Junk Mail; Catalogs; Justice Scalia; Justice Thomas; "grandma"; the Peach emoji

This may be our last warm and sunny  day this year, so I will be treating Elaine to a pleasant trip to Frederick and to a belly-busting meal at the famous country restaurant there.. which has a name that I can't remember ... due to my advanced age, of course.  It should be fun.  Elaine's birthday was yesterday and tomorrow we will be having a party for her.

Junk Mail

Everybody knows that I like junk mail, apparently even those folks that publish catalogs.  For instance, here are the titles of most of those catalogs that we found stuffed in our mailbox for the last three days:

Appleseeds
Better Homes
Blair (2)
Bradford Exchange
Brecks
Creations
Critics Choice
Creative Irish Gifts
Daedalus Books (3)
Das Bleu
Dream Products
Fresh Finds (2)
Gardeners
Gregory's
Hammacher Schlemmer
Harriet Carter
Heartland
Lehman's
L.L. Bean (2)
Meduri
Mindware
Monticello
National
Norm Thompson
Old Pueblo Traders
PBS
Pinetree
Russell's
Scientifics
Sharper Image
Smithsonian (2)
Tog Shop
Toscano
Vermont Country Store
Victorian Trading
World Wide Gifts
Wolferman's
Woman Within

That's 44 (count'em) fat Christmas season catalogs.  Of course, they will all go into the recycle bin.. but not before Elaine scans them all looking for bargains.  (We may have to get a bigger mailbox.)

Antonin Scalia

I listened to some speeches on CSPAN from a national lawyers meeting this week.  A lot of the talk was about the "untimely" passing of Supreme Court Justice, Antonin Scalia.  One of the speeches was by his fellow justice and pal, Clarence Thomas.  I had never heard Judge Thomas speak before, so I was anxious to see what he would say.  He and Judge Scalia shared the same Conservative approach to the Constitution, but Scalia talked a lot during hearings, while Thomas rarely, if ever, even asked a question during any proceeding.

Justice Thomas gave a nice speech; however, most of what he said was a reiteration of famous quotes of Justice Scalia, for instance:

"No one should see how laws and sausages are made."

"The operation was a success, but the patient died."

I'm anxious to see who Donald Trump puts forward as a Scalia replacement.  Ivanka?  Kushner?

Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me

This week's show was nice.  Garth Brooks was quizzed and Paula Poundstone agitated, as usual.

The only thing that remains with me is the results of a study that showed that any product with the name "grandma" associated with it sells better than other like products.

They did talk about the "peach" emoji, which has been redrawn to make it look more like an actual peach, rather than Kim Kardashian's butt.