There are plenty of shopping streets/neighborhoods here that going to a mall is not a necessity. Not all malls are all covered here either, particularly Century City Mall, which has a parking structure, but you walk outside to go from store to store. Third Street Promenade is all outdoors, as is Rodeo Drive. Melrose Avenue is one of my favorite shopping streets, but I also like Sunset in the Silver Lake district. Hollywood and Highland also has a large central area that is open to the sky. There's really no need to cover these areas, since we don't have cold weather, and it's usually not too hot. Lowspark, you are not a weather wimp if you can handle living in Houston in the summer! I lived there when I was going to Rice, but I never managed to stay there in the summer. Rice closed for the summer when I was there - they didn't want to subject the students (and professors and staff) to the heat and humidity. DB had been telling me that Circuit City had been late with all their payments to Sony, and so we were not surprised when we found out that they were going into chapter 11. We bought a new TV recently and ended up getting it at Best Buy because they have a brand (Insignia) that got good reviews and was well under the employee discount price that DB could get from Sony for a similar LCD widescreen TV. I gave our old widescreen TV to the neighbors, for helping us move it out of the house. It was a rear projection TV and was huge!! I'm much happier with the flat screen TV, and our old TV, even though it was HD, was not compatible with Blu-ray. DB had bought a Blu-ray player a couple of weeks ago at a company sale (at Sony) along with an AV amplifier, but we could not get a picture on our old TV with it. Finally, I broke down and bought a new 47" Insignia flat screen LCD TV, and we're much happier with that. We only have a few Blu-ray discs, but we're starting to collect them. The old DVDs are supposed to look better on Blu-ray player, but it's difficult to tell. Lars

I love your desk and chair, Raven! Looks like almost everyone is getting some really good deals, that's great. I'm not doing any shopping other than the basic necessities, like groceries. But I did get a good deal on some canned soups, thanks to someone here! I'd like to thank her for telling about Walmart's "Savings Catcher" app, but I don't remember who it was that posted it. Anyhow, I like to keep canned soups on hand during the cold winter months, and I had picked up 6 cans in Walmart. The only other grocery store we have had them on sale for $1.00 a can, (I wasn't even aware of their sale) so Walmart refunded $1.29 each for the 6 cans! Rusty

Why can't you freeze your bowl with water? The one I just bought was recommended for frozen desserts. I hope that wasn't just ad copy blather. I chill my small bowls and the contents stay cool for a couple of hours even when it's hot out. If you look around, you might be able to find the size bowl you're looking for. Since the beginning of the year, I've bought a few things for the kitchen, mostly frivolous. Before things got tight, I ordered a covered square aluminum baking pan from Amazon, for making heated pan cornbread. My cast iron frying pan was too hot. It's called "natural". So many pans nowadays have some kind of surfacing (which I hate! I have a few specialty pans with it and I don't like the outcomes of dark or treated). I was checking on my "saved for later" while ordering and saw a cake safe I'd been looking at for a long time. It's a green that matches a lot of my kitchen decor, and tall enough (many pretty cake safes are too short), though small in general. Perfect because my big Wilton plastic one is huge. I loved that it was all enamelled. There was a notice that it was half off. I bought it! It was poorly packaged and the rim is a little bent, but the enamel is intact and at half off I didn't want to make a fuss. I'm choosing to think that the bent edge makes it easier to open, and gives it character. It's just a pressure seal, but has a silicone band to make it airtight. That was before Amazon was slammed, and they came from third party listers. Doing that brought an offer for the matching biscuit tin, and I got that too. :) I have a couple of cookie jars that aren't really practical. The tin is perfect. So, I also have the bowl and the $100 Staub cocotte on the way. I think the little bit of retail therapy is good for the isolation blues, and we do have to keep the country working. Austerity from those of us who can afford to participate in commerce isn't a good thing no matter how guilty we feel about giving in to temptation, but I'm still not ready to buy clothes when I could be buying meals for those who need them. :) I usually don't believe in the charity myth that says that no one should have anything but the basics so long as others are living in chronic need. Commerce creates wealth. Subsistence economies don't eliminate the poor, they just have less for everybody. But that's not what we have right now. We have a cessation of commerce which is temporary but preventing many from earning their keep. Here in Southern California, the cost of living is high and even for those who are getting the maximum amount of government assistance, it's not enough, and many don't qualify for that much help. So I'm happy with my small gifties to myself, and my luxury groceries like the wine but I'm happiest with putting most of my discretionary towards making sure others get fed.

Kswl, I too was remiss in not sending my condolences to your family. Also, I missed that you had been ill. Did you get sick after your trip? Sorry I missed that too, but hope it was short. Seems like that happens to a lot of our friends when they travel. Back to clothing…I just realized that I have been gravitating to dark olive lately, especially pants and one paler olive green skirt. So much so that I’m re-thinking some tops I’ve had in my cart from a couple of places. I really just needed to look thru my closet at what I have, which I did yesterday, and put together some coordinating jackets/sweaters from there. I did order a couple of cashmere crew neck sweaters and a cashmere hoodie from Quince. They were down to $50 from $69 for the sweaters, so I couldn’t let those pass by.