- Happy and sad: Aunt Polly’s gone home (Boo!) but Fraction’s home (Yay!). Aunt Polly’s visit went CRAZY fast. I always feel like such an ass after she leaves – like all I do is work her to death when I really mean to take her out to lunch and relax. I’m not good at relaxing in the ‘sit around and do nothing’ sense of the term, though. And neither, honestly, is she.

- Lots of retail therapy of late. New clothes! I did well, I think. The only thing I bought that I’m not sure about is a black skirt from the gap that’s an A-line. In retrospect, an A-line is not great for my height or my hips. I wonder if I can get it made straight at the tailor’s? Something like this would have been a wiser choice, but I succumbed to the allure of the $30 sale price plus extra 30% off. The only thing I didn’t purchase that I sort of wish I had? This jacket. The big fail was high boots. Found a pair I loved, but I couldn’t zip them up over my 15 inch calves. Feh. Most “wide calf” boots are too big, leaving enough room for me to slip a wallet down in there too, so I’m seriously thinking about calling a shoe repair shop and finding out if they can insert a panel for me or something. Anybody have any experience with that sort of thing? Failing that, I can always put nice legwarmers over ankle boots or maybe go with these.

- As long as I’m soliciting advice, I’m trying to track down bread basket linens for a certain someone on my Christmas list. I have a couple of colorful ones that my mother-in-law got me, but all I seem able to find online are like this. Any ideas? I tried etsy, but maybe I had the wrong search string?

- We need a new printer. We seem to destroy inkjets, so we’re going to spring for a laser printer this time. Ideally, we need something wireless with a scanner that works well with a Mac. Not having a ton of luck. Costco has a Brother multifunction laser printer (mfc-8670DN) that seems the best deal I can find, but I can’t find any reviews. (It’s not wireless out of the box, but my understanding is that if we can make it wireless with an airport. No?) Thoughts/suggestions? There’s this one on the Apple site, but we’d then need to get (and store) another flatbed scanner. It’s also about $100 more than the one at Costco.