Most things are shut down here by now, nearly 4 p.m. I'm waiting on word from home to get a ride. Mike M. will be going home to eat with us tonight, if he's feeling better. We had set up to eat lunch together, but he was feeling poorly.

Maybe the promise of chili with real meat will rouse him.

I think today is the hottest day since we arrived back from the U.S. Nov. 15.

Brazilian families often have a midnight supper on Christmas Eve. Our family continues the tradition of Christmas lunch. This year the menu includes Mexican chicken, sweet and sour carrots, hash brown casserole, a chilled layered salad, and chocolate stack cake.

Whether good or bad, many Brazilian families are surrendering to the commercialism of the season and putting up lights, trees, and other decorations. You see it a lot more than in the past. Though the exchange of gifts is still more low-key than the U.S. Our family is cutting down, too, on the amount we spend.

Santa gets pretty hot in our sweaty summer temperatures. The only snow falls in the store windows. I've tried to tell him to go with bermuda shorts, but he's self-conscious about his legs. Maybe next year ...

One nice way to end the year: aside from a handful of poems published in several magazines, today I had a photo published on a family-friendly site.

You can see the photo here, during this week.

http://www.arborwood.com/Photo_Week/thisweek.cgi

After this week, it goes to the photo archive.

On this site, we have The Encouragement Forum. Why not pop in and say hello there as well.

http://arborwood.com/forums/encouragement

Have a great Christmas with friends and family, and let us thank the Father of all lights for the gift of his Son.

http://www.allaboutfamilies.org/current.html#mikal

I've been an on-again-off-again journaler (right word?). This little piece of news makes me want to get back with it again.

This morning I had 29 emails in my regular account's inbox. Out of those only 12 were good; the rest were spam. About par for the course. All the regular junk: viagra, sex, investments, enlargment of certain body parts, etc. etc.

I didn't realize there were so many lonely housewives out there in the world. ;-(