"...and I'm so surprised it's not a dream!"

(With apologies to the Carpenters and "On Top of the World.")

Otherwise known as the long, long post.

One more week to go before telework can start again...we need to make sure everything is finished up. Been nice seeing everyone but I'll be so glad to get back to sleeping an hour later, my walks in the morning, and being able to do laundry and chores during lunch. The house is a wreck and I despise washing clothes on weekends. And it's time to put my fall decorations up, but I'm too dog tired at night after 90 minutes of round trip commuting and nine hours of work to do it then.

At least I have the new computer at work! It's so nice operating with 2GB of RAM rather than 512MB. It hasn't fixed the ICE problems—that's a problem with the server—but everything else is moving faster.

On Friday I get off at 3:30, so I came home via Costco to fill up on gas. Wow, 2.18⁹! By the time James got home from work Willow had been walked, I was changed, and I had finally gone into my new "Ultimate Rewards" catalog that replaced the Borders coupons I used to get. What a crock. Yes, you can get Amazon points, but it looks like it takes forever. For instance, you have to get 1,400 points to buy the book I just finished reading (a $8 paperback). Everything else is like frequent flyer points, fancy restaurants, and, as I predicted, stores that sell clothes, shoes, and expensive purses. Yawn.

Since James really needed gasoline, we went to Costco at Town Center for gasoline and finally made it to Borders for the book James wanted two weeks ago but we couldn't buy because their computer wasn't working. We had a nice collection of coupons, including $2 off a magazine, so I was able to buy the sequel to A Beautiful Blue Death and also, finally, a Golden Guide to trees, plus the new "Shop Smart" and British "Country Living."

We had supper at My Cousin Vinny's. I just had spaghetti and meatballs; hadn't had any for a while. James had a chicken dish. We both had enough left over for a lunch. Then we went to Town Center Mall; I wanted to see if Yankee Candle had anything new in fall things. Not sure I like any of their new scents. Checked in Hallmark and FYE, and bought some half-price chocolate at the Lindt store. It will be good for desserts.

I wanted to go to JoAnn, so James dropped me off and went to Hobbytown. I got a "Cross Stitcher" with some pretty fall patterns and a few dollar things, including a pair of gloves and "ear warmers" (those things skiers wear, like a giant headband).

We came home via "the Ditch" at Jim Miller Park, even though we couldn't see anything but they had opened the original road again, which now also has a sort of access road/pathway, presumably a route for the people who will be parking in the field beyond for the North Georgia State Fair.

We pretty much decided that if we woke up early on Saturday we would go to the Farmer's Market. We woke up at 9:30. :-) After last weekend, we wanted to rest! About ten we went to Costco—best time to go: no long lines. Dropped all that off, then went to Kroger. Then all the grocery shopping was done and we could have fun.

So we went to the hobby shop for a while. I sat in the meeting room while James schmoozed with the guys and read the new issue of "Country Woman" I found at Kroger. I hope they have the next issue because someone I know is in it: Melody Howell, the head of "Christmas to the Max." They are profiling her—and her fifty-six Christmas trees.

Next we went out to the Borders at East Cobb. Paydirt! I not only found the "Early American Life" I saw two weeks ago at another Kroger, but they have the Christmas issue as well! I also bought a book called The Anglo Files, a humorous book about England that I passed on last time, and two books that I saw at DragonCon and didn't feel like buying at full price: Shakespeare's London on 5 Groats a Day and Magic Lost, Trouble Found, the first book in a fantasy series.

I also picked up the next of the gingerbread reindeer at Hallmark. Now only Donner and Blitzen are left; they will be out Columbus Day weekend.

We arrived home for a few hours, then went to trivia. It was a nice dinner and we won the game, but instead of playing music, they were playing the Georgia/South Carolina game. Loudly. So you could barely hear the trivia master, let alone the person next to you. Phyllis asked if they could turn it down, but the waitress told us someone at another table asked them to keep it turned up. So you allow some of your customers to annoy the rest of your customers? Weird.

