Had Christmas gifts early Christmas morning—James bought me season two of A Discovery of Witches, Joe Straczynski's book about writing, a book of Bryant and May short stories, a book about geology of the Old West, and a nifty butter knife that will make it easier for me to have a treat occasionally. I bought him books, including three about the space program, a Larry Correia book, and a "Politically Incorrect" book for his collection. Tucker got a tug toy and some Paul Newman dog biscuits, and Snowy got a big sprig of millet.

Christmas afternoon was spent at the Lucyshyns home, having a killer dinner and lots of conversation. We were happy that one of our friends had been sprung from the hospital to be able to come to dinner; she had been in the hospital for a couple of weeks. We also had another friend who was looking rather sad at Thanksgiving but who was looking much improved at Christmas. He was using a cane instead of a walker and seemed much more alert and happy.

James had to work Sunday, of course, so we headed home in time to watch the Christmas episode of Remember WENN and prep for the next day.

Christmastide or no, Sunday is still my chore day since James is working all day. He had a bit of a bumpy day as he woke up with the runs—and James so rarely gets that; he usually has to take Metamucil—that it was a little concerning. We got some Pepto Bismol in him, he kept up drinking, and we had a bland lunch of rice and plain broth, and by the time suppertime came he was doing a lot better and he'd only lost about ninety minutes of work.

Monday it was my turn; no idea what caused it, but it least cleared up in time to go to Alice's birthday dinner at Okinawa. This was very small, only six people besides ourselves, but dinner and conversation were great.

Tuesday morning I did what I'd planned to do Monday, make a trip from dollar/discount store to dollar/discount store in search of after-Christmas deals. I went to Dollar Tree, Publix, CVS, Walgreens, and Big Lots before my bladder betrayed me. I didn't find tinsel, but I did get some cheap decor for out front of the development for next year, two rolls of wrapping paper, and a string of lights with 2.5 wattage bulbs to serve as spares (since the library tree has been almost completely dark for a week now; it was fully lit when I put it up the first week of December! first the middle went out, then the top). I didn't see any bows, either.

Wednesday was laundry day, and I also did another load of dishes, loaded up the old books to go to the library book sale, and reviewed books on my blog and prepped my dozen best books of 2021 blog entry.

All this is being done in miserable weather: it's been high 60s or 70s almost every single day this week. It's revolting. And then with rain coming in on Wednesday, it started smelling like a swamp outside, all moist and heavy like a terrarium.

2021 is counting down fast...next thing you know it will be the new year.

Labels: books, Christmas, food, friends, gifts, shopping, weather

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 10:14:00 PM

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After a Thursday of shopping, we were all prepared to have some fun on Christmas Eve. So we woke this morning, had breakfast, and I took Tucker on his long walk. We headed out early for lunch, intending to stop at Popshelf first for burritos, but traffic was so bad on the East-West Connector (since Walmart was between us and the restaurant) that we just went directly to O'Charley's and waited for everyone else. Juanita couldn't make it today after all, Mel and Phyllis were still being careful, and John never showed up, so it was just us and the Spiveys (including Aubrey). We talked about Marvel films (but not Hawkeye which they haven't seen) and other stuff, and Alice took a photo of us for Facebook.

On the way home we hit Popshelf. It was very crowded at that end of the shopping center because Popshelf is two doors down from Target, so I had James drop me off at the end of the sidewalk and he parked behind Office Max. Well, no sooner had I hit the sidewalk than I heard the weird honk/coo noise that the sandhill cranes make when they fly over—saw two small flocks of them the other day—and looked directly up to see them right overhead, so close that I could make out their long necks with the naked eye! I got two nice photos of them on my phone!

Bought twenty-five burritos and then brought them and James' leftovers home. We were feeling kind of bad not seeing Mel and Phyllis since we still had their Hanukkah gifts, so after I put the food up I grabbed the gifts and we drove back out to their house. We sat in the driveway and chatted with them for a while, and then drove home, stopping at Bruster's for ice cream on the way. James had peppermint stick Oreo, which was a lot more pepperminty than Oreo, and for once they had coffee ice cream (although theirs is nowhere as good as Baskin-Robbins, which is nowhere as good as Newport Creamery's, but them's the breaks) for me. I thought of Billy Joe in the Lassie episode "Yochim's Christmas": "This sure am the life."

Compared to last year, yes, it is.

We got home and settled in to watch Christmas things. First played The Gathering, with Edward Asner and Maureen Stapleton. Forget Hallmark Christmas movies, this is a Christmas film for adults. Then The House Without a Christmas Tree while we ate a light supper (the soup we brought home from Chattanooga). Caught the weather report, watched Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy, then went on to The Homecoming: A Christmas Story, which is absolutely my favorite Christmas film ever (you can take It's a Wonderful Life, thanks).

Labels: birds, Christmas, events, films, food, friends, television, treats

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 11:05:00 PM

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James' day-off Wednesday was fast approaching, and I knew what I wanted to do with it: go up to McKay's Used Books in Chattanooga. We hadn't been up there since January of 2020, and there was a pile of eight Xerox paper boxes and a stray stack of books in the library waiting to be traded in. On Monday I went downstairs and separated out the books: James' discards in four boxes, my discards in four boxes, and DVDs and CDs in a ninth box, and tied up each of the boxes with strings so the lids wouldn't blow off in the bed of the truck. I also cooked pork chops and read and listened to Christmas music.

Since we were going to be out Wednesday, I did laundry on Tuesday and also put the gifts away from Sunday's gift exchange. We crossed our fingers Tuesday night and went to bed.

Amazingly, Wednesday morning was chilly, but clear. I didn't have any stomach problems, and James wasn't having an allergy attack. I figured, hey, get up at eight and we would be on the road by 9:30. Alas, more like 10:30, so we arrived at McKay's right before lunchtime again. On the other hand, it was a wonderful day to come; either there aren't a lot of people on Wednesdays or not a lot of people shopping there before Christmas. We got right in with our books (I put the DVDs and CDs in James' bins because he had the room) and started to wander around. I wasn't looking for much, because right now I have so many books. I did look for any "Dear Canada" books (I've found them in McKay's before), and hunted around the television and movie books and found the old CSI Companion and also a book I bought as a gift two years ago and dearly wanted to keep, but couldn't because I didn't have an alternate gift. I got a nearly new copy for only $1.50. What I did go look for were some of the CSI novelizations, and found about a dozen, but only bought five (I also got one at 2nd and Charles, so now I have a half-dozen). Also found The Pictorial History of Radio. Alas, didn't find anything I was looking for in DVDs, like Emerald City. James got a nice bio of Pappy Boyington and a John Ringo book and a couple of other things. I looked at the biographies and some of the travel books, but only skimmed history.

