Raking, not baking

Today I had big plans that involved baking cookies. Unfortunately, the cookies I planned to bake today are ones that require alcohol of some sort - brandy, or whiskey, or scotch - and the only hard liquor I have in the house is a bottle of Paddy Whiskey, unavailable in the U.S. I decided to go out and buy something else to use for the cookies, considering that a) the per-bottle cost of Paddy Whiskey is over $1000, if you figure in the cost of flying out to Ireland to purchase it and flying back with a bottle tucked in your luggage, and b) Paddy is so smooth and clean that it doesn't have much of the strongly aromatic nature that you want in the alcohol used in these cookies.

I tried to buy a bottle of brandy at a liquor store yesterday, but I got there ten minutes after they had closed. I planned to get out early today to get it, but then I remembered a stack of bills that needed to be paid by the end of the month, so I spent some time this morning making those out. By the time I was showered and ready to roll, it was nearly 2:00, and I had a birthday party to go to at 5:30. So I just had time to go to the post office, mail my bills, go to the liquor store, buy a bottle of brandy and a box of wine (blood donation in two weeks!), and then stop at my house across town to transfer some stuff from here to there, including some frozen food that we didn't have enough room for in our freezer here. While I was there I added more decorations to my Christmas tree. It's really starting to shape up.

I got home at about 3:30 and decided that I had just enough time to to rake the leaves which up until this morning had been buried under a quickly-melting blanket of snow. These included two bags full of leaves that had blown across the street onto my neighbor's yard. Hey, these are oak leaves - I'm not just gonna let somebody else rake them up! (To help make my point, as I was raking up the leaves I uncovered an earthworm who had apparently been nipping at their nutrient-filled goodness. I left the earthworm on my neighbor's tree lawn - I should have flung it into my yard!)

So the leaves are raked, but the cookies are not baked. The bills are in the mail, but the Christmas cards are not. The birthday party was fun, but the garbage still needs to be taken out.

By the way, there has been another death in my vicinity. The story is still unfolding. "Death in the Choir Loft" will have to wait until tomorrow.