Overheard at HoneyBaked Ham

"I said 'Merry Christmas' to a customer and then thought, 'What if they're Jewish or something?' But then I realized that if they were Jewish, they wouldn't be buying a ham."

...I laughed out loud the whole way out the door.

More dog...

Courtesy of my brother, we give you Neon Coco.

The British are Coming! (or, rather, came)

My English friend Claire came for a visit over Thanksgiving. She decided to find out once and for all what this American holiday was all about. We decided to avoid the shopping crowds on Black Friday (renamed Slightly Unpleasant Friday to sound more British) by tramping through the woods in the Laurel Highlands. Here's the day's winning photograph, which we both now have as our desktop wallpaper. (Caveat: I can't figure out how to make images bigger here, or how to allow you to click on them to increase their size. The picture looks much better blown up.)

I realized after Claire went home that we hadn't taken any pictures of us together. But here's one of Claire and a bear outside of Wholey's Fish Market in Pittsburgh's Strip District. I'm sure she'll be thrilled that I'm sharing it.

While in the Strip District, we encountered Coco, the Steeler-loving wiener dog:

I tell ya: You just can't go wrong with a dog in a football sweater.

Live Lobsters to Celebrate 5 Years!

A few weeks ago James and I celebrated our 5-year wedding anniversary. To celebrate, I honored James' love of all things surf and turf, and ordered a Lobster Gram. The nice company in Maine ships live lobsters and other tasty goodies straight to your door. I didn't get a picture of the FedEx guy delivering it, but that's okay, because he wasn't wearing a lobster costume, despite my hopes.

Here's the box the little crustaceans arrived in:

And here are the beauties themselves. The one on the right was definitely the fiestier of the two. It gave James a bit of a fight. Thank goodness for those rubber bands! (And yes, that is a lemon and a plastic bag of butter packets nestled into the box with the lobsters.)

I made James put them in the pot of boiling water. (And no, they did not scream.) (And yes, I did feel a little bit bad about the whole thing. But someone else killed the cow that gave us our filet mignon. It shouldn't make a difference who does the killing, but it does have a psychological effect.)

But of course I got past my guilt and enjoyed the scrumptious feast...

...and some good company:

Here's to another five years and beyond!

Inspiration for the Masses

I'm not usually a fan of motivational speakers or the quotes they throw around, and I've never gotten into the infamous Stephen Covey of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People fame. (Not to be confused with Kip Winger of Winger fame.) I've heard good things about Mr. Covey. But like I said, I'm not so much into that whole self-improvement genre.

But today I read a quote that struck me as interesting, true, and yes, even a little bit inspirational. Of course, it could be because my mind has turned to Jell-O [wiggle when you jiggle it] after six days of good old fashioned headaches and these new-fangled (suspected) migraines. You be the judge:

"You have to decide what your highest priorities are and have the courage -- pleasantly, smilingly, nonapologetically -- to say 'no' to other things. And the way to do that is by having a bigger 'yes' burning inside. The enemy of the 'best' is often the good.'" -- Stephen Covey

Feel inspired?

Photo of Stairs in Bisbee, AZ by David McGuiggan

[p.s. Does anyone know how to add a rollover caption to photo in Blogger? I tried adding an ALT tag to the photo code, but it didn't work. ]