By 1:30 we were ravenous, so we put our empty boxes, wedged together so they had no open surfaces, up against the tailgate of the truck, and went to City Cafe Diner as usual. I had the open face hot turkey sandwich and James had a chicken pot pie and ordered a side of tater tots that was in a huge plate. He forgot how big the portions were last time. I brought half my turkey home and he half the pot pie and half of the tots, and we ordered a wedge of chocolate overload cake and couldn't eat it we were so full!

Of course we had their wonderful chicken "noodle" soup which has broken up spaghetti in it instead of something like egg noodles, and we ordered some to take home.

Before we left for home, we filled up with gas, but alas, by that time it was 3:30 and we didn't want to get stuck in Wednesday rush hour traffic in Atlanta, so we once again put off the trip to their Barnes & Noble at the Hamilton Mall. Their B&N is so much better than ours, or was the last time we were there; of course now that the new owner has taken over, it may not be.

Alas, we ran out of luck on the way home: no matter how tightly the boxes were wedged together, they still kept flying up and we lost three of them out of the truck bed on the way home, and to keep the rest intact we had to weigh down three of them with the books we bought and take the other three into the cab with me. As we were riding home with lots of leftover and uneaten cake, and I had the extra soup we ordered between my legs, it was kind of uncomfortable. We had to stop a couple of times to rearrange the boxes and once for James to use the bathroom.

But finally we were home and changed and munching on a light dinner while finally watching the end of Hawkeye. Wow! What a finale! They killed the Rockefeller Center tree dead and had a killer fight on the ice; in the meantime, Kate Bishop went up against Kingpin. Wow, does he wear armor or what: Kate shot him directly with an arrow and he just pulled it out. And then there was the whole cliffhanger at the end...they say this is only a "season finale," so will there be another one? And I do want a series about Echo/Maya Lopez, which is apparently in the works.

Except for the boxes, it was a wonderful day!

Labels: books, chores, excursions, food, shopping, television

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 10:36:00 PM

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James had twenty hours of vacation time left going into December. At first he was going to take the Sunday before and the Sunday after Christmas, but someone had already claimed Boxing Day. Tim also depends on James on Sundays because for the first three hours of the day he's the only one on phone duty. So he asked for either the 22nd or the 29th (both Wednesdays) and then five hours each Sunday afternoon on the 12th and the 19th.

We had already used the afternoon of the 12th for my birthday dinner; Sunday we had our annual Christmas get-together at the Lawsons' house. We managed to remember all the gifts except for David's, but both forgot our phones; I didn't care for any other reason, but if Butch broke down we had no way of calling for help! Luckily nothing happened. We had pizza as the main course (Jerry even ordered me a bacon-black olive-and-no-cheese pizza) and a group played games, but I sat on the back porch with Alice and Juanita chatting. Then we had the mad gift exchange with wrapping paper flying. And then it was time to go home, which was rather a relief. They always have a nice wood fire at the party, and my allergy just revs up when I have to breath woodsmoke anymore. I was finding it kinda hard to breathe by the time we left, so the cold air was very welcome, and we got to look at Christmas lights on the way back.

Labels: food, friends, parties

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 9:10:00 PM

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Well, it was an up-and-down sort of week, and I do mean down...

Monday at least was good: the blue tree I ordered from Home Depot arrived, so I finally got to put up the airplane tree. I thought from the photos on the website it would be a light blue, but it's a royal blue, but it still does look nice with the ornaments on and the white lights. There aren't a lot of blue planes in the collection, so there's a nice contrast.

At 11:30 the problems began. We tried to get the "Dot" in our room to time our fifteen minutes of reading as usual, and it said it couldn't collect to the internet. So I just timed it on my Fitbit and then we went to bed. It's not responded like this before and always been okay in the morning. But when James got up to work the internet was still down, and it was down all day. We had to call Earthlink and we emphasized James was handicapped and needed the connection to work. But they couldn't send anyone out until Wednesday morning. James tried to connect to the internet through the hotspot in his phone, but the VPN he has to use to get to the main call center wouldn't stay connected to it. So he lost a whole day's work and two hours on Wednesday.

So on Tuesday afternoon we piggybacked off the hotspot and watched the first three parts of Hawkeye, which looked like so much fun in previews. Each of the episodes took an hour to watch because the signal kept dropping out, but the story is such fun and interesting that we made our way through it.

The repairman showed up about 8:30 a.m. on Wednesday. Guess what: not Earthlink's fault again: the problem was at the box out on the street. Someone repaired another line in the box and broke one of the two wires to our connection. Dammit, I am so tired of that happening; I hate when AT&T fixes anything anymore.

This way we could watch two more episodes of Hawkeye, and guess who shows up at the end of part five: Kingpin. (Played by Vincent D'Onofrio as in the Daredevil series.) I thought I recognized that chuckle at the beginning of part three!

But now we have to wait like everyone else for the end next week!

Thursday was back to normal in that we had grocery shopping, but James had agreed to work in the morning to make up for Tuesday. So I went to the Smyrna Publix to do it myself, and then to the Smyrna Kroger, which is useless. They had no skim milk. WTF? In the afternoon we had to go to James' eye exam. He has to have his eyes examined every year to make sure the Plaquinel he takes for his arthritis isn't damaging his eyes. But, aside for cataracts just starting, he's doing okay. No sign of macular degeneration or glaucoma.

Friday morning we had to get up really early for an 8:40 appointment, but it was worth it: Dr. Friedman says the ulcer on James' left "ring toe" is finally healing as I thought it was (for once I was feeling good about a doctor's appointment!). I think it should be healed by the New Year, or maybe earlier. (Every bit of the money James earned on Thursday morning went for doctors' appointments...)

Since we had to be up early anyway, after the appointment and a blood test and picking up a prescription, we hit the freeway and went up to Canton for the day. First stop was Books-a-Million, where they had games on sale, so we picked up four. And then we had pizza at Uncle Maddio's. The owner is still working the whole place alone!

There was a lot of traffic home, but all-in-all it was a great day.

Saturday we went to Lidl and then stopped at Hallmark where I needed to pick up a gift with a coupon. They had some items BOGO so I have a start on next year's shopping. When we came home I baked two batches of wine biscuits and I vacuumed.

And now there's only a week to go until Christmas...time sure flies at the end of the year!

Labels: chores, Christmas, food, health, internet, shopping, television, work

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 10:23:00 PM

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I was ready to decorate the Christmas tree on St. Nicholas Day, but the weather didn't cooperate: it was still too warm. If I'd done it on Monday, the tinsel would have stuck to my hands. So instead I changed the bed, cleaned out James' side table that would be next to the tree, cleaned out the corner, and brought the tree up and assembled it—as well as replacing about seven more bulbs (after I replaced every bulb at the bottom of that tree last year!) and fluffed it, all ready for the morrow.

The tree was up on Tuesday, while I worked my way through Pearl Harbor specials on the History Channel (yeah, I know...actual history specials on the History Channel!) for the 80th anniversary. When they quit, I put on my own: The Waltons' episode "Day of Infamy."

