Patrick and I went out looking for Christmas lights tonight only to be completely disappointed. Not many of the houses around us had any lights up and the ones that did were unremarkable. I am getting my fill of christmas lights in Woonsocket though. Some of those houses are absolutely crazy. Speaking of Woonsocket, I start tracking on my own tomorrow. I'm done with training and will be out in the wild by myself. I'm excited, but also a bit worried about getting around unaided. We'll see how it goes. I already have a few kids coming in the car so hopefully they will help me out a little bit.

In other news Christmas is coming up and I'm full steam ahead with plans. We have the apartment decorated all festive-y with our little Charlie Brown 3 ft fake tree. It has lights and presents underneath so deal. Right now we're pretty far from rolling in the dough. Yes, we can't even spend the extra $15 to get a normal tree. The tree is nice and I got pine scented candles so it at least smells like there's a tree in the apartment. I also have some of my christmas shopping done. I spent the afternoon yesterday down in Warwick hitting up some of the shops and the mall down there. That is after a good 30 minute detour getting lost. Right now I have Patrick, mom and Breanne done. Yikes, I still have tons of things to buy and barely enough money to do it. Besides being broke I also finally found a pair of winter boots that I love, so I had to buy them. Merrill boots for $50? No question there. All warm and fuzzy AND waterproof. I don't want to take them off. This week I'm also planning a little Christmas get together. The only way I figure its feasible is to provide the food and get everyone to bring alcohol. Its not sooo bad. And I have a nice menu of stuff including Connie's Golden Graham thingies that rock. Inexpensive food and decorations from the dollar store. Man, I rock.

There is so much to do and I don't even know where to start. Christmas is around the corner and I have no clue when it comes to about half of my presents. What to get Patrick's boss and his wife? What about the neighbors (who i am good friends with)? Then there are the traditional hard gifts, Dad, Emily (not hard, just I want to find something good). All this stuff stresses me out. Maybe if I actually had money. Such is Christmas I guess.

My food adventures are also exciting as usual. My upstairs neighbor made a comment about how coming up the stairs always smells good. I proceeded to offer her chicken and dumplings. For my first endeavor it was pretty good. The dumplings weren't very dumpling-y and I needed more veggies and seasoning. But a good first try. There is also the soup. Holy crap this stuff is good. I got it from work, my co worker Tiffany made it and I got the recipe. Its just a veggie soup with some Lipton's chicken noodle mix in it. LOTS of veggies. It might be the most amazing thing on the face of the earth, seriously. I'm getting more and more into cooking. Its just a great way to be creative and its relaxing. Tonight we went out for dinner because we ran out of meat in the house and there wasn't really any protein at all. We went for gyros (not so good). It was probably the first time in a few weeks, maybe 3 or 4 that we have been out to dinner. Not so bad. Now I kind of actually want to puke. We also went to Whole Foods and split a slice of cake. Good but very rich.