Jasper Jones

From talking with my mom last night and making plans for Christmas, I was glad to hear that my sister and her family are planning to come down and join us on Christmas Day. She has two youngsters and I think Christmas is much more fun with little kids running around.

Last time I talked with my sister she was excited about starting her own cottage industry. I think that’s what you call it. She makes little outfits for dogs and sells them on the internet. She started out just selling a few things on EBay and that was going so well that she decided to start her own web site and sell the outfits direct to her customers.

Because she was using EBay she used to take PayPal for payments, but a few people have asked about using their VISA and MasterCard charge cards. Well, I had to help her figure out how to go about taking charge cards for payment. Everything she needed was online at a site called Online check.com and they also offer loans to small businesses, too. So if she wanted to buy a large order of materials at once, she could borrow a small amount from this same site and pay them back when she sells the outfits.

But she was most interested in getting the Merchant services set up, and she was able to find out everything she needed right there. As far as I know her small business is still doing really well and I’m really proud of her for doing it.

This afternoon is the only time I have to go Christmas shopping unless I make a mad dash on Christmas Eve for a couple of last minute gifts.

I hate going to the mall but I have a friend going with me to help out. I’ll have to find a way to get off on my own to buy her gift, but I know what I want to buy, so that’s a help, too.

I think the worst thing about shopping is finding the right size and color on racks that are all mixed up with a variety of things. If a store is really messy about their shelves and racks I won’t even go in there - it’s not worth the aggravation of searching.

Last night at the Predators game I noticed a lot of cowboy hats in the audience. This is a town known for country music but not really much of a “cowboy hat and boots” crowd unless you are a tourist. So all the hats in the crowd made me think we must have had a lot of “out of towners” here for Thanksgiving and they were able to get tickets to the game.

I do have one good black felt cowboy hat and I think I should get another hat for going to games and events when I’m home. I’d like a nice white Stetson, so I’m letting Santa know that he should stop by a Cavenders to check out their cowboy hats to find my Christmas present.

Most of the time I can drive the little bit around campus and over to the hospital without having to read any signs because I know where I am going. But lately when Kelly and I go somewhere it is a place unfamiliar to me and I have to try to read the highway signs and road signs. But I’ve noticed that I’m having a hard time reading them until I get really close. Sometimes by the time I get close enough to read the sign then It is too late to safely make the turn. This is not good for my manly image. Obviously I need to get a new pair of glasses so I can see the road signs.

While I’m home for the Thanksgiving holiday I asked my mom to make an appointment for me to see the eye doctor so I can a new prescription for eyeglasses. All I need is the new strength prescription because I will check around for a cheap price on the glasses.There are web sites that advertise cheap eye glasses, like the site Optical4Less.

As long as the site has free shipping and guarantees that the prescription strength is correct, the main thing I am looking for is a cheap price and a good selection of styles. I know that Optical 4Less has all of that, so I’ll probably buy my new glasses online.

It’s getting pretty cold here in the mountains, especially since it gets dark by 4:00 in the afternoon now. Chattanooga is on Eastern Time, so it is dark even earlier here than at home. Winter is definitely headed this way.

The guys on an ambulance run last night were talking about ordering some insulated underwear for the night shift duty. I hadn’t thought about it much, but they say that it is good to have three different weights or levels of long underwear for the different degrees of coldness that we have here.

The driver says that the Under Armour Clothing brand of Coldgear leggings and shirts is the best insulated long johns for emergency personnel, police, and military. We all looked it up on the internet last night and found good prices on the Brigade QM web site. They have all the different weights and a complete range of sizes, from small to XXXL.