The precise moment of the 2002 winter solstice will be December 21, 2002 at 8:14 p.m. EST. If one is not a wiccan, then those who suffer from SAD (seasonal affective disorder) could celebrate the winter solstice purely because it marks the passing of the longest night of the year and every day after will be uphill towards more daylight. Yeah! I can dig that.
Was going through my Christmas songs (I'm not telling where I got them from, ahem) and came across again the funniest Christmas parody song I've ever heard. If you care to hear it, press this link, hope it won't take too long for you to open because it's an .mp3 file: Police Stop My Car--by (who else) Bob Rivers.
I went on one last--YES, IT IS THE VERY LAST, no kidding, I don't care what got forgotten I'm not going back--trip to Meijer (a department/grocery store I've mentioned before). Bill can go out and get it. Now that Lee and his girlfriend, and probably her 14-year-old daughter, are coming, too, I thought I better go get some reinforcements on the grub. Dang, I should have gotten more juice. Sigh. Boy, I sure have the next few days mapped out for me. Cooking, baking, and house cleaning. And feeling the overwhelm to boot. Ah, I always get like this no matter how hard I try not to this time of year. Bill and I haven't even gone out driving around to look at all the Christmas displays. He said he found a yard that's displaying one of those blowup bears that I missed out on.
I realized that I better get started on some cookie baking before Kip got here or else I would feel totally out of control if I didn't. So, I whipped up some shortbread cookie dough two days. Took me till today to get them in the oven. Ohmigod, they are melt-in-your-mouth wonderful good! It's the only cookie that Bill will eat and he was yumming over them. It's a recipe I got from a Canadian magazine while I lived up there. Here's that recipe. Mine are cut in the shape of little teddy bears this year. Let's see. Other cookies I have set myself up for baking are gingerbread, mincemeat, eggnog thumbprint cookies, and peppermint pinwheels. Two old favorites and two new ones that I found in the Taste of Home magazine. Man, I better get cracking!