The week began in an ordinary manner (thank goodness!).

Alas, the shorts we had bought at BJs last week, although they were the correct size for James, did not fit. So today we went up to Books-a-Million (they have canned the J. Muggs café, which is sad, because they had the best frozen hot chocolate) and put the magazines (a lot smaller space) in its place. We figured that since we try to get up here once a month it would be worth getting a membership again, especially since Barnes & Noble has jacked up their membership price so you can get such "goodies" as a crappy book bag each year and discounts in their café, which we almost never use. So we got a discount on today's books as well as a $10 gift card to use in the next 30 days. With the refund for the shorts, we got more maple syrup, some nice round steaks, and a wedge of smoked Gouda cheese.

Friday we went to JoAnn to use some good coupons, and when we stopped at Walmart, I finally kept a resolution: I bought new nightshirts. I have been wearing the same nightshirts since we moved into this house; they were still intact, but very faded and rumpled. So I got one with rainbows on it and one that has sleep words ("dream," "snooze," etc.).

Saturday I had a frustrating but ultimately rewarding afternoon rearranging the electronics under the TV now that the Dish Hopper is gone. The Roku is now on HDMI port 1, our aged (we've only had one; I think this one is about fifteen years old) Blu-Ray player on port 2, the VCR/DVD recorder and the Chromecast on a switch port on HDMI 3, and the cheapo region-free DVD player on 4. Plus I made gravy. We got four servings with pork, and then just some plain sauce to mix with ground beef or turkey for another meal.

Sunday I finally cleared out my "shorts and pajamas" drawer, and that's a relief. Threw a few tank tops away, found out I had a brand-new pair of blue shorts I should have been wearing. So...gain.

Labels: books, clothes, crafts, electronics, shopping, television

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 11:17:00 PM

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Seems I can't go anywhere anymore without a case of "traveler's complaint." Was awakened early with a rotten occurence and couldn't get back to sleep, so just continued reading On Her Majesty's Frightfully Secret Service as I hung out in the bathroom. So I spent most of the day in a sleep-deprived haze on top of a late night and it being the final day of Atomicon. Luckily I'd started corralling items last night, so I did manage to be dressed before I woke James up and we had pretty much everything together by the time we left for breakfast. Unlike the first two nights we were here when the morning temps were in the 30s, this morning it was in the high forties, presaging the summery weather later on.

The conference room was quite alive when we arrived, although people were in various states of wakefulness. Some folks had gone to Hofer's Bakery for breakfast; the rest of us dug into the hotel buffet with gusto. I just had cereal, oatmeal, and toast with a glass of milk; even if I liked eggs and sausage it was beyond my digestion at that point. Then people began to trickle away home: Alice and Ken, Debbie Medina and her best friend Debbie, Juanita and David, Jerry. We did a slow Southern goodbye that turned unintentionally hilarious when I was trying to wheel out both suitcases at a time and one kept tipping over, and then I nearly tipped over a chair myself. At that point Terry, Aubrey, Kristine, and Damian helped us out with the stuff, with James trailing behind in his power chair. They were sweet and helped us load the back of the pickup, and then went off to Wendell's restaurant in search of lunch.

We took some more time getting everything settled, James used the bathroom one last time, and finally we loaded the power chair, then, due to a big truck attempting to turn into the driveway of the hotel, had to turn right instead of left and went around the back instead of via the main street. As we approached Wendell's, I suggested we stop and join them for lunch and then go on. So we did, only to find the place packed. This is a very popular local place and it looked like everyone was already lined up outside the door. We went inside and could not see them, so I walked up and down the strip shopping center and found Shannon extracting some items from her trunk. She said the wait was very long, so she was getting some games to hold them over. I found everyone in the back room and apparently they'd already been waiting 45 minutes and someone at the table next to them had been waiting an hour! So we just went on, enjoying the blossoming trees and the farms—one place had two tiny brown ponies!—and the antique stores, until we were finally out of the country and back on the highway

When we reached Dawsonville, we stopped at the North Georgia Premium Outlets. I simply had to have new underwear and socks. We were supposed to stop last year, but were too exhausted after the dialysis excursion and the emergency room visit, and then we were supposed to stop when we went up the August before that for the eclipse. James was already tired, and I was still hurting and didn't really want to stop, plus the temps were now up into the 70s and I was really, really regretting not bringing my broad-brimmed hat, so I just trudged to the Hanes place and bought three 6-packs of underwear and of socks, and two pairs of lounging pants for James. Then we went on.

