Last night we had a great windstorm, even if it did keep me awake rather longer than I wanted.

When I woke up this morning I realized that I don't want to make moulds of animal crackers, because the boxes don't show cracker versions -- they show more realistic animals. Thus, I shall make moulds of little plastic animals that I already have, or buy a bag of zoo animals for that purpose. That should work just fine.

With those theme items, the obvious use is some kind of Nativity scene with the camel and the wings being used on an angel. The jewel could be carried by one of the wise men, or serve as the Star of Bethlehem. I'm pretty sure that someone will use the items this way in their entry.

Oh, by the way, we recently suffered through THE worst movie EVER made. It's a classic science-fiction one; of course, I refer to Plan 9 from Outer Space. We'd never seen it before (thankfully) and encourage anyone out there who's thinking of watching it to find something -- anything -- else to do with your time. But of course, people won't believe that a movie can be that bad, and will want to see for themselves. Don't say you weren't warned.

One movie that turned out much better than expected for me is Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, whose cast is completely computer-generated. This in not simple animation, but 3-D characters generated by computer. It's often obvious as such, but many times not at all obvious. And Shelley's new sound system made it even better.