.jeri.

Hello everyone!

I hope you're all feeling contented and refreshed after your Thanksgiving holidays, if you were able to celebrate them. We kept our usual tradition of visiting Ric's brother's family in Arizona, where we hung out for a few days. We drove in on Wednesday night after I had spent about seven hours baking and cleaning in the house.

We enjoyed a good homemade meal, had plenty of great conversation, played outside with the kids, and went on some nice night walks. We even had a chance to catch breakfast with Becky and Zoe on Saturday. Since we like the night drives, we came back late Saturday night so that we would have Sunday as a day of rest (or errand-running) before having to return to work on Monday.

After church on Sunday, I went running around trying to find items to decorate my office for the holidays. When I was at the Dollar Tree, I heard a lady trying to give her son a lesson in manners. She said something about some other lady, who apparently didn't pick something up that she knocked off the ground. She talked about how people didn't have manners anymore, and kept harping on it, all in earshot of the other lady. When the other lady tried to explain, Ms. Manners said, "Ohhhhh, the accent explains EVERYthing." She repeated that again and again. I was right there in between these two ladies. The other lady said, "It doesn't matter if I was born in China," and Ms. Manners kept repeating, "Don't worry, the accent explains EVERYthing." Now, as far as I can tell, Ms. Manners was of similar ethnicity to the lady she was insulting, so it was probably a Mexican vs. South American thing. I don't know. But when the other lady said, "I'm not your maid," and Ms. Manners said, "Well you look like you should be," I was outraged. I'd never really heard someone be so blatantly racist toward a complete stranger, and so I couldn't help but tell her that her manners weren't much better since she picked a fight in the middle of a store. She retorted with a "Neither are yours then!" I just walked away. I wish I were quick-witted. I thought of plenty I could have said later on, but my instincts tell me to insult people when I know I should be a good example, so I'm glad I didn't go any further. I spent the rest of the day doing crafts for my cubicle and decorating my house for Christmas. I watched almost an entire season of The Simpsons with commentaries.

This week should be kind of crazy. Today I have a Christmas choir practice at work and class and shopping, Tuesday there's a bocce final and a cookie exchange at lunch and National Lampoon's at the Fox at night, Wednesday I think we have a movie night, Thursday there are two big Christmas parties at work, Friday is the Christmas tree lighting at work, and Saturday is supposed to be a Kings game in the afternoon and an opera at night. I may also try to catch the candlelight ceremony at Disneyland on Sunday. I am glad we had this slow weekend before the storm!