We woke to a different world this morning.

After it being in the 70s and 80s all week, a cold front swept through yesterday. Six in the morning was much warmer than noon, and that was much warmer than 3:30. By the time I headed for home the rain that had proceeded the front had stopped and it was a bit chilly in short sleeves. I took advantage of it being cool again to toss some old boxes out of the garage and into the trash.

It had been an annoying week. When I was dancing Saturday and fell off my shoe, I never hit the ground, but managed to somehow wrench my right hip. I've pretty much limped around all week, and during the night Wednesday (early morning Thursday) I was sick during the night. This was horrible because I had to drive in for a meeting on Thursday about certain funds we have to be careful using. I was tired and a bit light-headed, especially after I went outside to open the gate for Alex to cut the lawn and he showed me the snake he'd beheaded with the weed-eater. I almost lost my breakfast. Ugh!

So the cool upon waking on Saturday—along with the sunny sky—was quite welcome. We got up at eight and went to the Farmers Market, and had to wear jackets. We bought chicken salad, goat cheese, scallions, and dog biscuits, and watched the tumult going on in the square: a big rally for Multiple Sclerosis. Wonder if they mentioned Annette. Saw a Weimaraner puppy being greeted by the big greyhounds that represent greyhound rescue. He immediately rolled over on his back to be properly submissive in the presence of these older dogs, as canine etiquette decrees. Too cute.

This morning after putting away the few things we bought, I nursed the headache I woke up with (and boy, could I have lain down longer than fifteen minutes), and then we did some cleaning up in our bedroom, getting rid of some stuffed animals, and rearranging the top of the chiffarobe. All the stuffed animals had to be dusted first, which took a while; I used the vacuum cleaner to get them really clean. We put the shoe cubby that was atop the chiffarobe into the closet and put shoes in it! (I know! Novelty, what?) Only kept a few of the Webkinz; we have a bunch to donate, but don't know where. James said he heard of a place where they give stuffed animals to kids who have been burned out of their homes, but we don't know what that charity is or how to contact it. If anyone knows, please contact us!

Once the dusting and the vacuuming was done, we took some things (mostly junk that had collected at my old desk at work) to Goodwill, had lunch at Williamson Brothers barbecue (I ordered the all-meat pork platter because I'd had an apple turnover for breakfast; the plate was huge—we brought ¾ of it home to use for a dinner), and then dropped all our wedding clothing off at the cleaners. (I don't want to think about the bill with two suit jackets and the kilt in there. Bonus: lady at cleaners was Scottish and recognized its importance!) We stopped at Bruster's for a treat and I had chocolate-chip coffee yogurt. It was quite yummy.

Our physical treat for the afternoon was going to Fry's. We hadn't been there in ages. Traffic was a bit annoying from Roswell through Alpharetta, but otherwise it was a nice ride, very sunny but cool. We drove there while listening to the latest episode of "The Splendid Table," which included Lidia Bastianich talking about cooking dishes from Apulia. Plus there was a funny bit in the parking lot: a car marked "Just Married." I guess real geeks go to Fry's on their honeymoon!

We were there a couple of hours. We'd planned to just buy a power strip, and came home with a bunch of other items, including lots of DVDs! We found the Blu-Ray anniversary edition of Who Framed Roger Rabbit, a $7 Battle of the Bulge, The Artist on sale for $10, and a $5 copy of two Nature bird episodes, one about hummingbirds, and "Parrots in the Land of Oz," which will probably drive Schuyler crazy. James also got a film called The War Lover, which he says has real B17s in it, and I found two complete series, last year's Pan Am, which we enjoyed, and an animated series called Sherlock Holmes in the 22nd Century, Jason Gray-Stanford is the voice of Holmes, which boggles the mind: it's Randy Disher from Monk!

We had a nice drive home (traffic had lessened a bit), and were enthusiastically greeted by Willow (but that followed because we were carrying those pork leftovers—we even brought half the $4 riblet "appetizer" [full meal size] home!). I spent the evening fussing over the little computer that is attached to the television. I'd bought an HDMI cable for it and hitched it up. All of a sudden the .mkv (?) files that I had of the recent Doctor Who stories would not play properly in VLC, although "The Snowmen" played fine last time we used it. Nothing will play full screen on VLC any longer; it just locks up and you have to CTL-ALT-DEL to get out of it. Stuff plays on Windows Media Player in .mp4 format, but if you put the mouse pointer anywhere near the video itself as it plays, it sputters and stammers. I thought it was the HDMI cable and immediately retrofit it with the PC connection as before, but there is no change. It is so disappointing! I can't imagine what's happened. I even uninstalled the old version of VLC and downloaded the new, only to have the installation abort. I finally had to quit and reinstall the old version. That didn't help at all.

At least we are all caught up with Doctor Who, but the evening was very, very aggravating for me. James had a better time of it; he bought a $13 rice cooker/steamer at Fry's as well. He was so itching to try it out he did, and made some rice, and then steamed some carrots. The rice was beautifully done with some tooth still left in it and the carrots were soft and sweet. We really do need to get that additional shelf up in the kitchen now; we definitely have too many appliances for our small counter space!

Labels: chores, DVDs, electronics, food, health, television

----------------------------------------------------------------
. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 11:38:00 PM

Comments: Post a Comment