Festive products

Since we got back from vacation, I've been working on getting my diet back to something more "normal" for me. I've been concentrating on vegetables and fruit and beans, with some pasta and bread thrown in. Lunch today was roasted red pepper hummus on French bread, raw carrots, celery and cauliflower, a banana, some Low-Fat Wheat Thins, and a tangerine. Last week was a little rough, as my system made the switch, but this week seems fine so far.

I've also become quite fond of instant Chai Latte. I saw someone buying it in the grocery store a few weeks ago and was kind of intrigued, so I bought a box of the original flavor. This week I have the vanilla flavor; I think I prefer the original, but they're both good. I started drinking tea awhile ago because I thought it might help keep me from getting so hungry during the day, and thus snacking, and it does help, I think. Even though it has caffeine, it doesn't seem to make me quite as jittery as Diet Coke does, if I have too much.

I've started looking forward to my first cup of chai when I get to work in the morning; it's the first thing I do now. Kind of funny for me. I never used to drink anything hot. Diet Coke was always my caffeine delivery system of choice.

I brought the bread (sliced into fat slices) and the vegetables (carrot and celery sticks and little cauliflowerettes) in Halloween Zip-Lock bags. It was kind of fun filling them this morning--I cut up a whole bunch of celery, a head of cauliflower and several carrots and divided them into bags for the week's lunches. It kind of felt like making little goodie bags, although I suppose if we'd given them out at Halloween we would have gotten our windows soaped or something . . .

I love holiday-specific things like the bags. Even though we have about six rolls of paper towels out in the garage, I couldn't resist buying Christmas ones at the store this weekend. I also bought a package of the new disposable/reusable plastic containers with a Christmas pattern on them to use when I take my spinach dip to Bob's folks' house on Christmas, and if they made small containers with a design on them, I would have bought them, too.

I also bought Christmas Vanilla Wafers--they taste the same, but they're shaped like snowmen (white), Christmas trees (green), and, I think, red bells. Oh, and red and green Tostitos. I'll risk dying of red food dye poisoning to get fun food. I've never gone so far as to buy holiday pasta, that sort of seems like a waste to me, but it certainly looks pretty in a jar. Oh, and Candy Cane Tootsie Roll Pops! I always used to buy Canada Dry Cranberry Ginger Ale at Christmastime, but I haven't been able to find it lately. And Peppermint ice cream!

I'm currently listening to The Burglar Who Traded Ted Williams in the car, and I just finished reading Sue Grafton's Q is for Quarry. In the "Burglar" book, there's a running joke about Grafton's books. As the book begins, Bernie, the burglar/bookseller, is confronted by a customer who says, "Not a bad looking Burglar; I don't suppose you have an Alibi." Of course, the customer is referring to A is for Alibi and B is for Burglar, but it gives Bernie a start.

Throughout the book, Bernie and his friend Carolyn reminisce about various Grafton books, but they (both the books themselves and the titles) are fictional: K is for Rations (about an army barracks); H is for Preparation, about a proctologist, and the ever-popular one about the sex therapist, G is for Spot. Oh, and T is for Sympathy. I think there was another one, but I've forgotten it. That will probably keep me up all night.

All week I've been waking up in the middle of the night trying to think of the names of all the books up to now. I think I had the list pretty well down last night, but this morning I couldn't remember a few of them. I figure I need to write them down so I can stop worrying about it.

I went to Sue Grafton's website to look for the book list. this picture of the view out her office window nearly made me gasp. As one of my nephews was wont to say at the toy store when he was small, "I need this."