I am irritated at this weather! It is grey! It is mildly chilly! I have to wear a jacket and socks! O the humanity!!

I am certain that the amount of sympathy that I am getting from readers in Indiana, where the storm was so bad the other day that there were hundreds of people trapped in their cars on the highway, is negligible, but this is Los Angeles and I expect to have a Christmas of sandals and tank tops, dammit.

It's my right.

So yesterday we went to church in the morning, for the second day in a row--this is what happens when Christmas is on a Saturday. At the end of mass, the cantor said, "Let's do it again tomorrow!" and everyone laughed.

Clearly, they will never play anything other than Hark, the Herald Angels Sing and O Come All Ye Faithful, the two dullest Christmas carols in the history of the universe.

Admittedly, we are never on time for the opening hymn, so perhaps they are singing all of the cool ones then--maybe it's O Holy Night and Away in a Manger until the cows come home for those who are on time for church, but somehow, I doubt it.

Afterwards we went to the 99¢ store.

Mom is crazy about the 99¢ store. I am of the opinion that I'm too good for 99¢ stores, that they are ghetto and all the things in them are cheap and nasty. Or at least I felt that way for about 30 seconds, then I started de-nuding the shelves of everything possible. Gum and candy and paints and clay for the kids.

Now I'm 99¢ crazy! What was I thinking, never going to the 99¢ store before? Everything is 99¢, you know! And there's so very much of it! Who knew that it was possible to spend over $35, 99¢ at a time?

After we got home, we cleaned out the closet under the stairs again (weirdly, the last time we did that was exactly a year ago), then I went out and met Joan and Susan and Jim from my Randy Newman email list at Joan's favorite restaurant, which also is about 45 seconds from my house, so it's a restaurant I'm happy to go to as well!

I got there a bit early, was seated by the waitress and told her that I was waiting for three other people, so she sat me at a big table and said that she'd tell them I was there. I waited and waited and waited. Where were they?

Finally, my phone rang. Where were they? Seated across the restaurant from me in plain sight for the past twenty minutes. Not the waitress' fault, though, because they didn't ask whether I had come in or tell her that they were waiting for one other person. The funniest thing was Joan complaining about having to pay to make a long-distance call to me when I was about ten feet away from them!

It's a dimly lit restaurant, is our only excuse.

We all had a swell time after that auspicious start, though I need to remember not to order a reuben sandwich if all I am going to do is pick out the corned beef if I don't know that the corned beef isn't going to be half fat.

The funny thing is that I really only said "Let's get together!" to Susan and Joan that morning, but we were all able to make these dinner plans at the last second, and on the only day that we would have been able to do this, since Susan, Jim and I are all going out of town today! So Joan could have eaten at the restaurant alone, but that would kind of be it.

Today's horoscope:
When you come out of your shell, bring something to show your rich inner life. People change you in ways that are both pleasing and useful. It's never too late in the season to exchange the gift of human energy.

One year ago today:
As an aside, on the TV they kept talking about how it was the first rainy Christmas in twenty years here in the southland. We Angelinos think that a sunny Christmas is our birthright, so the rain was the top story.

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Last Updated Mon 21 February 13:29:09 2005