Played hooky on Friday instead of keeping the nose to the grindstone.

Well, yeah, I did play hooky.  But I also had a TON of errands to get done at the same time, so it wasn't REALLY playing hooky.  Except that I stopped at a couple of places that just happened to carry books....

Yup.

Instead of getting my Christmas cards addressed (I still want a few pictures of the boys to add for the cards that go to relatives),  I did other things.

I did, however, find a few cool books.  Don't have pictures of them yet, but hope to by later this week.

I also hope that I start to feel business-like again and want to do data entry.  Currently, not feeling very business oriented (though I do need to keep the orders rolling in to pay the bills, ya know) and would far rather sit on the sofa reading trashy novels (DON'T EVEN ASK ME TO TELL YOU WHAT THEY ARE.... I WON'T TELL --YOU CAN'T MAKE ME!!!)

I SHOULD be making a batch of Stollen for Christmas.  I will before Friday comes around -- it's just not Christmas (at least to me) without it.  (I use my grandmother's recipe, which, I have a feeling, she modified at some point, and which I have, over the years, modified a smidge again for my own tastes. It really looks very different, and has different ingredients than most of the stollen you find in cookbooks.)

 I don't usually do a great deal of other fancy baking for Christmas -- though I did make a Buche de Noel last Christmas ...every once in a while I try to make extravagant things... I found the recipe for Buche de Noel for a French Class holiday dinner back in.... oh, well either 1983-4 for classes I took way back when, or for the second set of French class I took in 1986-88.... this is the decadent, totally butter filled, coffee and chocolate flavored yummy that takes me three days to get all the parts together and finish.

Not this year though, for the Buche de Noel -- it will have to be the Stollen.  Hopefully I'll remember to take a picture of it before I dig in.  One of the modifications my grandmother added all those years ago was a buttercream frosting to the Stollen instead of just plain powdered sugar.  I happen to find buttercream frosting  addictive and slather it on in excess.  Good thing Christmas only comes once a year.



Now come tomorrow, I'm hoping to get a few more good (as in not blurry) pictures of Sons Number One and Two -- I signed them up for a soccer clinic which goes for two days, four hours a day (to hopefully give me a bit of break from listening to the constant bickering / computer grabbing).  It's rained steadily for the last day and a half... the weather report was for five inches of rain this weekend -- the clinic goes on regardless of rain unless it's an out-and-out downpour, so I expect LOTS OF MUD!!!   And I'm hoping that not only will they have a good time, but that the clinic will help them out too.


Tomorrow, I really need to get back to work.  I gotta get over this thing for playing hooky.  Sigh.