It’s high time to begin the Howdygram’s official New Year’s Eve festivities.

In this post: Crappy crap, pickles & biscuits, poor Sam.

I have NOT had a terrific day. The crapola started before sun-up with a variety of body maintenance issues (see previous post) followed by seven consecutive hours of intense intestinal distress, several frantic trips down the hall and half a quart of Imodium. (If this is too much information for you, get over it.) By late afternoon I felt so lousy I couldn’t even face a can of Hormel tamales for dinner so I had pickles & biscuits instead. Stop laughing.

L’chaim, y’all.

In this post: Kvetching, New Year’s Eve, a treatise on Vienna sausages.

It’s 6:30 in the morning and I woke up sneezing about 15 minutes ago. This is a good thing, actually, because I was also thirsty, I had to pee, and I just discovered that I’m having a mild hypoglycemic (low blood sugar) episode. So — for all of the aforementioned reasons — I’m wide awake, writing a Howdygram post and enjoying my first Marcytini of the day. L’chaim, y’all.

Happy New Year, people!

It’s midnight at Howdygram headquarters, and as we limp into 2013 Sam and I would like to wish all of you a Happy New Year filled with good health, wonderful things and plenty of Mongolian chicken. We’ve had a quiet evening at home (as usual) with some fine movies and leftovers.

Incidentally, the United States fell off the fiscal cliff last night. Sam and I landed safely on the sofa in our family room, where he ate a whole pumpkin pie for dinner with a can of whipped cream and fell asleep around 10:15; I enjoyed a bowl of tuna salad and watched After the Thin Man and The Apartment on TCM.

So far this fiscal cliff horseshit has been largely uneventful, although CNN.com is reporting that, according to Vice President Biden, an agreement has been reached but no vote will occur tonight in Congress. This is no surprise whatsoever. We wouldn’t expect the blowhards in Congress to actually do something.

For your possible interest I managed to tear myself away from the Howdygram’s holiday festivities tonight to purchase the following fantastic crap from Wal-Mart.com. This included three cans of Folger’s hazelnut coffee, three cans of Folger’s French vanilla, two bottles of Equate Arthritis Pain Reliever — best pain reliever EVER — and two packages of very cheap Ziploc round storage containers.

Thank you, as always, for reading this.

Margaret Dumont is definitely more entertaining than the bubonic plague.

It’s New Year’s Eve at Howdygram headquarters and all’s right with the world. Groucho is tormenting poor Margaret Dumont in Duck Soup, I just woke up from an especially intense three-hour nap on the most fabulous chaise ever invented and Sam is still unconscious. For the record, we also slept through Room Service and Horse Feathers. A photo of the previously-mentioned fabulous chaise appears below; Groucho and Margaret are posing at right.

Before I forget, Sam and I want to wish all of you a happy, healthy New Year. May yours include lucrative investments, plenty of cake and not voting for Rick Perry no matter what.

We had a terrific day today. After a late breakfast at Denny’s we took a nice long drive to Cross Roads, Texas, to visit the Rustic Furniture Depot. Don’t be fooled by their semi-tacky website because this store is AWESOME. They’ve got the most beautiful — and affordable! — western-themed furniture we’ve ever seen, plus lots of high-end decorative accessories, bedding, artwork, picture frames, dishes, lamps, you name it. I can’t wait to go back and spend money because everything they sell makes you think of Pa Cartwright and the Ponderosa. (All that’s missing is Hop Sing.)

And now it’s time to scrounge up some food and enjoy a couple of cheerful New Year’s Eve classics on TCM ... Fail Safe (1964), a nuclear war doomsday thriller with Henry Fonda, and Panic in the Streets (1950), about a bubonic plague epidemic with Richard Widmark and Jack Palance. It’s really too bad I don’t drink.

Happy New Year ... and thank you for reading the Howdygram’s last post for 2011!

P.S. Marie Osmond is a drag queen, naked pictures of Paula Deen and ugly world leaders.

Out with the old, in with the new.

