mini-series from Marvel Comics and for co-writing 
with 
Retail Thera–ECONOMIC STIMULOUS
- 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.
I dunno how much that Costco Brother is, but we’ve got an MFC-7840. The wireless version is $230 the wired one is $190 I think… http://tinyurl.com/6l8m99
If you can put the printer near your airport, it is cheaper and easier than fussing with the wireless options on the printer.
A friend of mine just bought a Brother MFC490CW and he loves it — uses it with both his Mac and his WinXP machine and says he has no problems with it at all.
The boots with stretch along the back are the best, because wide calf can be TOO wide.
http://www.naturalizer.com/shop_online/item_detl.asp?CID=boots&PID=catty&variant_id=848P04&Size=%25%25%25-%25
This suggestion might be a little late, but we when we bought our Macs in August, we got a Brother MFC-6490CW from Office Depot. It’s wireless and has a pretty decent (especially for the price) 11 x 17 scanner, also prints 11 x 17. It’s a pretty big machine, but seems to be working well so far. Good luck!
Did I ever tell you about the getting a pair of reindeer-skins boots from an aikido teacher from Uppsala in an attempt to curry favor for his sushi-chef pal in Tokyo who wanted to marry me? Since it’s highly unlikely I’ll get another pair of reindeer-skin boots as inducement to marriage, I’m protective of them. I had a shoemaker in JC add a leather panel for me. He made a special trip to pick out the leather yada yada. I’m happy with the results but
1) I knew him for years and that in the ‘old country’ he did custom shoes all the time, 2) you can see that work was done, and 3) be prepared to spend.
I’ve also had good results with having the tops of boots stretched. (Couldn’t do it to the Rudolphs because of the shearling insides.) It’s much cheaper. Unfortunately not all cobbler’s have the proper equipment. Good luck.