Wednesday was my usual laundry day. We were also celebrating Snowy's eighth adoption day. And James was happy because Forged in Fire was back Wednesday night.

Thursday was a busy day: we did the three-stop shopping trip in Lidl, Publix, and Kroger and then came home for lunch. This particular Thursday we actually went out again, as we wanted to drop off a bag of childrens' items at Vickery Hardware since they were collecting for Toys for Tots. James needed gasoline, so we went to Costco next, and then ended up at Barnes & Noble. This time I committed book: the newest Harry Dresden in paperback, a murder mystery taking place in Italy featuring an Irish/Italian former NYPD detective, something called The Love Hypothesis about romance among academics, and also an issue of "American Road" magazine devoted to lighthouses.

Ended the evening with Star Trek: Discovery and a very surprising ending for Tilly! (She's one of my favorite characters, so this was particularly heart-rending. I'm also getting particularly fond of Adira and Grey.)

On Friday we slept until ten, then had lunch at West Cobb Diner with Alice, Ken, and Aubrey Spivey. Turkey dinner of course, my favorite dish there. On the way home picked up Christmas napkins at Party City and then burritos at Popshelf.

On Saturday rain was predicted, so I drove James up to the sports bar where they were holding his club's Christmas party, then went across the street to gas up my own car at Costco. From the Costco parking lot you could see the black clouds of the storm marching south, so I figured I'd better go somewhere and take cover, so I chose 2nd and Charles, the used bookstore. The skies opened while I was there, but I lucked out, too: among the DVDs found the sixth season of Homicide: Life on the Street for $15. This season had a famous episode called "The Subway" that won a Peabody award and PBS did a documentary about; both are on the DVD set. Did I mention "The Subway" featured Vincent D'Onofrio? Oh, and that another episode in this season featured Kathryn Erbe? (Yes, when I have an obsession I do it thoroughly.) I also found one of Max Allan Collins' original CSI novels—and I also discovered a nifty Christmas gift for Aubrey there.

At this point I was hungry, so I drove toward Barnes & Noble, hoping to find something to eat on the way, but Tin Drum is gone and I didn't want anything else. Instead I popped a watermelon candy and soldiered on. Since I was there anyway, I strolled down to CD Warehouse and not only turned up the DVD (with commentary) of the rom-com Happy Accidents (you can look this up and find out why it's significant), but I found the BluRay of the newest film of Midway, which James wanted to see, each for $4. Next door at Barnes & Noble I turned up the newest "Chicken Soup for the Soul" Christmas volume and also a book of short stories based on Christmas and crime just as James called asking to be picked up. The party itself was over and they were starting to watch the Army-Navy game. So I tooled on to pick him up.

We were supposed to go to Longhorn on Saturday night to have dinner for my birthday—yes, Saturday was my "Route 66" birthday—but neither of us wanted to go out in the rain, so we stopped at Zaxby's on the way home and I bought wings for both of us. Amazingly, what did we watch? The Army-Navy Game! Yes, us, the sports-phobic. But James was Navy and we cheer for Navy. (And they won!)

[Later: We ended up at Longhorn Sunday afternoon. James had 20 hours of vacation time left, so he's taking one whole day (the 26th, we hope, if not the 22nd or the 29th) and then two Sunday afternoons off, since Sunday is generally a dead day, but they need him early in the morning as no one else is covering until 10 a.m.]

So I had a swell birthday with books and DVDs, but felt rather sad because we'd found out late the evening before that a friend was in the hospital with a slight stroke. This person has had many health problems this year, including having to have chemotherapy, and we feel terrible that they've ended up in the hospital yet again. After what James went through last year it is doubly dismaying.

Labels: birthday, books, chores, Christmas, Christmas decorations, food, friends, health, shopping, television

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 11:09:00 PM

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Christmas decorations? Yes!—we are off with a bound!

Sunday was the first Sunday of Advent, which mean it was time for lights! I'd decided I wanted to go back to the blue lights out front, so after the dog walking sequence of our day, I went to the garage and went rooting in the boxes. Although I'd bought all new strings of blue lights on Saturday, I decided to use the old lights if possible. I spent an hour or so distributing them on the bushes in the front of the house. In retrospect, maybe it was a bad idea, because they are two different batches of blue glass and one bush doesn't really match the other (some of the lights are bluer than others) and some of them are faded and look white. But, for better or worse they were out there, as well as the tree that goes on the porch table and the wreath on the front door, which are still multicolor since I don't anticipate finding blue lights for those.

I also unboxed a set of white and blue snowflakes James had picked up on clearance one year and plugged those in out front as well. They will make a nice background for the three log deer: Woody, Holly, and Rudy, he of the red nose.

While I was outside Ashley from next door came out with her dogs and then stopped to talk to me a while. She kept asking if she could help! I thought that was sweet. Maybe I am looking decrepit these days? 😀

Then I came inside and put up the candoliers in the windows (frosted blue on the upper story and clear blue down in the library) and the inside door wreaths (since they're all in the same box) and set up the timers. All this and doing my essential Sunday chores: sorting meds for the week, washing towels, and cleaning the master bath.

Monday it was time to clean out the Thanksgiving decorations, and that I did, and everything got boxed. Also unloaded (again) and reloaded (again) and ran the dishwasher. That thing is insatiable!

Tuesday I helped James start up the turkey soup from the carcass and meat we got from Juanita, and then decorated the foyer, cleared off everything upstairs, put up decorations in the hall bathroom, first put up the ceppo on the china cabinet, and then worked on decorating the dining room. Finally the two of us ended the night by straining and putting up the soup.

Wednesday was, of course, laundry day, and along with that I finished up the dining room and decorated the kitchen, put up the woodland tree and the supporting decorations in the spare room, put up the Rudolph tree, put up the Scottish/Italian decorations in our bedroom, and put up the stuff on the landing.

Thursday we finally got to the bank, then did the trifecta of shopping (Lidl, Publix, Kroger). We also tried a new restaurant that is next to the Mableton Kroger, "Yummy Bistro," an Asian fusion place. James and I both had Japanese noodles with beef, and he tried some tempura sushi and I had pork potstickers. (We both had to put the appetizers up for another meal; the Japanese noodles were indeed "yummy" and filling!) After lunch I stamped and addressed the Christmas cards and put two packages together, and later on I brought up the board from the "Christmas Closet" and set up our 1940s Christmas village on the mantel (and those decorations under the mantel, as well). Almost immediately two bulbs were out, so I had to order more from Amazon. Those special village building bulbs are expensive (they're shorter and squatter than C7 bulbs so they fit into the houses better)!

