When Julie Andrews comes to stay

Warning: cheesy post alert (and no, that does not mean it is a food post, but that my darling hubby thinks I have lost all literary tact). Cheesy or not, I figure sometimes ya' gotta focus on what ain't broke.

Rain makes me crabby and kittens are noisy
'only see snowflakes when I go to Boise
Don't care for winter, my bed needs new springs...

These are a few of my favorite things (for under $5):

Trader Joe's Salsa Verde -mixed with sour cream and eaten with corn chips after school with the kiddos.

Capitol Aquarium. Free admission, because it's actually a store, but they have an indoor Koi pond, an electric eel named Smud (named after our local electric company), a 400 gallon fish tank with ginormous fish in it, and a cichlid named Sherbet that you are allowed to tease. We tell the kids it is Marine World, which works until they're about 5.

Fancy cheese from Grocery Outlet for $1.99. Current favorites: Havarti Dill and Smoked Gouda (Guy says it's very gooda).

My magic Filipino broom. about 4 bucks at the Asian market. Magic, because normally I can spend about 10 minutes to sweep a room with a normal lame American broom. The same floor will take about 2 minutes with my Magic Broom. I calculated once that over the course of one year, I save 26 hours of sweeping time. That means I get a whole day back every year that I use it. What other cleaning appliance gives you that?

Extreme Moose Tracks ice cream from Safeway, on sale $2.50 for a half gallon. But don't go buy it because they might run out and then I won't get any (it is like a frozen chocolate massage...um, ok, sorry. That is just weird.).

Eating a ripe pear (pealed) over the sink and being all drippy about it.

Jack Johnson, Duncan Sheik, Peter Gabriel, Natalie Merchant, Indigo Girls, Crowded House... on volume 8... 10 if the kids are home. (I got most of these at used stores like Dimple on Sunrise or via Columbia House online when they do promotions with free shipping).

Eco Thrift on Greenback and San Juan in Sacramento. Organized, great used clothes -cool stuff for $.98-$3.98, mostly. Big dressing rooms, too.

Jango.com, free streaming music. You choose the genre, then rate songs you like or don't, the website creates a radio station for you with similar songs to what you have chosen. I love it.

Second Saturday in downtown Sac (free). All the galleries stay open late. They serve cheese and crackers and fruit, and if you are lucky, you will get to see the flamboyant Tuxedo Twins in their limo.

Used books from http://www.amazon.com/ and http://www.half.com/. I have been finding some great books for under a dollar (add $3.99 for S&H and you have a whole penny left for your "go-to-Hawaii-someday" jar). My latest finds: Parenting Teens with Love and Logic (to help me with my pre-teen with full blown teen-tude), and Love and Logic Challenges (see above).

Online movie reservations from the public library. FREE!!!! Yes, you have to wait until you have grey hairs in your ears before some of them come in but they have a ton of flicks. They hold them for 10 whole days, and if you realize at 11:30pm that they were due back today, you can recheck them for 3 more weeks online.

Date nite, Barnes and Noble and my hunny. Open till 11pm, lots of floor space to sit side by side and look at cookbooks and art books. Priceless!