The storm that was headed east with a vengeance hit New England sometime last night, and I awoke to a new blanket of snow, about 3 inches, on the ground.

With rising temps, the snow has changed to rain and I'm waiting for it to stop (around noon, they say) so i can get out there and shovel the wet stuff off the driveway.

Tomorrow I am bringing my mother to the hospital for cataract surgery. I have to get up at 5:30 am at the very latest. This will be interesting, since I haven't used my alarm clock in months.

She won't be done til about 9:30 am, so I'll have a good three hours to kill, maybe with shopping errands, while she's in there, even though the surgery itself only takes 10 minutes.

My mom was feeling pretty anxious about it (who wouldn't, it's your eye) but after talking to a bunch of people (everyone seems to know someone who's had it done), she seems to feel better about it now because it's a quick recovery.

Let's see, I can hit Xpect for some cheap wrapping paper, then Costco for some milk since I'm running out. I could always order from the $1 menu at a fast food joint and I'm not averse to sitting in my car. Oh, bummer. I just realized those places won't be open around 7 am. Maybe I'll just go home again.

Yesterday H. and I saw The Invention of Lying in the $2 movie theater. It was pretty good and i thought a very clever idea for a movie, the idea being, a world where no one ever lied and how blunt and funny some of the things people said to each other were when only the truth could be told. Rob Lowe and Jennifer Garner were in it; I'm not sure why this movie never seemed to get much PR when it first came out.

I made a really good dinner last night, pasta, shrimp, pea pods and broccoli in a peanut butter sauce (just a half cup of PB, sesame oil, sesame seeds, water, rice vinegar, garlic). Every so often I get a PB craving and this definitely satisfies it.

For the past several weeks, I've kept the heat on at 64 daytime, 63 nighttime. Any cooler than that and it gets real chilly around here if you're sitting still. I felt, too, that one of my cats was getting cold, and since I'm here all the time now, I might as well be comfortable.

I checked the tank the other day and saw that I've still got a half tank of oil. I'd like to think I could get through til early January with that, but they are predicting much colder temps this weekend, so I don't know, since I never really turn the heat down now. It's a treat, though.

Craig's List sales have kind of fallen off. Bummer.