Friday we went to the post office to mail everything I'd stamped and packed, and then drove off to the Apple Annie craft show at the Catholic Church of St. Ann. It was lovely to be back after last year's break. Lots of jewelry crafters this year, so didn't buy much except for some baked goods and a new St. Jude medal to go on my chain as the old one Mom bought me from Tally's in Providence years ago is now sadly worn and may break off any day. It was warm enough for James and I to have a lunch outside (it was catered and not very good). Then we had to get going to make his podiatry appointment at four. Dr. Friedman said the ulcer on his toe was looking very good and the medihoney was working, then completely changed his mind and told us to try something with a different kind of medihoney and a different pad. I'm hoping this will work.*

Saturday morning we had a treat: James made buckwheat waffles! They were delicious with real maple syrup. Then James headed off to his meeting as this week was their Christmas party. Except it wasn't, he had read the message incorrectly. So he came back about 90 minutes later. In the meantime I had given up and gone on Home Depot's site and ordered a blue tree to use for the airplane tree, and later in the afternoon I put up the library tree—after replacing something like 20-30 bulbs on that tree last year, I still had to replace nine more before I could decorate it!—and put up the rest of the library decorations. The airplane tree will have to wait until the blue tree comes; I've always wanted a blue tree for the planes.

Finally at rest, it was time for The Snowman and A Christmas Story.

* It didn't. I went back to the medihoney and hope I am okay doing it.

Labels: chores, Christmas, decorating, events, food, health, neighborhood, shopping

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 10:10:00 PM

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I don't get it. Summer lasts for so long. It goes by with the speed of a constipated sloth, leaving behind the ugly scents of hot asphalt and sizzling concrete, mold and heated metal.

And now here it was Thanksgiving week!

The early part of the week was notable in that it was cold enough, or we thought it was cold enough, that we pulled the comforter down from the closet shelf and put it on the bed, only for me to put it back up a day later. Even as chilly as it was, it was too warm. Ironically, when we had the furnace inspected on Monday, it was too warm.

Thursday it seemed Thanksgiving was back to normal. Except that Dish Network and Tegna are still in a pissing match and I couldn't record the Macy's Parade on NBC, so I watched it on CBS instead. This was actually good; the coverage was better than NBC has done in years. We spent half the morning cooking for dinner this afternoon: steamed carrots with maple syrup glaze and also a green bean casserole. James "mixed it up" a little by using cream of onion soup instead of cream of mushroom soup and also added chives to it. Finally about two we headed over to the Lucyshyns across town, only to be held up in traffic! On Thanksgiving Day, of all days! No accident ahead, just scads of cars on I-85 northbound. We finally got off the freeway and went surface streets.

Dinner was delicious as always: turkey, ham, pot roast for the main meats and all sorts of veggies, two different kinds of fruit salad, regular pies and also a hot crispy fruit pie. Had football on the television, and were able to host a friend who is basically in hospice care as he has an incurable cancer. We also had another friend who was able to come but not enjoy himself as he used to: he has a host of medical problems and basically can only sit and watch television and eat simple things. Despite that, we all enjoyed it.

Heading home, the freeway was apparently still clogged up and we had to go south to Stone Mountain to be able to double back to I-285 and go north and then west to go home. Quite exhausted when we got there.

No need for Black Friday shopping this year; I think those days are gone. We have enough gadgets and enough thumb drives and hard drives for a while. We had to go to the post office to pick up a registered letter and then tried to go to the bank, only to find it closed for the weekend. Then we did the grocery shopping, which means that we didn't get lunch until almost dinner time.

Saturday we went to Popshelf to get James more beef and bean burritos so he won't have to make his own, then went by Lowes where I found strings of blue lights on discount sale. Back at home we made more carrots and green bean salad, because in the afternoon we were invited to what I called "Second Thanksgiving" at the Spiveys' home. Juanita made the turkey at home and brought it over, and it joined the veg and numerous desserts and breads. Football was on here, too, as well, and the cats wandered in and out at will as Cinnamon the dog stared at people trying to get them to feed her.

Then we came home to watch our usual Christmas starts to the season: "Merry Gentlemen" from All Creatures Great and Small and "Silly, But It's Fun..." on The Good Life.

Labels: food, friends, season, shopping, television, Thanksgiving

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 9:24:00 PM

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It was a week of in and outs. On the "in" side I did some book reviews and blogged and shelved books. On the "out" side, I finally got rid of the alarm clocks—we don't use them anymore and there's no radio station I want to wake up to any longer.

Thursday was a usual shopping day, Lidl, Publix, and Kroger in a row. And then we managed to have a little fun at Barnes & Noble. I'm having to buy "Yankee" magazine again since Nook canceled my electronic subscription. But at least the print copy came with a calendar, so I'm stocked on calendars now. James also took delivery on a sanitizer for his C-PAP machine. We are hoping this will cut down on the allergy problems he's been having for the last few months (he gets up sneezing very hard and it continues all day). I've been washing the mask and making sure there are no particulates in the tank, but this will make sure all the germs are taken care of.

Something nice did happen after B&N: Did you ever have an ordinary moment when you suddenly realized you were...just happy? I had a moment like that Thursday: we'd finished the grocery shopping, everything was put up, and we'd had lunch; James was driving us to Barnes & Noble, we were going through the back way with all the trees, it was autumn, the windows were down and it was cool, and I was exactly where I wanted to be.

And later on we had the season premiere of Star Trek: Discovery. That was a very interesting opening act before settling into a more traditional episode! Glad they didn't make the new President a snotty sort, and she was actually very knowledgeable. This was followed by the first Ready Room of the season, with Wil Wheaton on a slick-looking new set that looks like a real Trek ready room. Also watched Prodigy, and perhaps Gwyn has finally gotten the message that her father can't be trusted?

Friday we had a very small "lunch bunch" at Top Spice (Thai), and also went to Hobby Lobby. I got Patti Callahan's new book about C.S. Lewis and "where" Narnia came from, a novel called Once Upon a Wardrobe. I read it as an e-book and wanted a real copy.

Saturday we had to take Tucker to the vet. He's been biting at his tail so much it was getting irritated, so we were treating it with aloe wipes and some anti-itch medication and leaving the Thundershirt on him so he couldn't twist up and bite at his tail. What we were worried about was that his left ear was drooping more and more every day from the beginning of the week, and now it seemed to have fluid in it. So we dropped him off before nine o'clock and then had to go to Hair Day. That part at least was fun. Afterwards, not so much: James cooked up some "Plant Based" (that's the brand name) burgers that we tried. He had no problem, but whatever they put into those burgers to make them taste like meat made me very ill. I was burping it up all night. I had a nap and then indulged in Pepto Bismol and "Goren and Eames therapy."

We were instructed to come pick up Tucker at 5:30, but didn't actually get him until after six. The vet is still doing the stupid drop-off thing and we had to sit in the car for 45 minutes and twiddle our thumbs while the guy in the car next to us smoked noxious cigars. Barf.

