Christmas is All Around Me

That's not a photo of me blogging this morning on a typewriter. It's a screenshot I ripped from the Christmas classic, Love Actually. The Wife and I, like many others, made this flick our holiday couples' tradition a few years ago.

If you haven't seen the movie, you probably avoided it intentionally, because of the "chick flick" stigma that comes with romantic comedies. Someone's probably recommended it, and you've just smiled and nodded graciously. Seeing Hugh Grant and/or Colin Firth on the cover of any movie seems to cause me to do the same.

But it's an all-star cast with an amazing patchwork-style script (think Crash, Pulp Fiction, Magnolia, minus the violence) and a brilliantly navigated soundtrack. It's rated R, for nudity, sexuality, and language, and it deserves the rating. But this is one of the rarer-than-rare times that my disdain for romantic British hunks and The Wife's sensitivity to R-rated material are both easily pushed aside, and we can agree perfectly on a movie.

Just go rent it. Or steal it. Or come borrow my copy, if you like. After Wednesday, that is. That's the night we plan to watch it.

Not trying to write a movie review here... I leave that to the good folks over at Knoxfilmjunkie.com. Only wanted to throw up that timely reminder of the looming holiday deadline, so that I could awkwardly segue into what I wanted to talk about today.

The mail usually runs slow around this time of year, and perhaps my slacker brain cell has gotten the best of me and caused me to wait too long. But it's time, if not past time, to send out Christmas cards. And what better Christmas cards to send out than free ones?!

My friends the MCB's turned me on to this promotion at Shutterfly.com. Since I have a blog (sometimes), I was able to sign up to get some free stuff by writing about their products.

Typically, when we send out cards, The Wife chooses two or three and I make the final decision. But this year, it's the other way around. In the spirit of the promotion, I've selected three possible themes for this year's cards, and they're all inspired by 30 by 30. And we're putting photos of the girls on the cards, so wanted a design to reflect that, and have room for at least 2 pics.

The finalists (in no particular order, and each pic links back to product details on Shutterfly):

I found this one and immediately thought... Lists!

The banner in the middle of this card caught my eye. It looked delicious. Reminded me of chocolate. Then I saw the title of the design: "Sweet Chocolate". Duh. How appropriate for a blog about diet and weight loss. Speaking of chocolate, The Wife made Kahlua fudge yesterday. There just might be a connection here.

I looked, but couldn't find an Asian-themed card, so I reached a little bit.

The "Back"ground of this card is Black. Get it? Back... in... Black?

Now that I've fulfilled my obligations to my sponsor, feel free to click over to Shutterfly and buy stuff. And The Wife will probably read the comments below, so if you want to, you can try and influence the final decision.

I went to the mall yesterday. Not on my own behalf, but running some errands for others (I'm the charitable sort). Made some observations, though, while I was there:

1. Some people at the mall seem perfectly willing to just walk right into you, if you don't alter your path first, before the collision occurs. This happens way too often for comfort.
2. Must be awesome to be one of those old folks, just sittin' away the hours in those comfy chairs at the entrances to the mall. I'm not being sarcastic this time. That really looks awesome. What I don't like is when the chairs are coin-operated massage chairs and they're not on. What if I want a mall-chair massage? "Excuse me, sir? If you're not gonna turn that chair on, would you mind sitting over there?"
3. Those folks standing at the kiosks in the medians must be seasonally out-of-work carnival workers. They're gonna get your attention one way or another. The only way to escape being pitched their miracle cosmetics or made-in-Afghanistan trinkets is to look straight ahead, don't make eye contact, just keep on walking...
4. How cleverly inconvenient of them to put the registers all the way in the back of the store.
5. Now, the mall cops are on wheels. Not golf carts, or bikes, or even rollerblades. I'm talking about some kind of Jetsons-lookin' two-wheel hovercraft thing straight from the movie Total Recall - or maybe one of those Stallone sci-fi's.
6. There's a space in a food court in every mall in America claiming it sells "Cajun" food. Except every single one is run by people of Asian heritage, and every one sells food suspiciously identical to your local Chinese buffet. Bourbon Chicken? Or Honey Chicken? I guess they figured out you can sell twice as much Asian food if you sell it from opposite sides of the food court and call one side something else. "Cajun" just happened to rhyme with "Asian".
   
7. My favorite store in the mall, by far, is Williams-Sonoma. I could easily spend a million dollars in there, and after that bought me a coffeemaker, I could probably spend a million more.

I'm gonna be late for work.

9:00 a.m. 2 eggs, scrambled, one bacon strip, 1 small bran muffin with butter 350 calories

1:30 p.m. ate about 4 oz of a 6 oz portion of homemade chicken lasagna, small salad with Honey Bacon French dressing 500 calories

NO WORKOUT SATURDAY 12/11/10