My hands are a mess, and it's not all due to the colder, drier air. I spent hours in our attic, insulating one of our dormers (we have three). The studs are too narrow and too irregularly spaced to use fiberglass rolls, so I've been putting in furring strips for ventilation and then styrofoam. Because the attic is old, I breathed in lots of dirt and dust, and ended up getting a few small razor cuts on my fingers from styrofoam cutting. Ouchies.

I should have the one dormer completed with a few more hours of work, so I can then clean it up and use it for better storage, enabling to move some of the garbage picked crapped out of the garage so my poor snow covered Kawasaki has a safe home for winter.

Of course it didn't help that I was continually washing them Saturday evening. We made Christmas cutout cookies Friday evening (after six year old's friend went home, more to follow) and frosted them Saturday evening (after I got back from gaming, more to follow). Mrs. Ha decided to list a designer purse on ebay, so I alternated between mixing up frosting and then washing my hands to type on the computer to help her do her listing.

So six year old had a playdate with music_girl on Friday. Her dad came over too, I guess he wanted to check us out better before leaving her unattended, so we drank coffee and chatted for a few hours. He's in a well known local band who's lead singer had just died a few weeks previously. Wouldn't you know, we talked about the local scene, and a guy he jammed with at a benefit for lead singer's family was a good bud from high school. Good bud's band also was the only one to cover a song from lead singer's band.

In yet another RIASC moment, I ran into our neighbor at Weggies, who asked me about the Girl Scout cookies, so eleven year old delivered them last night. I also ran into an old co-worker.

We had Thanksgiving at my moms, my sister is too busy with school to host it. I got up early on Black Friday, but the particular bundle I was looking for was not available at either of the two KMarts or two Targets I went to. I may yet order online, as I told the woman at Target who was also looking for it, we have 5 more weeks to shop. All in all, a big waste of gas (I took the minivan, and the Tercel was so iced over I couldn't even unlock the door).

I don't know why I even went to KMart. I started at the closest one to the city, hoping that the demand would be less, but no luck, there was a huge crowd gathered outside, and they all went to electronics. I'm liking Target more and more, it's becoming my first choice.

Speaking of online buying, Mrs. Ha was ecstatic about her sweater selling. Now that I have a modest paypal balance, I may buy more gifts on ebay. Time to sell some more.

Gaming, yes, I did get some gaming in this week. I missed the monthly meet for familial reasons, but made up for it a week later, agreeing to meet some folks at Millenium. Rather than get into the old hex and counter, I played a few rounds of Arkham Horror, a co-operative boardgame based on the Cthulhu mythos. I don't know how well I like it, it's complex and it would take a few more tries to get into the flow of the game. I would give it another try, though.

I'm not giving up on the wargames though, during the time off I was able to play my first scenario in Panzer Grenadier: Afrika Korps, Fort Capuzzo. One less game out of my unplayed queue (good thing, I just ordered the free game Target Arnhem, a small one about Market Garden.

With the week off, we got into some movies. First up was The Sisters, the story of a three sisters and a brother in a academic family, based on a Chekhov play. The play origin showed, it was mostly talking, and talking dramatically. I was disappointed, I couldn't find any Star Trek influence.

Next up was an incomplete watching of the Bob Dylan pic, No Direction Home. I really dug this, it makes me want to load up my mp3 player with Dylan tunes, but Mrs. Ha was lukewarm, so we never finished up.

We must have been the last people in the world to see Little Miss Sunshine, which was Saturday nights choice. We were only going to watch a but and then go to bed, but it sucked us in. It was great, with some really really wrong moments.

The latest in my Discworld binge was Monstrous Regiment, a political type novel about a small, pugnacious country nearly losing a war and sending women (disguised as men) to the front. It's not a Vimes novel, though Vimes (and Angua and Shoe) have small parts. I enjoyed it, though I'm not so sure the clacks (apparently an 8 bit one hertz semaphore) Pratchett describes is as capable of the bandwidth he assigns to it, unless he's using imps or something to change the semaphores.

There is big news on the school front, eleven year old really like her tour of the smaller, more nurturing and cheaper Catholic school ( she went to the big one on Monday, didn't have a great time and then broke her glasses leaving, ouch, another $180 down the drain). Since the smaller school takes debt and medical expenses into account, we may even get some financial aid.