So Tucker finally got his exam and his shots, which they had conveniently "forgotten" to do when he was there boarding in March, although we confirmed this when we dropped him off. (We're still pretty pissed about this; can you tell?) The itch on his butt is from a flea allergy, even though we haven't had any fleas, and they gave us steroids for him. (We never got his flea meds in March, either; they wouldn't give them to us because he hadn't had his exam!) The fluid in his ear is a hematoma, and they only wanted to do it if he had his teeth cleaned, too. Well, this bloody costs $1,000, which we'll have to save up for. Hopefully the hematoma will reabsorb. We have to watch it.

We didn't get home until way after dark and forewent watching the final, clip show of Call the Midwife. I was frankly disappointed by this season of Call the Midwife, except for the final episode. Every plot seemed to be "okay, this bad thing happened, but everyone was supportive and the baby was okay." Just very "by the numbers" this season, and unsatisfying. In the last episode, even though the baby was born with Down syndrome and his adoptive mother rejected him, things came out okay, and Rich Guy came through for Nonnatus House. Meh. Instead we watched more Murdoch Mysteries.

Labels: chores, dogs, events, pets, shopping, television

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 10:44:00 PM

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If James was going to have a week's furlough, at least we could get a "sort of" vacation out of it. So I turned off all the alarms and we looked forward to a nice Monday morning of sleeping in.

Labels: anniversary, autumn, chores, dogs, electronics, food, health, shopping, television, vacation

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 11:14:00 PM

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We ended up having a really nice time at Conjuration. Again, it's highly Harry Potter oriented, but they have a very nice writer's track, and we spent a lot of time at those panels.

We were a little discombobulated Saturday morning, so did not arrive in time for an 11 a.m. panel that I was interested in; however, we discovered the schedule online was not accurate, either, and that panel wasn't being held. Alas, it also meant that the raptor demonstration we had wanted to see wasn't going to happen this weekend either. It was okay, though; we found things to do. In fact, I knew the moderator of the first panel we attended: Dr. Dea Mazingo-Gorman, who did the anthropology panels at Anachrocon. "When Magic Gets Sciency" was about customs in ancient societies that were considered "magical" back then that have a scientific basis. For instance, in ancient Egypt, worshipers of Horus wore eye makeup that identified them as members. While this eye makeup had lead in it, it also protected the Horus-worshippers from eye infections caused by bathing in the Nile due to its scientific properties. Another was Lake Avernus, which is near Pozzuoli, Italy. There are caves in the area which caused death when you entered them. Turns out the lake is the caldera of a former volcano and poisonous gas still issues into the caves. Also talked a lot about the interconnectedness of ravens and wolves, which appear in many different mythologies including Native Americans. Apparently when wolves vanished from Yellowstone, so did the ravens; when they reintroduced wolves, the ravens came back. Neat panel.

"Sometimes You Can Judge a Book by Its Cover" was a fun panel about cover art past and present for fantasy novels, and how good covers can persuade you to read a book even if you don't know what it's about. But it was the next two hours that were the most fun: "Dragons, Wizards & Pens," a writing "contest" involving four writers, a moderator, and suggested words. The writers were given a word and then had to write an opening sentence for a story, and the audience voted on which was the best opening line. Half were audience suggestions and we suggested "budgie" (another suggested word was "carburetor," so I think budgie wasn't so bad!). The entries were hilarious; if laughter really is the best medicine, we had a dose of the best.

"Static Character vs. Dynamic" was a good discussion about static (characters that stay the same, like Batman or Indiana Jones) versus dynamic (characters who change). Next was our final Saturday panel, "To Tell the Truth--Or Not," in which our panel of writers had to tell a real-life story from a prompt and we had to decide if they were telling the truth or lying. They were quite clever at it.

We also cruised the dealer's room a couple of times and James bought me the updated version of Alan Siler's book Doctor Who's Greatest Hits for our anniversary (later I got Alan to autograph it), and talked to one of the authors who was on the "Dragons" panel, Barbara Evers.

Came home to scritch the budgie and walk the dog (and turn back all the clocks and the timers) and drop into bed to do it all over again. This time we were a bit more collected and arrived mostly in time for the 10 a.m. panel: "To Trope or Not to Trope," about the tropes in stories we hated, the ones that have been done to death, and the ones that we love to have "flipped."

We didn't have anything we really wanted to see next, but stayed for an interesting discussion about being a mother in the Harry Potter universe. The three panelists were all mothers—in fact, one had to take time out occasionally to tend her little ones (looked like about two and four). I think the most difficult thing about being a wizard mom would be when the kids started to manifest magic and you would have to teach them not to!

We sat and ate our sandwiches and talked to some folks, and then went back to the panel circuit. Alan Siler did a panel about the old "Land of Oz" amusement park in North Carolina. It was very popular in the 1970s, but then closed after a fire and was abandoned. It's since been fixed up and opens two weeks out of the year, with the performers all volunteers. The woman who plays Glinda originally played Dorothy in the 1970s. Alan went there in the 1970s, when he was age seven, and then went back with the television crew of The Unseen World. A lot of marriage proposals apparently take place there because one or both people went to the park as children.

The next panel was "World Building 101," which was exactly as it sounds. Most of the authors began with characters, but a few did begin with the worlds they needed.

The last panel was called "The Storyteller's Toolbox" and was conducted by John Adcox. He was challenging the teaching of the three-act story structure and says it's more like a four-act structure instead, and illustrated this by applying the structure of Star Wars to his four-act graphic. It made a lot of sense.

Before we left James bought me two books for my birthday, the first in an independent series about a witch and her sentient cat.

We came home and James made an easy supper of ramen noodles and Trader Joe's orange chicken. Later we watched Call the Midwife. Is it me or has the series been kind of "by the numbers" this season? Maybe it was because of the difficulties of filming with the pandemic going around, but I'm just not feeling the love this year. Usually I cry at the end of several episodes; this year it's "okay, this bad thing happened, but everyone was supportive and the baby was okay."

Labels: conventions, friends, shopping, standard time, television

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 10:46:00 PM

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We had a good weekend despite James' toe (which is now not red and looking better although the wound appears a little larger) and the news we got on Friday afternoon.

Alas, first we had to get through the shopping on Thursday as well as getting James a blood/urine test for his nephrologist appointment next week. But that was pretty painless.

Although it was cloudy and a tad chilly on Friday, we drove up to Ellijay and had a nice day. We listened to "Travel With Rick Steves" on the way up, and once we got past Jasper we started seeing some very nice color on the trees considering Georgia doesn't always get brilliant color. We stopped at Panorama Orchards as usual for fresh apples, fruit spreads, pot pie noodles, sugar free taffy, fruit teas, goat's milk lotion, and a few other things. Then we drove another 15 minutes to Blue Ridge to go to Taste of Amish. We can't get into this store with James' power chair due to a curb, so I went in alone to buy more "soup greens" and also found Necco Wafers (James uses them for low blood sugar instead of those icky lemon tablets they give you), some smoked cheddar, and a packet of seriously delicious ginger cookies with a nice ginger bite on the "back end."

