Mom, & Score!

My mom turned 80 years old today. And even though she drives me nuts on occasion (what mother doesn't drive their kids nuts on occasion?) she's pretty cool, too. She's a liberal democrat, she believes in choice, she thinks gays should be allowed to marry, she works out several times a week and volunteers at the local library, battered women's shelter, and community foodbank. She's a subscriber to the local Philharmonic (which as a side benefit means I get to go with her to the Phil concerts fairly frequently) and volunteers for them sometimes, too. If I can do half the things she does when I'm her age, I'll feel lucky. Hell, I'd feel lucky to be able to do half the things she does now. So huzzah, Mom! My brother and s-i-l, myself and the kid-unit went together and made lunch today, her favorite of baked ham, scallopped potatoes, fruit salad, green bean casserole, and chocolate cake for dessert. Since my brother and I are sorta foodies we couldn't leave well enough alone so he made the green bean casserole with home-made mushroom soup, and my scalloped potatoes included spinach and swiss cheese, and I used byob_kenobi's Guinness Cake recipe for the cake. :) The food was all well-received and we had a nice time celebrating.

Afterward Kid-unit and I went to BestBuy because she wanted to buy Gilgamesh 5 and Suikkoden 2 (or 3, not sure) and while we were there I couldn't resist looking at the toaster-ovens. We do most of our cooking in our toaster-oven because our real oven sucks, plus it hardly seems energy efficient to heat it up when cooking for just two people. Our old nice one had crapped out a few months ago (after a good 10 years service)and I was broke at the time so I replaced it with a really cheap one which I've hated ever since we got it, it's too small, and it heats unevenly and tends to burn everything either on the bottom or on the top. I spotted a new stainless-steel super-deep Sunbeam-Oster model with convection features that looked really nice. And it was only $61.99, which struck me as an excellent price, and having a few extra dollars due to a tax refund, I decided it was time to get a decent oven. Unfortunately that Best Buy was out of them. The guy called the next-closest store and it turned out they had three of them so we headed over there and found the same model, but it was listed as $79.99. Puzzled, I tracked down a manager and explained the issue. She called up the other store, determined that they did indeed have that model of oven listed for $61.99 (an error) and she went ahead and gave me the lower price! Score! :)