How did you celebrate the new year? I wanted to stay up, and my hubby and I even broke open a bottle of champagne! We each drank two glasses (we sipped) and turned on the Dick Clark celebratory television show. I’m sorry to say that we both fell asleep (me on the sofa, him in his recliner) around eleven pm and woke up about around one am. Oh well, we missed it! But you know what, the new year is here just the same. Hopefully this is not the LAST new year our civilization watches!

The past couple of days we’ve been getting gift boxes in the mail from my hubby’s relatives. Seems as if they all decided to buy fruit from Harry & David this year! We love their pears, so we are glad to get the gifts. One of the boxes arrived with no message as to who the gift is from, it just said in the message part for my son to keep his hands off of the fruit! I am thinking it is from my sister-in-law, but I’m not sure of that.

Today we got another box, this time from my hubby’s aunt – it had pears and candies and nuts and smoked salmon and baklava and all kinds of great goodies in it! That box cost a bundle, I am sure! The last time I remember eating smoked salmon was right around 1999, and I really enjoyed it, so I’m sure I’ll enjoy that treat, assuming that my hubby doesn’t eat it all before I get any of it!

It seems that when the heat is high outside, my kitchen becomes the hottest room in the house. I will do anything to avoid having to spend an hour in the kitchen cooking with the hot stove and oven making the room heat up. So I’ve become a great fan of cold summer salads.

Do you have a favorite salad?

Yesterday I was at the store and saw someone buying a package of Twizzlers. No big deal, right? Well, these Twizzlers were not licorice, and not strawberry. There was an assortment of colors in that Twizzler bag.

Well, that piqued my curiosity, so I bought a bag for my own family to try. There are supposed to be a variety of flavors. One of them being watermelon, which happens to be one of my favorite flavors.

Got the bag home, and we opened the bag. We each took a different color. Much to our dismay, none of the new flavors tasted anything at all like the flavor it is supposed to be. Such a disappointment! No one in the house wants to eat anymore of that candy, so I guess we’ll be throwing it out. Or maybe I’ll take the bag to work to let my co-workers try it out for themselves so they don’t waste their own money on buying a bag.

I’ve been trying to find coupon-clipping websites to use to clip some coupons to help cut down on my shopping expenses.  Several ladies at work have told me that they get a lot of coupons off of the Internet.  So last night I went online and found what looked to be promising, and I signed up.  I was immediately notified by my security software that there was a hacker attempt at that very second to get into my system!  Thankfully my system blocked the attack.

I thought that was strange, and a coincidence.  So I went and picked out my coupons and tried to print them off.  They wouldn’t print.  I thought I had done something wrong, so I tried it again.  Again I got that notice from my security software.  So I wonder if that website is a front for hackers, or if my security software is blocking something that I really wanted.  Either way, I guess I’m not going to get coupons from that site!