let's play "time to embarrass Sean"

1. Another day of shopping and seeing people. Danielle stopped by this morning to say hello, as did Chris; this afternoon, I went around downtown admiring store displays and picking up a couple of things I've been meaning to get to. The storekeeps downtown are noticeably more cheerful than the mall folk, who are downright snarly at this point.

2. Last night while painting, Sean noticed that his acrylics seemed to be slipping off of the canvas, which is kind of inconvenient, so I stopped in at the art store to ask about gesso (a primer for acrylics). The woman at the store is always very friendly, and gave me some advice; it turns out the paint is the likely culprit, not the canvas, as it comes with gesso already applied. She asked if I painted and I said no, it's about my roommate, he stopped in yesterday, he has a big tattoo on his head, you might remember him?
"My goodness, I love that guy!" she said, and dropped her voice conspiratorially low. "Let me just sneak into the office and see if there are any bottles of molding paste that have been played with."
And lo and behold, she came back with an additive for the paint that will help it along, for free because it had been opened at some point, and then gushed for a bit about how sweet and chivalrous Sean is, and said to say hello to him. I haven't seen him yet, as he was out when I came home, so I'm putting this here before he can tell me not to. Ha!

3. This evening Nick is coming by for tourtiere and roasted vegetables (I think). The last time I tried the roasted vegetables thing the sweet potatoes absolutely refused to cook through, so I've skipped them, and I forgot all about peppers while at the store, so it's really just portobello mushroom caps and zucchini and pearl onions with fresh pepper and organic olive oil, but I'm excited nonetheless. With tourtiere and mushroom gravy (I can throw some finely chopped bellos in that too, I think) it will be pretty good.

4. Christmas knitting is becoming dire. Less blogging, more knitting!