Y'know, I have no real clue what to write about at the moment but I feel an overwhelming urge to pontificate so let's see where the keyboard takes me.

Weather's always a nice generic way to start. It's been kind of cold here the last two days. Weather.com claims the daytime high has been in the low 20s but I don't think it's been that high. It's been cold enough that I've had to wear pants during the day which, I have to admit, has drastically reduced the number of scrapes I usually get on my legs when I let the dogs off their leashes.

Syd's Christmas concert was last Friday during the day. It was quite an elaborate production overall. Syd's class did a short rendition of The Nutcracker with the most adorable sugar-plum fairies anyone with a daughter in the class has ever seen. I brought the leftover skittles from the night before to ensure quality control (“Booo! Get off the stage!”). Thankfully for Syd's continued admittance at St. Andrew's, the show was pretty good (as in: it was easy to ignore the segments with kids I didn't know; oh, come on, you know you do it, too) and I had to settle with actually eating the skittles.

So as I was showering this morning, I grabbed Liza's shampoo because mine had run out. My brand is L'Oreal Kids Strawberry Almond shampoo mostly because it's Sydney's and with as little hair as I have, any shampoo I buy would expire before I used it all. Anyway, Liza's brand was some obscure company but emblazened on the bottle was something like, “Now with avocado!” I checked her conditioner, and it was avocado-less but apparently has the goodness of “wheat protein”. I'm guessing ninety percent of the buyers of this shampoo had no idea avocado and wheat protein was actually good for their hair until they read it on the bottle. Furthermore, I bet the science behind such claims is probably as rigorous as what I do to make a sandwich (“Hmmm…wonder how long THIS has been in the fridge…oh well, still smells okay”).

The people that sell these shampoos are marketing geniuses. If I could add “now with the emboldening power of guava” or “Refreshing marmalade essence! It's not just for toast anymore!” to my generic vat of goop and sell it as a brand new product, I'd move to a Caribbean island and live my life out there. The people that came up with this little scam rank up there with the Baking Soda industry (“I've got an idea! Let's tell people to open the box, put it in their refrigerator for a month, then throw it away!”). Or whoever first put “eau de toilette” on a bottle of alcohol and charged people $300 to douse themselves in it.

Finally, my brothers will be proud to know that I have successfully introduced Potty-Mouth-Friday to the Bahamas. We haven't grown bold enough to practice in fast food restaurants the way they do in Manitoba but we're growing. Racial-Slur Wednesday and Repentence Thursday have been met with…ummm…less enthusiasm.

A couple of lines on Syd and the weather and a nice little ditty on hair products. Yeah, that'll do.