Because James has been in and out of work, we've been kind of in and out of money. All those thirty dollar visits to the doctor and to Urgent Care add up quickly. So we didn't eat out as usual on Friday night, but had some chicken legs that were already cooked in the freezer.

Saturday morning we did our shopping at Publix, making sure to get supplies for James to make breakfast burritos this weekend. They only had three packages of the low-sodium low-carb wraps that he uses instead of tortillas, which are usually too fragile for the roll of the burrito. So after we went home and put all the stuff up and had a little snack, we headed back out for a treat: a frozen hot chocolate at Books-a-Million. On the way we stopped at another Publix and managed to procure another three packages of wraps.

We had a nice time out. Petco was adopting dogs, so we went to check them out. There was a group of larger dogs playing together in an enclosure; one bull terrier (who ended up going home with someone) was playing dominance games with the others. Other dogs were lined along an aisle. There were some puppies, and also a couple of dignified adult dogs.

Of course I visited the budgies, too!

We spent about an hour in the bookstore looking around. I picked up a remaindered book, and then we enjoyed the frozen hot chocolate. No one quite makes it like the Joe Muggs coffee shop they have.

Now we were hungry and we headed for a treat. We had read several places on the web that Golden Corral has a senior Early Bird until four o'clock, under eight dollars with a drink, every day but Sunday. We can't afford to eat at Golden Corral any longer and we were really looking forward to it. But after fighting through construction traffic on Cobb Parkway, we arrived to see that it did not include Saturday. James was tired, so we did not drive all the way back up to Town Center to Fried Tomato Buffet, which is the next cheapest buffet to eat; we just had dinner at Hibachi Grill.

The sun blazed on us everywhere we drove. By the time we got home we were hot and tired, even through we'd been in an air-conditioned car. I know we shouldn't have laid down after a meal and I regret doing it, but the bedroom was dark and seductively cool, and we were both asleep for about an hour. In fact, James got up before the alarm I'd set and I slept on another half hour. Summer just sucks all the energy out of me.

Spent the evening watching two movies on TCM. The Mask of Dimitrios was a 1944 movie which starred Peter Lorre as a Dutch mystery story writer. While he is in Istanbul, a man named Dimitrios, a famous criminal, is pulled out of the Bosphorus, and he becomes fascinated with his story, following a trail of the amoral man's different capers across Europe. Along the way a man named Peters (played by Sydney Greenstreet) befriends him and he learns much about the treacherous Dimitrios, including one very big surprise—maybe more than he really wanted to know. This is a classic movie which I'd never seen. Lorre and Greenstreet play well together and Zachary Scott, in his first starring role, is a great treacherous villain.

Following was Errol Flynn in Footsteps in the Dark, which was a comedy mystery. Frances Warren is a wealthy insurance broker with an equally wealthy mother-in-law who lives with him and his wife. He's bored with his job, so in his spare time he writes mysteries under a pseudonym with his chauffeur as his typist, and, like Rick Castle decades later, hangs around the police department to get ideas for his books (the cops in this one played by Alan Hale Sr. and William Frawley). His wife and MIL know nothing about this; in fact his MIL is in a snit because his latest book, Footsteps in the Dark, lampoons her hoity-toity women's club meeting. But all his late nights "at board meetings" (really following the police around) arouse their suspicions, just about the time he's checking out a burlesque performer named Blondie White (Lee Patrick, who played Topper's goofy wife in the television series, has a fairly dramatic role here). I enjoyed it, but it's not a belly-buster of a comedy by any means. Supposedly Flynn loved doing it, too, but it did not do well, so they never made a sequel. I would have liked to have seen it, since it is intimated at the end that his wife is equally bored and would be joining him in his sleuthing.

Today I did chores (washed towels, did hard drive backup, finished my June book reviews, sorted pills) and went to Kroger, where I ended up playing "Where's Waldo?" All I needed was milk, no-salt mushrooms, and a Smart Balance low-sodium. I stopped at produce to buy peaches, plums, two ears of corn for Independence Day dinner, and some mandarin oranges, then descended into a maze—they'd rearranged the entire right side of the store! A lady and I wandered around bewilderedly for five minutes figuring where they might be, then I shagged down a friendly Kroger employee. She was working from a list because she'd come back after being off for a few days and didn't know they'd rearranged either. It took us another five-ten minutes to find the mushrooms, which are currently under a sign that says "cookies." And after all that I didn't get the Smart Balance because the Smyrna Kroger, at least, doesn't carry the low sodium version. Arrrgh.

Listened to "The Tech Guy" this afternoon, and then two episodes of "A Way With Words," then finally chilled out to music.

Publix had shrimp rings on twofer this week, so James took them and made shrimp scampi of them for supper; a nice butter-garlic sauce and shrimp over linguini. Happy tummy time.

Now watching The Incredible Dr. Pol.

Labels: books, food, pets, shopping, television, weather

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