We had lunch at Shane's BBQ, and then headed home. James' right leg was getting twitchy, so we stopped at a Cracker Barrel so he could stretch his legs and use the bathroom. While I was wandering around the gift shop (if you've never been to a Cracker Barrel, it's a country style restaurant that also has a gift shop) and found an adorable Christmas/winter sweatshirt in my size with two chibi-type foxes, pine trees, and snowflakes on it. They had a couple of other shirts that I liked, including one with chickadees on blue, but none in my size. A lovely piece of serendipity.

For some years we have been recommended a small convention called "Conjuration." It started as just a Harry Potter convention, but has branched out to encompass magical media. Our friends Alice and Ken go every year. Well, this year they went to Disney World instead, but we decided we would go on Saturday.

Things changed as we drove home: James got a phone call from his boss. Once again, they forgot to renew the purchase order that pays his salary until too late. So they have no money to pay him next week. So guess what, he's on furlough until "the board" re-ups the PO.

To look at it positively, I don't have to cook next week. And now we can go to Conjuration both Saturday and Sunday.

Labels: conventions, excursions, food, shopping, weather, work

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 11:30:00 PM

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How amazing! It seems like we wait years for October to arrive and then the whole month goes by like the wind.

Still looking for some real fall weather, but the temperature is dropping to better levels, and next week looks heavenly: nothing over 68℉! (Fifties would be better, but beggars can't be choosers, as they say.) Plus I had a first this week: cooked my first "stir-fry." It was actually pork bits in a sesame-seed sweet sauce, and it came out pretty well, especially when I did a reduction on the leftover sauce.

Thursday was our usual shopping day, and then I started uploading some of my fanfiction to Fanfiction.net. This is fine for my Remember WENN fanfiction, since there's already a category for it, but there's no category for the other fic I want to put up there: my Lassie, Doctor Simon Locke, and Addie Mills stories. I contacted someone at the website and still haven't heard from anyone yet.

Friday James had two doctors' appointments. In the morning we went out to Glenlake to see his cardiologist as a followup for him being in the hospital a few months ago. That worked out fine, and he doesn't want James to have another echocardiogram as his last one was so recent. Since we were so close we went to Trader Joe's, and it was actually chilly enough for us to buy things and leave them in the back of the truck! So we got chicken sausage and pub cheese and other good things; alas, no more pumpkin bars.

There was a Mellow Mushroom nearby, so we had lunch there. Their crust is almost, almost as good as Uncle Maddio's, and I got quite full on a personal pizza and still took a slice home. Then we went next door to Half-Price books for about a half hour. I bought Jill Lepore's history of the U.S., Mike Douglas' memoirs, and The Autobiography of Jean-Luc Picard, plus a Blu-Ray copy of Jurassic World for only $6!

Then we got to go to Kaiser again, Cumberland this time, for James' podiatrist appointment. He was only supposed to have his nails trimmed, but the nurse didn't like the look of his "ring" toe on his left leg and got us in to see the podiatrist. He has this small ulcer on the toe and it had become a little irritated on Wednesday night, so we were glad we were seeing the doctor. He didn't like what he saw either, and gave me some collagen to put on it and says James is not to get that foot wet (so I basically got chewed out by the doctor for not treating it the way he wanted me to). He also gave him doxycycline for any infection.

I had kind of a bad night on Friday. Snowy had been acting kind of quiet when we got home, and I was worried something was wrong with him, so I spent a lot of the night crying and James a lot of the night comforting me, and of course that did a number on my lower GI. He seemed better in the morning, but I was a mess. Finally we did go out—we had to go back to Half-Price Books because the Blu-ray disk in my Jurassic World combo pack was actually a copy of Jurassic Park. There was a new Lidl two stores down and I went in and found eggs for James and some pork chops for dinner. We also had lunch at Panera, but that was a dead disappointment. I haven't been to Panera for a couple of years, and I don't know what the hell they've done to their chicken soup, but it's dreadful now: tastes like a can of Progresso!!! I ate half, enough to dispose of the nice big piece of French bread they gave me and some of the noodles, and James dipped his bread in it and ate the rest of the noodles, and we left some of the soup. Ugh.

Labels: books, food, health, movies, seasons, shopping, sickness, weather, writing

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 10:59:00 PM

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It was a quiet week, thankfully.

Spent most of the work week not doing much except the usual chores on Sunday and refining and revising my story. Thursday was the usual shopping day, and we filled it up with not only the usual Lidl/Publix/Kroger run, but we also went to Sam's Club because we were looking for their multipack of Dial soap. Alas, like Costco, they have abandoned having real soap to have endless supplies of moisturizing soaps. Apparently Dove has a corner on the warehouse market, to our extreme disgust. To make up for it, we stopped at Bernhard's bakery on the way home and bought Florentine cookies for me and a German chocolate cake square and a gingerbread cookie for James.

Friday we had a nice day: had lunch at Oy! (a breakfast/lunch place) with Alice, Ken, and Aubrey. They were all a-chatter with plans for their upcoming trip to Disney World. After we were done, James and I had to pick up meds at Kaiser, then went to do something fun: stopped at Barnes & Noble and then at Hobby Lobby.

Saturday James had his annual IPMS modeling contest and left the house not soon after breakfast. I had plans for the day and, after doing the vacuuming and unloading and loading the dishwasher, sat down to have a nice Vincent D'Onofrio film festival for the afternoon. I watched his half-hour drama "Five Minutes, Mr. Welles" (about Orson Welles' mercurial behavior while filming the classic film The Third Man), plus two films. Sherlock: A Case of Evil is a meh TV movie involving a younger Sherlock trying to recover his reputation after he supposedly kills Professor Moriarty, but then the dastardly professor "rises from the dead" and makes his reputation suspect. Then Moriarty kidnaps him and gets him hooked on drugs until he's rescued. Notable for an interesting take on Dr. Watson, but Sherlock himself is kinda dull, and the only lively scenes are D'Onofrio chewing scenery quite well as Moriarty, and the ending where the two have a swordfight in the tower where Big Ben is hung (ala Disney's Great Mouse Detective). Much better was a charming little rom-com from around 2000 called Happy Accidents. It's about twenty minutes too long, but Marisa Tomei is adorable as the girl who keeps picking loser boyfriends (to the point she's seeing a therapist about it) and D'Onofrio is delightfully goofy as a guy named Sam Deed that she meets who eventually confesses to her that he's from the future (2478, to be exact). You really don't know if Sam is just a kook or if the story he's telling is true until the very end.

I can see I'm going to have to check out Mystic Pizza, even though I'm not a big Julia Roberts fan.

