Dante's Toy Dept.

I took this photo while on a walk with Kelly First yesterday. This little flock is probably overwintering here and someone has been feeding them, I think, because when we came up to the field, they all ran over and honked at us.

On the same walk, we saw some cranes.

I love cranes. They're such beautiful birds. These two Sandhills were part of a group of seven who were rooting around in the same field as the Canada geese. The cranes are a little more skittish than the geese, though.

So that was yesterday's wildlife.

Today's wildlife took the form of all the little monkeys at the shopping mall where I took my niece to buy her birthday and Christmas presents. First we stopped by Torrid and my niece picked out three pairs of jeans and three tops and a couple of pairs of earrings and an armful of bangles. After Torrid we went to Sephora where I treated her to some high-end makeup, an eyeshadow palette and silver glitter eyeliner from Urban Decay. The Torrid spree was her birthday present and the Urban Decay was her Christmas present.

After we left the mall, we hit a salad bar for lunch, then we went by Target to find a Christmas dress for The Newbie. They didn't have anything my niece wanted at Target, so we ended up at Wal-Mart. (I hate Wal-Mart, but I have to admit that it was less crowded than either Target or the mall--that is, it was less crowded unless you looked into the toy department, which looked like the one circle that Dante Alighieri passed up during his tour of hell.) They didn't have a great selection of Christmas dresses, but my niece found something.

After we finished shopping, we met Dave and my older brother Rudy for dinner at Dion's where we split a couple of pizzas and a salad.

I very much dislike shopping during the Christmas season, but with my niece, it was kind of fun. We got to chat and eat and eat and chat, so it almost made up for having to wade through throngs of monkeys.