Random Update

I finished stitching this pansy a few weeks ago. Not very seasonal, I admit! It is the fifth of sixteen pansies that I'm stitching on a project.

Today I was out and about -- I had an appointment for a haircut, and thought I might pick up a few things I needed at Target or someplace. Well, I didn't count on the traffic. It was absolutely horrible. Everywhere I tried to go, there was gridlock -- even at the hair salon. There were three cars waiting to park, so I parked across the street at the bank and walked over. It was so awful out that I never even ended up going in any of the stores I wanted to, I just came home. I took back roads home from New Haven so I didn't even have to deal with the interstate.

I did see a bunch of people taking their Christmas trees home today, though. I must have seen 30 cars, trucks, or vans with trees tied to the roofs or hanging out of the trunk. Some of them were huge!

I would really like to read this new book, Hungry Planet: What the World Eats by Peter Menzel and Faith D'Aluisio. They visited 30 families in 24 countries and recorded what each family eats in a week, and how much it costs. They also took pictures of the different families with their food. Some of the items on the German family's grocery list were weekly staples for us when we lived there, too. But I don't think I ever spent even close to half of what the German family spends on a week's worth of groceries (they spent about $500 on food for a family of four). That looks like a really interesting book, though. I'd like to read it.