Labels: friends, movies, shopping

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 10:30:00 PM

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Labels: birds, books, friends, health, shopping, writing

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 10:00:00 PM

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The rest of the week was not quite as solemn, and even a little fun. Thursday, of course, it was shopping, and then James had his six-months visit to the dermatologist. She froze off two little moles on his left earlobe, but otherwise gave him a clear bill of health. Unfortunately we should have popped in the pharmacy and picked up a new box of Ferrex. Now we're going to have to pop in at a Kaiser facility sometime in the two weeks he doesn't have an appointment just to get Ferrex. Bother. (Don't suggest online. Everyone is five dollars a box more than Kaiser.)

And Friday it finally happened! The first time in two years there has been a library book sale! Report is here. Later in the day we went to Kaiser's TownPark facility and got our COVID-19 booster.

On Saturday we spent the afternoon at Monsterama/Spycon, a combined horror/spy convention put together by Anthony Taylor and others. James and I are not big horror fans, so basically we were there for the conversation and the spy panels. We saw Louis Robinson for the first time in ages, and stopped to talk to local author Bobby Nash in the dealer's room. James bought one of his books, an old-fashioned pulp-type aviation adventure. Sue Phillips was also there, and when we took a break to get something to eat in the con suite (since the hotel restaurant didn't do any lunch specials like last time) we sat together and got to talk (although mostly eat since we were pretty hungry by that time!).

Our first panel was a little disappointing. It was supposed to be about spy cars in different movies and television, but we just talked about the Lotus Enspire (sp?) car used in a James Bond movie. The presenter had a Lotus car which he mocked up to look like the Lotus in the film, and also the "submarine" version of the car which he also owned. (He also has a killer Jaguar convertible, all three which were out front. I'm not into sports cars per se—the only car with a place in my heart is still Twilight—but the Jag looks like it would be fun to drive.)

We then went to a panel about doing research—which, of course I get off on, because doing research on something you're interested in is fun!—and did have to laugh about them talking about doing research on murders and making some really dicey records in their browsers!

Other panels were one about the music of spy music in films and television series. Again, much Bond orienting, but then the James Bond theme by now is iconic. And how you can't hear the Get Smart theme without thinking of that corridor with the doors! And how no one is writing great theme songs for television anymore because of the need to shove more commercials in, and lots and lots about the classic composers like Jerry Goldsmith, John Barry, Lalo Schifrin, and more. And one other panel that was a "spy fight" of television spies versus movie spies done like a Fantasy Football competition. Black Widow won eventually.

Our favorite panel was the spy trivia. I did well on some historical stuff, fictional stuff, and a couple of others, and started out well out of the gate, but James pulled ahead with more technical stuff. Also playing were two other guys, Kevin and Lee. We had a great time and the moderators, including a woman (Bernadette Johnson) who wrote a book of spy trivia, were absolutely great. I hope they do another panel like this next year; it's been years since we played trivia at Rockford's on Saturday nights, and I do miss it!* We all got prizes: James and I both chose the book, of course!

James said wistfully as we were leaving that that was what we had really missed: just talking to people with like interests. I really wish I'd checked the calendar when we made the vaccine appointments, or we could have come on Friday, too, but by the time we fought our way through traffic up to TownPark (it was hideous...you might have thought the entire city was being evacuated) and then gotten the shot itself (mine began hurting immediately), neither of us were in any shape to go anywhere. And of course we couldn't go tomorrow because James works. Maybe next year...


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* We'd get to trivia early and everyone would end up meeting at Media Play in the same shopping center. I remember when Jake and Nancy showed up with a Cyberhome DVD player and told us you could make it region-free. We had three of them eventually! We loved when Matt showed up because we had our movie expert for the night!

(Plus I have never had anything that was as good as Rockford's Asian salad—with grilled chicken strips in it—and haven't found an Asian salad dressing yet that was as good as theirs.)

On the drive home—Rockford's was way out past Stone Mountain—in summer, it was usually cool enough to ride with the windows down and we'd have the Sixties channel on SiriusXM playing Cousin Brucie...those were the days!

Labels: books, conventions, food, friends, health, shopping

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 10:24:00 PM

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Betty's funeral took place today. James got up and worked ninety minutes so there would be sure to be coverage in the early timeslot. We then left to go to the service at the West Cobb Funeral Home. This was held in the adjoining chapel, and a box of tissues was passed from pew to pew as it was a lovely service, and Betty's husband, John, and our friend Juanita especially made us cry as they spoke. Juanita was so overcome John went to stand behind her and put a hand on her shoulder to steady her.

Next followed the funeral procession. We had been lined up outside before we went in for the service, and now we proceeded north with a police escort. It was fascinating watching the different police cars do their work to keep the line together: the Cobb County Police doing the overall procession, but the different community police handing off as we rolled through different neighborhoods, Sandy Springs, Woodstock, Holly Springs. It was like watching sheepdogs work. One car would stop to hold traffic and the second would race ahead to the next spot where coverage would be needed, and the community police blocked exits so the procession would not be interrupted. Despite that, at least three people cut into the procession; two of them stayed in the procession for several miles. One of them even put on his flashers like he was part of it all! The third was the most blatant: the neighborhood police had blocked one of the entrances to the freeway and this dork in a big SUV went around the police car and tried to get into the procession! We could see the folks at the end of the procession blocking him from getting in, and then a police car herded him to the side of the road, then let him go on as we got past.

Betty, who was a military veteran (Air Force), had her ashes laid to rest in the Georgia National Cemetery in Canton. The cemetery is nestled in the middle of rolling hills and from the entrance you can see the North Georgia mountains in the distance. The first stop for our little procession, after an hour of driving, was at a restroom facility where we could all have a little relief and discuss the dork in the SUV. Then military honors were accorded to her at the little outdoor chapel area near the columbarium where her ashes would be stored. There was a beautiful flag ceremony that made most of us cry and then huddle around in groups to exchange hugs.

Finally a few of us went to Chili's for lunch. I can't say I'm anywhere more pleased with Chili's than on the last occasion that I was there, but at least the music was lower! I remember the last time we were at a Chili's the music was so loud we had to shout to be able to talk to whomever was next to us. But it was the only place Alice could find that would let us sit together, and that was really the most important part, being together.

We got home about four and James worked for the rest of the day until seven.

Labels: events, friends

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 9:52:00 PM

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It was a...well, rather buggy week. Literally. Both James and I had been seeing little roaches feet up periodically in the kitchen (and we were glad they were dead!), so it was providentially we had the quarterly extermination service in on Monday because when I went into the kitchen that morning there was yet another roach on its back, feebly waving its legs. Squish! You're dead!

Evidently one still was hiding out in the house because it ran skittering underneath my bedding on Friday morning, which definitely made me not want to sleep in any longer and instead wigged me out enough to make me change the bed on what was a very busy day already and a fat pain in the neck to juggle. I also gave the dog a bath on Tuesday and washed all his bedding, which made it a triple-threat week.

