Whew!

Escaped another prophesied End-of-the-World. If the world ever does end it will probably take us all by surprise. On Friday I took a little detour on my way to walk and drove up Cooper Mountain to see if the rest of the world looked to be intact. It did.

Misty, cold and December-ish. Just as it should be.

I am ready for Christmas. Well, I still need to go grocery shopping tomorrow, but that's just normal. Emily requested salmon for Christmas dinner and that sounds great to me. Both my kids were vegetarians for years, but they ate fish, so salmon was our Christmas dinner tradition for years. I've gotten away from it lately, but it sounds perfect. And easy. My hearing is returning little by little. We had some good friends for dinner on Thursday and I made pork tacos with homemade tortillas, a jicama/orange salad and black beans cooked in beer. The food was extra good, in my humble opinion, and we had margaritas and decadent dessert and lots of great conversation and laughter and at the end of the evening I discovered that my ears had cleared considerably during the evening. It was a winning combination apparently. I will remember that for future reference.

My friend Muriel sent these this week. I certainly don't need any more Christmas decorations, but I loved these guys the moment I set eyes on them. This is the kind of design that I wish my brain could conceive. The simplicity of a wooden dowel sawed at an angle. That angled cut and the resulting oval create a hat, a beard and a face in one clean plane. Genius really. A little tag on the bottom says they are from Sweden. I could have guessed that.

Don't know if I'll be back here before Christmas, but I will have a post on the Sketchbook Challenge blog on Monday. I'll be here, cooking, wrapping and humming Christmas carols along with the radio. I trust you are doing pretty much the same.