Encouraged by a weather report that predicted a cloudy but dry day, we slept until nine and then went through the usual morning routine, although I had to cut the dog walk short for a call of nature. However, this gave me enough time to write out some Thanksgiving cards and address and stamp them. These came with us as we left for lunch a little early so that we could swing past the Austell Road Cobb County complex so I could renew the registration on my car and get this year's tag. Even with this detour, we arrived at this week's lunch venue in plenty of time and had a nice long meal and convo with Alice, Ken, Aubrey, Mel, and Phyllis. We were eating at Okinawa and discovered that Aubrey's good friend from her school years, Kayla, was working there and had just been promoted to head server. Alice was keeping warm by the window, as she had come home from Conjuration with a cold. Nothing worse than good ol' fashioned con crud. We talked about everything from the weather to the anniversary of the Kennedy assassination.

Lunch broke up after two, and I had James swing by the Mableton post office to drop off the Thanksgiving cards. Instead of coming back up Floyd Road/Hurt Road to return to the East-West Connector, we did a slight variation on the directions being given to us by the GPS and drove a street called Fontaine Road. We're so used to being surrounded by suburbs that we are surprised when we find the small places in Cobb that are still country-like. The road leading to Fontaine was filled with small, older homes, but Fontaine itself paralleled an old railroad line and looked almost like the road we take up to Helen, GA, with widely-spaced homes, some with stables and acreage behind them, and many stands of trees, all in various stages of autumn color. The railroad tracks were out of sight in a little valley at the right side of the road. It was like a little five-minute vacation in the middle of our day.

We were headed for Barnes & Noble to get the cocoa we got cheated out of last weekend when the Acworth Books-a-Million showed up missing in action. The doors were wide open and they had been doing some rearranging inside, with big upright shelves of the newest and recommended books right up front. Before we had our cocoa we wandered around both floors, checking out the magazines (but I'm not buying any this weekend, as they usually have the magazines on discount on Black Friday), and then the books. I did find a book that was discounted, so picked that up (a humorous memoir about a woman who is an introvert attempting to act as an extrovert) and a paperback involving a paranormal mystery. After surveying the reading material and getting ideas for the few gifts we have left to purchase, we sat and had peppermint cocoa and shared a chocolate chunk cookie. No dessert for us tonight!

James wrapped up the power chair before we left the bookstore and a good thing, because we ran through a rainshower on the way home—say, what happened to that dry day we were supposed to have?—but luckily it was barely spitting when we pulled into the driveway. So we got the chair put up safely.

Spent the remainder of the afternoon and evening watching some things on Netflix. First up was a British special narrated by Stephen Fry about the elaborate courting behavior of several types of tropical birds, including birds of paradise and bowerbirds. The narrative was very tongue-in-cheek and the birds beautiful to look at, but with the most extraordinary courtship rituals: dancing, decorating elaborate nests, even a type of bird where the male has a male "wing man" to help him court his lady friend.

While James was cooking up some burritos for his breakfasts, I watched the documentary Harry and Snowman, the story of which is told in Elizabeth Letts' The Eighty Dollar Champion. Snowman, a former plow horse, was on his way to become dog food when a riding instructor named Harry DeLeyer bought him for eighty dollars. The horse turned out to be a natural jumper who won prestigious jumping contests in the late 1950s against younger, fitter horses. It wasn't the first time I had met Snowman. He appeared in a childhood book I still have, More Than Courage by Patrick Lawson, stories of real-life dogs and horses, where I also first read about "Sergeant" Stubby of WWI, Chips the war dog (whose real story was much better than the Disney telefilm), Roman war dogs, the famous Lipizzaners, police dogs, race horses, rescue dogs—and even a chapter on performing dogs and horses that talked about Lassie, Fury, and Rin Tin Tin.

Later we watched a series of short Disney films, including little shorts based on Rapunzel and Frozen, the enchanting nearly black-and-white "Paperman," the Prep and Landing "Secret Santa" short, etc. Totally delightful! The Mickey Mouse cartoon made of half vintage animation and half CGI was very inventive.

Labels: animals, books, Disney, friends, holidays, seasons, shopping, television, weather

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