So, yeah, we did the usual route for Thursday grocery shopping: Lidl, Publix, and finally Kroger, but we did it all in an hour, and it was so nicely cool for a change that we ate a hasty lunch and then went out again: drove out to Trader Joe's as well, so we could stock up on fruit bars and also get some of their yummy orange chicken for supper. Glad to drive "through the back" up Lower Roswell Road and see trees starting to turn, even if just minimally! Goldenrod is everywhere.

Between the bedding tradeoff on Friday, we had a nice lunch at O'Charley's with Alice and Ken, Mel and Phyllis, and John Bouler, and then had to go see James' rheumatologist at Kaiser. He says James' right hand has developed "knots" in the tendons and has referred him to a hand specialist. So now he has that to look forward to. 😩

James spent the rest of Friday afternoon cooking while I wrestled with the bed, so that on Saturday we could run a couple of errands. I wanted to get more of a good type of LED light bulb I'd found at Home Depot, then we skipped to Hallmark to buy a special card and also found a Christmas gift for someone. Dipped in Barnes & Noble for a few minutes, and by then it was after two and James was starting to get a little light-headed from not yet eating lunch. So he stopped at Lidl and I ran in for a cookie for the bakery for him and some chicken that was thawed that we could have for supper. Instead I emerged with sweet Italian sausage and a big bag of grapes that we both enjoyed. Later James cooked something we'd found at Trader Joe's, butternut squash cut as crinkle fry shapes, in the air fryer. They were a little overdone, but still tasted delicious as a side with the sausage. If we do that again, James should knock them out of the park!

I'm happy for October to be here! Just wish it would get a little cooler. Looks like we are going to get a barrelful of rain next week.

Labels: events, food, friends, health, shopping

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 9:21:00 PM

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The autumn equinox arrived this week to great cheering by the folks here at Autumn Hollow. Now only if it would feel like autumn—although we did have to wear flannel shirts Thursday morning to drive with the windows down on the way to Costco. But by the time we got to Costco (ten minutes) it was too warm for them. (We were also windows down a couple of other times, one early morning, one nighttime return trip. But it's not enough!)

I have been attempting to go on my longer walks again after just surrendering due to the heat and my inability to get outside before 10:30 in the morning (blame needing sleep and that extra trip to the bathroom), and have come upon a large patch of "Scotch" thistles among the weeds that grow along Smyrna-Powder Springs Road (these combined with goldenrod, pin oak, timothy, Virginia creeper, honeysuckle, holly, and others). They were in great purple bloom a few weeks ago, attracting yellow swallowtail butterflies, silver spot skippers [a type of butterfly], and big fat bumblebees, but now they are starting to go to seed, and two days in a row, sans camera, I ran into a beautiful male goldfinch who let me get into six feet of him. Third time's the charm and I finally got a photo of him.

Went out to walk the dog Wednesday night and discovered abruptly that sometime today they changed out all the streetlights. I think they are those new lights that only aim at the street and don't glow upward, and so don't interfere with migrating birds. It's a weird effect; they make what they're shining on brighter, but the light doesn't extend as much, so our front yard is now darker. There's also a rather large dark area near the upper cul-de-sac because all the lights appear to have two light fixtures except the one on the cul-de-sac itself.

We hit Costco Thursday morning because Procter & Gamble was doing their "buy $100 worth of stuff, get a $25 gift card" thing again. Since we can easily spend that much buying Swiffer pads, Oral B toothbrushes, Metamucil, and Downy, we went for it, plus we needed "plastic cheese" (Kraft cheese slices) as James calls it, and both BreatheRights and generic Flonase were on sale...needed almonds for my oatmeal and mandarin orange cups as well. It is so nice when it's not broiling outside and we don't have to rush into one store, dump perishable items in a insulated bag with an icepack, rush to the next store, etc. We were able to drive to Publix in a leisurely fashion and finish most of the rest of the shopping (although I still had to go to Kroger on Saturday morning for milk, yogurt, and no-salt-added mushrooms).

Friday we did a little of everything: paid our property tax, picked up a gift, had lunch at Okinawa with all the Spiveys and John Bouler, drove down to Kaiser so James could have blood drawn for what the doctor says is a minor problem, and then went to Barnes & Noble. James bought a book and I didn't, which seems ironic, but I'd already gotten three in the mail this week: a used copy of Madeleine L'Engle short stories (The Moment of Tenderness), a used copy of Hal Borland's Book of Twelve Moons (nature essays), and the new Vanderbeekers novel.

We also bought a new gadget that is three plugs that are operated by one remote. Since I was depressingly unsuccessful in trying to set up a "smart home" system to turn on the lights through Amazon wifi plugs and Amazon Echo devices—two of the wifi plugs worked flawlessly for a month and then quit working; I contacted Amazon and they walked me through all sorts of remedies that didn't work for one and they finally told me to send the plug back for repair, but when I tried to set up a third plug I had bought, brand new out of the box, it wouldn't work either. They supposedly work on the 2.4GHz portion of the router, and I tried resetting the 2.4GHz, which reset perfectly and everything else that worked on them, like the Roku box and James' Kindle, worked perfectly. Then we ended up resetting the router anyway, and the plug still didn't work. We have to press a remote button instead of doing a voice command, but it works!

So Saturday I did the Kroger thing and James had to cook meat and breakfasts for the rest of the week, and we broke up the time with original Law & Order episodes on WE. I've become so besotted with Law & Order: Criminal Intent that I am reading fanfiction, most of it of the "shipping" sort, but I appreciate that the stories that I really have enjoyed have chosen to actually have a mystery plot among the romance. One story has Mike Logan down so pat I can hear Chris Noth doing the dialog. Unfortunately I think that was the one that got to part eighteen and then never was finished—and, darn, I wanted to know the solution to the mystery!

This week I also worked out a way to get all the videos I've saved on YouTube to show up in the YouTube app on Roku. I have so much saved that the idea of re-bookmarking them gave me the horrors. It's a great big dog's breakfast worth of stuff: old British black and white films, 1930s black and white films, the Old Indiana Jones segments they cut out of The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles DVD sets, an uncut version of the 1960s animated The Night Before Christmas with Olan Soulé as the voice of Professor Clement Moore, Lucy Worsley specials, Lassie episodes, and more.

Today I got all my weekly chores done and there was still time to go to Alice and Ken's house after James finished work to celebrate Aubrey's 28th birthday.

September 22 was the Autumnal Equinox! All hail Queen Autumn and her colorful court! (Now for cryin' out loud, do something about that big bully the Sun!)

Labels: birds, events, exercise, food, friends, plants, reading, seasons, shopping, television

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Labels: books, conventions, death, DragonCon, excursions, friends, health, illness, television

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