As I write this post Sam is still at the office pulling another all-nighter. I have amused myself for most of the evening folding mountains of socks and underwear and trying to watch a few recorded movies that turned out to be real duds. They were:

• 
  Sally, Irene and Mary (1938), a story about singing manicurists starring Alice Faye, Joan Davis and Marjorie Weaver. I had to delete this monstrosity almost immediately. I usually like Alice Faye, but even Alice couldn’t save it.
• The Bells Go Down (1943), described as a comedy about British volunteer firemen during the London blitz in 1939. Nothing about this movie was even remotely funny, particularly James Mason as a loudmouth drill sargent with a Cockney accent. Talk about lousy casting! I deleted this one after the first 15 minutes.
• Doubting Thomas (1935), a comedy with Will Rogers and Billie Burke. This turned out to be nothing more than a showcase for Rogers to make a bunch of snotty wisecracks during the rehearsal of an amateur play. Maybe someone can explain to me why everybody revered this guy like royalty in the 1930s, because I thought he was a weird, un-funny hick. I watched a “Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares” rerun instead.

That’s about all for tonight. I’ve just decided there’s no way I can wait up for Sam because he probably won’t be home until 5 a.m. and I’m already so tired I can’t keep my eyes open. I hope y’all have some nice plans for New Year’s Eve. Sam and I want to watch Marx Brothers movies on TCM if we can stay awake long enough. (I think the sofas in our family room are stuffed with chloroform.)

Don’t drink and drive, and — as always — thank you for reading this.

Behold the power of lox.

I lied. You can disregard part of my post from this morning because I went to Costco after all. Sam looked exceptionally sad and pathetic after I told him the weather was too crappy for a fun-food outing, so I threw on three layers of clothing (seriously) and drove off into the late morning fog. Know what? It was worth the trip! Costco was crowded, which was no surprise on New Year’s Eve, but I found a great handicapped spot near the entrance (God bless handicapped spots) and there were plenty of open checkout lanes so it didn’t take very long to get everything on my weekend food-fest wish list. This included: two pounds of lox, a dozen bagels, a gigantic box of T.G.I. Fridays mozzarella sticks, a three-pack of Classico tomato basil pasta sauce, a dozen hand-made chicken tamales, salsa, three pounds of jumbo shrimp, fresh raspberries, chicken salad with pecans and cranberries, two pounds of shrimp salad, a dozen muffins, herb-crusted sliced turkey breast, pot roast, Tillamook pepper jack cheese, a tub of whole cashews, and last but not least ... THE  BIGGEST DAMN CHICKEN POT-PIE I’VE EVER SEEN, which is in the oven as I write this. No kidding, it’s bigger than my Epson scanner! (Marcycita’s South-of-the-Border Tamale Pie is officially postponed until a later date.)

And now ... it’s almost time for TCM’s New Year’s Eve “Thin Man” movie marathon, so happy new year to y’all (again) and I’ll be back with another post in 2010!

Out with the old, in with the new.

It’s New Year’s Eve. Actually, it’s New Year’s Eve MORNING if you want to get picky about it ... a gray, cold, drizzly day that’s not especially conducive to a fun-food junket to Costco, which is what I was hoping to do right about now. Nothing says “Happy New Year” quite like a dozen bagels and a two-pound package of lox! But a person with a cane and a handicapped tag shouldn’t be shlepping around in damp 42° weather, so tonight’s dinner will be Marcycita’s South-of-the-Border Tamale Pie. (I’ll share the recipe in a day or two; check back for my post.)

Sam and I wish all of you a happy and healthy new year. Personally, I’m awfully damn glad to see 2009 come to an end because I can’t EVER remember a year of such misery and drama for so many people. Think about it. Major bank failures, home foreclosures and double-digit unemployment, the tragic death of Billy Mays, Bernie Madoff screwing up the largest ponzi scheme in history, Linens ’n Things going bankrupt, war is still raging in the middle east, and then we discover that Tiger Woods is a lousy driver. Here’s hoping that 2010 is filled with better things for all of us! Shalom.