Had a nice evening on chat. Something funny happened, though: I periodically autoscan the broadcast channels to see if any new sub-channels have appeared. I've been hoping one of the local channels would pick up This Television, which shows some 60s series like The Patty Duke Show and movies. Friday night I did an autoscan and came up with a couple of new sub-channels, including 29-4, which appears to be a bunch of public domain films running without station ID or even commercials. They were running Westerns Friday, and when we got home earlier this afternoon Pygmalion with Leslie Howard was showing. Now as I changed channels to this station a weird British film was on. It turned out to be one of the "Goon" movies, Peter Sellers' film debut.

Well, I was discussing with Rodney my desire to have a good enough antenna to get Georgia Public Broadcasting over the air. We get WPBA, the Atlanta PBS station, but not always reliably, and since the analog broadcast quit, we haven't been able to get GPB at all. Antennaweb.org says we need a "red" coded antenna to be able to reach the signal. I told him I had just rescanned last night and GPB still wasn't coming in. Well, just for the hell of it I plugged channel 8 into the remote—and now it, and its two sub-channels were coming in. Not very good, though; very pixilated. (This evening it was back to no signal.) I want to go to Fry's and see if there is a pair of rabbit ears that will actually do this job.

Finally we withdrew to bed in order to be up this morning at 8:30 and be on our way to the Yellow Daisy Festival. This is the best weather we have ever had for it. The forecast was for 83°F, but it was pretty much cloudy the entire day and I don't know if it ever got that high. I wore my nice wide-brimmed "straw" hat anyway and was glad not to need it. It was rather humid, but we didn't get exhausted and dripping wet after three hours of walking.

James got the magnesium fire starter he wanted for our emergency kit. I bought him a barbecuing gadget (it's a combination grate cleaner and meat turner; very clever) for our anniversary, and he got me Marcelline Wallis' new Christmas album (she does dulcimer music), plus an album of Celtic music. We got our annual fudge from Ginny's, I bought a new "shadow box" for the hall bath, a lighthouse/seaside theme, from Country Pickins, and also a small heart shelf which I will paint, with a little dog, apple, birdhouse, and gingerbread cookie container for it. We also bought three casserole "kits," and three dips to replenish our stock, and an apple-patterned recycling storage bag for our plastic grocery bags.

Last year I bought a decoration for the front porch. There is a gentleman there who does metalworking, leaves on branches, either dogwood or maple. The leaves have iridescent patterns on brown created from the heat of the welding iron, and then they are clear-coated so they have a lovely sheen. I could only afford the small branch of five maple leaves last year, and it looked really lonely on the brickwork out there! This year I bought another five-leaf branch to add to the arrangement. This branch has three of the brown leaves along with two golden leaves which will stand out nicely. Plus he had single leaves you could purchase, so I bought a large and a small one. This will fill out the design nicely. I told James I should get some little resin birds for it!

We finished up about one and were about to go on the long march out to the parking lot when the guy in the golf cart offered us and another lady a ride. We sat in the "rumble seat" and boy, did he go fast! I had to brace myself with my foot on a metal projection at the back of the cart to keep from feeling like I was going to fall out.

We put the GPS to good use and found the Longhorn on Hugh Howell Road. It was time for James' birthday dinner. We both had a Renegade and both brought half of it home. (James' half will make him a lunch and my half made me two sandwiches.) On your birthday, if you register online you get a coupon for a free dessert. We got a chocolate stampede, which is a huge piece of mousse cake with two scoops of French vanilla ice cream. What we did was eat the ice cream and take the cake part home, because this darn thing is for at least four people, not two! We can both have dessert on it twice this week!

And finally, since we were on that side of town, we went to the DeKalb Farmer's Market to pick up boneless skinless turkey thighs, ground turkey, and ground pork, plus vegetables for the week. Our first order of business when we got home, of course, was wrapping all this meat for the freezer! Now it's full, and then we could finally sit, relax, and read the paper and watch Clark Howard and Colour Confidential (oh, and do the damn laundry...LOL).

Labels: books, events, food, music, shopping, television

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