It's been a long week. We had a "stand down" this week due to the reorganization, where folks cleaned out their cubicles, got rid of shreddables, transferred files folders, etc. Unfortunately there are things that just haven't been finalized. Also, I had to go into work on Thursday, usually a telework day. I didn't mind going in, but it rained all day and traffic was a mess. It took me 75 minutes to get home. It was exhausting; I came home tired to the bone and headachy.

So we treated ourselves on Friday night and went to Longhorn. James got a big steak so he could have some for lunch on Saturday, since he had to work. This is the "new" Longhorn in one side of the old Circuit City at the shopping center at Akers Mill (the old restaurant is within walking distance and closed up and dark), and I'm afraid the service was rather spotty. James' steak was underdone, mine had pepper on it when I told them no "prairie dust," his mushrooms were late, we had to ask for our bread. They were very nice and made everything good, but I've never seen a Longhorn so discombobulated!

We had Barnes & Noble coupons, so we stopped across the street to browse. I found Dying in the Wool, a post-World War I English mystery.

James had odd hours on Saturday, noon to nine, so we went to bed relatively on time Friday night and got up at eight so we could go out for breakfast to partially make up for it. We went back to Douceur de France; we haven't been there since the weekend Juanita got married. James had a nice omelet, and I had some bacon, the baguette with butter, and a big fruit cup (strawberries, cantaloupe, pineapple, and grapes, with an orange slice on top; I know James likes the pineapple, so I let him have it—it was a huge bowl anyway). When we paid up we could not resist getting a chocolate dessert to share and also a chocolate chip cookie to split. Then we stopped briefly at the Farmer's Market to get James some chicken salad, finally heading home so he could go off to work.

Once he was gone I got in the car and went off to Publix for twofers, then on to Kroger for the remainder of the shopping. I finally remembered to use my rebate cards from buying our new phones in November! I needed bread for work sandwiches, so I went up to Macland Road because the Smyrna Kroger bread always has cornmeal on it. Ugh. Once the perishables were put away, I went out to Michael's because I needed Command hooks and I had a coupon. Gah. What was I thinking? What a mob scene between the makeup store, Petsmart, Michaels, TJ Maxx, Anna's Linens and Dollar Tree, the furniture store and the rest. I was surprised how busy Michael's was, too; it usually isn't that crowded.

Then I headed back to Kroger to gas up the car. I had forgotten to use a $1 off coupon and I still needed to get some lunch. I didn't really want chicken soup again, but they didn't have any potato. I also got a little baguette for a sandwich later on and some pumpkin bread from the Starbuck's counter for a dessert. Finally I picked up my prescriptions at the pharmacy and got to come home.

I spent the rest of the afternoon and evening watching The Flame Trees of Thika, a 1981 seven-part Thames television series based on the book by Elspeth Huxley, who drew on her own childhood experiences when her parents bought land in East Africa and set up a coffee plantation, only to have their experiment interrupted by World War. Holly Aird played a lovely young Elspeth (as an adult actress she went on to do one of my favorite British series, Waking the Dead) and Hayley Mills was her mother Tilly. (One of Aird's Thika co-stars was Sharon Maughan, the wife of her future co-star Trevor Eve.) I had Schuyler sitting with me and she chirped madly at the African birds.

James arrived home at nine thirty with some chili, and once he finished, went down to the "Man Cave" for a while. We were up very late since Mike and I were advising Emma on a new laptop.

So we woke very late this morning, but then since I'd finished the shopping yesterday, we didn't have much to do. We had a leisurely breakfast and I did some file swapping, and we only went out about 1:30 to use the other Barnes & Noble coupons. James had a book reserved at the Town Center store, so we drove through the gradually darkening day past downtown Marietta and Kennestone Hospital through Bells Ferry Road to the store. By the time we emerged with our findings—the newest Molly Murphy mystery was out in paperback!—it was spitting rain and it was raining when James went in and out of Hobbytown for a few minutes while I stayed in the truck and read.

We had a sad stop to make on the way home. Our friend Ken Spivey's father had died over the weekend and the viewing was this afternoon. Ken's dad has been sick for a while and finally was transferred to hospice at the end of last week. The now steady, cold rain created the mood as we arrived at the funeral home just as they opened. We talked to Alice and Ken for a while, said hi to Juanita and David, and then chatted with Ron and Lin before actually going in. The scent of the flowers surrounding the casket struck me immediately as we walked in and brought back a lot of sad memories. We said hello to Ken's mom and talked to his sister Debbie before leaving.

By now it was five o'clock and we were both starving, having not had lunch. Again, we had talked about having bacon and waffles, then bacon and buckwheat pancakes, but were reminded on our ride that Shrove Tuesday was coming up—what a good day to have pancakes on! So the bacon was temporarily shelved again. James needed gasoline, so we drove by Kroger and while he hit the pumps, I went inside and picked up a Hormel beef tips and gravy, plus a Sunday paper.

By the time we got home, we were chilled and tired on top of hungry. We cooked up some spaetzle and warmed up the beef tips and had them together for supper, with the pumpkin bread for dessert, and watched this week's This Old House. I wanted to laugh watching them bring in supplies to build a stone wall, because I was thinking of all those 17th through 19th century New England farmers who broke their backs (and possibly even their horses'/oxen's backs) pulling stone after stone after stone out of the rocky soil to make a decent field to grow crops on—how they would goggle if they knew how much modern folks paid for rocks to make stone walls! Also watched Saturday's Too Cute!, which took a vacation from kittens and puppies to do hedgehogs, mini potbelly piglets, and mini lop-eared bunnies. Talk about a cute overload!

Sadly, it was raining too hard to watch the 2013 RV show. Phooey.

Labels: books, food, friends, shopping, weather, work

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