Thursday is my 61st birthday and there’s still plenty of time to shop.

It’s Halloween night and I’m hiding in the study. I can hear car doors slamming and clusters of kids running past the house, but nobody’s ringing my bell because the lights are off and it looks like nobody’s home. This, quite honestly, is absolutely swell! When I finish writing this post I plan to clean out a couple of desk drawers, fill my pill sorter for the week ahead and enjoy my favorite late-night snack: a low-carb vanilla milkshake and a bowl of Vlasic sugar-free bread & butter pickles.

Stop laughing. I have a rich and rewarding life.

From our Puzzling Hobbies and Pastimes department, if you’re a regular Howdygrammer you’ve undoubtedly noticed by now that I redesigned the banner graphic today! I do this frequently. I don’t know why. Some of you may postulate that I have way too much time on my hands, and I think I have to agree with you.

Tomorrow (Thursday) is my 61st birthday and you will be pleased to know there’s still plenty of time to shop. Toward that end, I wouldn’t mind receiving any or all of the following suggested presents. A photo montage appears below in case you need visual aids.

• Cash in any denomination; foreign currency accepted.
• Greeting cards, emails, telephone calls and a big sack of miscellaneous groceries.
• An eye exam with dilation ($90) and new progressive trifocals ($425). 
• A case of Loma Linda Swiss Stake fake meat in a can. Amazon has this.
• Nice stretchy socks for diabetics from FootSmart.com, size women’s 11.5–13. I’d like two pair of white and two pair of black for $23.97. Thank you.
• Lowrey’s hot & spicy microwave Bacon Curls, 18 individual bags for $18.99 from Amazon. (They’re addicting.)
• A box of 100 insulin syringes, size 1ml/cc, 29 gauge, ½-inch length. Try Wal-Mart.

It’s 10:15 p.m. and the Halloween hoo-hah has subsided outside, which means I can finally stop hiding in the study and turn on a few lights. I might even live dangerously and take a shower. Thank you for reading this.