of Mind

Brought to you by a busy preholiday weekend.

Editor's note: A few posts back, I wrote about Signature Sound Quartet and posted a photo alongside the writeup. Astute readers have pointed out to me that there are FIVE guys in that picture of the quartet. That's because SSQ always includes pianist Roy Webb in photos, something I forgot to mention until I was reminded. Sorry about the confusion.

Anyway. Remember the other day how I said April the doofy Apple store clerk sold me something that didn't look like a microphone, but I trusted her and took it anyway? Bad move. It was not a microphone, it was a mic adapter, which I would have realized in the store if I'd bothered to read the packaging right there like I should have, knowing as I do what a twit April is. But I was in a hurry and got lazy, so I brought this tragedy on myself.



Like many annoyances, though, this one turned out for the best. After liberating Snow Toro from the garage and clearing the driveway and my walkways and deck, I went back to the Mall as soon as it opened Sunday morning, adapter in hand. The clerk at the register, Kang, cheerfully took my return and refunded my money. I’d been dreading another trip to the mall, but this one was off to an auspicious start.

So I asked Kang about the solid memory cards April swore the store didn't carry, the ones that I can swap from camera to Treo and back. She assured me that they carry them and hustled to the back room to fetch me a few. Then she hustled again when I asked for one with even more capacity, and I walked out of there with a 1 gigabyte memory card smaller than a packet of sugar. I can save more than a second or two of video on that bad boy!

Since I was in the mall anyway, I went to my favorite store and picked up a couple more gifts and whatnots for the coming trip to MO. Then I spent nearly 90 minutes wrapping the things I made last week. That's about 75 minutes longer than I usually spend wrapping gifts, since I'm bad at wrapping and don't usually enjoy it. But I seem to be improving with age, and my packages this year look downright purty. It helped that I had Starsky & Hutch going in the background. Very festive. I got extra cat-owner points for filling the kitchen with ribbon, too.

Sunday I also got groceries, made chili (again), cleaned house, did laundry, steamed some sweaters, and amused both cats. Whew! Thank goodness the phone rang when it did, or I might have accomplished even more.

Today around the world: December 5 is the King’s Birthday in Thailand. Who wants cake?