My priorities may be out of whack.

For the past three weeks, we've had some weird electrical action at our house--I'd turn on the microwave, the lights all along the back wall of the house, but only upstairs, would go out. Plug my laptop into a powerstrip, turn on the kitchen light, bathroom light, whatever. The lights would go out, always along the back wall of the house. They'd usually come back on in a minute, maybe, or with a little sleight of hand with the breakers. A little light cursing, perhaps. Anyway, it was clear that we needed a wizard, or an electrician.

So we called the guy who had replaced four breakers a few months back, a fine young man, but he wasn't going to be able to pencil us in until next week. He did have a referral for another electrician, though, a young man with the same surname as the people from whom we bought our house. So we gave him a call. Sure, he could come, and where did we live? When we told him the address, he said, "You're kidding." Indeed, the young electrician was one of the four sons of the family who once owned our house.
Today, which was the appointed day, I came home after an emergency trip to Target (it's positively shocking how many such emergencies there are!) with a new and more handsome throw to cover some of Bruiser's finest furniture-nibbling, as well as a lovely throw pillow that went with it. Also, two new poinsettias. It's gorgeous. Then, I went through the entire upstairs and picked stuff up, put clean dishes away, cleaned off the dining room table (aka, the repository of everything) and put down the new holiday table runner, straightened, wiped, emptied. And all of this? was so the young electrician wouldn't go home and tell his mom that their once pristine home had turned into a sty, inhabited by those inveterate slobs to whom they sold it.

In other news: The cheap cookie press I bought did not stand up to the pressure of my probably too-stiff cookie dough. Alas. Ever resourceful, I turned the dough into slice-and-bake rolls, with colored sugar on the outside. Spritz cookies will have to wait for another day, a softer dough, or a sturdier cookie press.

My manuscript was a "strong semifinalist" in a big contest. That's got to be a good thing, right?

The Utah Jazz are imploding.

(That's our new couch above, with the draperies pulled modestly to the side; this removal will only occur for parties and special events. Also, photo opportunities. The draperies are, of course, a precaution against more furniture nibbling.)