Meanwhile, Back at Target
With me being an unproductive member of society, we're trying to do Christmas on the cheap this year. (By "we" I mean me because I do all the shopping for my family and Husband's family and he just shops for me). I finished up today at that bastion of good taste, Target.

I started Christmas shopping last summer. I always try to be done by Thanksgiving, but this year I started earlier to spread out the Visa bill in less terrifying chunks. We have 12 people to get gifts for, not counting each other, so it can add up unless you shop carefully.

At Target today I bought the last of the gifts (two sweaters and a purse) and then when to the Christmas aisle for gift wrap. They had some quite nice paper, actually, but one weird display of paper obviously meant for children. It had cartoon and movie characters on it. Most of it was typical, but cute. Piglet hanging a wreath on Pooh's door. Santa Mickey giving a bone to a grateful Pluto. And, of course, that most Christmas of all movies -- Star Wars. Yeah, they had paper with Darth Vader, Luke Skywalker (complete with light saber) and the gang pictured as animated characters on red and green squares. Because, you know, nothing says Christmas quite like an intergalactic war.

Also seen and/or overheard at Target:

- A woman with three kids under the age of 5 who is pregnant again. Have these people never heard of birth control?
- A woman telling her boyfriend, "Target is fine for your mom but I expect something from Nordstrom."
- A man with a shopping cart with 3 24-packs of toilet paper and a 25-pound tub of cat litter. Apparently no live thing in his house does anything other than go to the bathroom.
- Two hip-hop wannabes with pants around their thighs buying the Josh Groban Christmas CD
- A Target employee in the bedding section asked what the difference was between "King" and "California King". Her reply: "They're the same, it's just these sheets are only available in California."
- A man who must have weighed 300 pounds wearing a pink sweatshirt with a pony on it in glitter and a 49er cap.
- The woman who ate an entire bag of chips in the store. And not one of those lunch-sized bags. A full-sized bag of Ruffles. I saw when she opened them and began munching and when I saw her in line the bag was empty. She paid for it and asked the clerk to throw the empty bag away.
- A man talking on his cell phone in the menswear section "Is Bob a large or an extra large? He's an extra-extra large? Got I can't believe my sister found someone fatter than she is!"

Ah....life on the A-list.