Waze gave us what was supposed to be a shorter route to the vet's office. Not sure if it was shorter, but it was different than the ravening hordes of GA400 racing southward at breakneck speeds. We stopped at a Bojangles to get James a sandwich, but I just had a doughnut next door from Dunkin; tummy was still too upset. We discovered downtown Cumming (which looks a lot like downtown Roswell), and also went through Johns Creek, which appears to be one big shopping center! Eventually, we ended up driving past Jones Bridge Park, where PGO used to have our work picnics before they decided to change them to (ugh!) May and a different place.

Tucker was brought out first, all freshly bathed with nicely trimmed claws, and jumped on me, then tried to make for the doors. I'd asked Snowy be brought out in his carry box, and when he emerged I saw with some bemusement that his tail was gone. Looked like he gave the vet or the tech the slip and they tried to catch him, only to pull off his tail feathers. I did that once with Bandit.

So we arrived home sometime after four, only to discover a big box on the front porch. Damn. Wonder how long that sat there. It was from Vine (it's a new chair; hope it works!) and was sent FedEx instead of through the mail, which I stopped until tomorrow. James scraped up some chili and I had the rest of the rice in some soup, and we spent most of the night drowsily staring at the idiot box. Found two episodes of M*A*S*H I hadn't seen in ages ("The Price of Tomato Juice" and "Dear Ma"), and, of course these days, Perry Mason. We are back to the 50's ones again and much different from the later ones. Lots of smoking and much antagonism between Lieutenant Tragg and Mason.

And so endeth another Atomicon. 

Labels: birds, clothes, dogs, food, friends, pets, television, travel

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 9:54:00 PM

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Ah, sleep, which knits the raveled sleeve...and all that. But I did sleep in this morning, since I'd be puttering around until the exterminator showed up. So finally about 10:30 Willow needed to go out, so I took her. As she sniffed about, I noticed once again that the tall bushes—nandina, Cindy called it—on either side of St. Francis were overgrown and he was disappearing between the stalks. So I opened the garage and got the pruners, and cut the tops off branch by branch while Willow finished her p-mail. Of course once the nandina was trimmed the darn hedge of bushes—leaves are reddish, and they have pink stringy blooms that look like miniature mimosa flowers; I think it's called a firecracker bush—was now just too tall, so I dragged the hedge clippers and the extension cord out and trimmed it down. Bad time of year for it, but I didn't get a chance in February.

The exterminator arrived while I was doing this, so I was able to open up the garage so he could treat for spiders. Once he left I could finally start on my errands. Originally I had to go to Kroger to drop off my prescriptions and then to the bank and then hopefully back to Kroger. Well, the doctor had called and said after seeing the results of my blood tests he wanted to change the dosage on two of my meds. So I had to go past Kaiser to pick up the prescriptions and put one of them in to be refilled.

First I had to track them down. They weren't entered in the pharmacy, so I had to go upstairs to adult medicine. The nurse found them, but they were written for 30 with two refills instead of 90 with three refills. Okay, I get it. He's going to play with the dosage and wants me back in 90 days for another blood test. But I don't want three 30-day meds. I want one 90-day. I had the hardest time making the nurse understand, and she never did. Anyway, the pharmacy gave me 90 of the one I had to have filled downstairs, and told me Kroger would probably do the same thing.

No, Kroger told me. They couldn't give me 90 unless the doctor wrote 90. (See, I told you!) However, they could give me all three 30s at once, but it would cost $4 x 3 instead of one 90 day at $10. Pfft!

I didn't get to the bank until 2:30! Thankfully, that was easy: I just had a CD that just expired, and I just wanted to pull the money and put it into savings since it was earning a pissant .05 interest. I talked to a financial advisor for a few minutes about preparations to make going toward retirement, and then, close to three o'clock, finally got home to eat lunch!

Anyway, today I had decided to wear two new things: a dark shirt that said "Bibliovore" on it that James bought me, and my new pair of black "scrubs" that I found at Dollar General. The scrubs usually come in colors like turquoise and gas-flame blue, both which I have, and I'd stupidly worn the latter outside while I was chopping away at the bushes, so they were dirty around the hems, so I put the black ones on, since it was already hot and rising into the 1990s. Scrubs are nice and light to wear at this time of year. At the bank I noticed that my hands looked all dirty. For a second I attributed this to having messed with the bushes, but I had scrubbed my hands before I changed clothes. It was terrible; there was a purple-black through all the little fissures of my fingers and my nails looked grubby. So when I came home I scrubbed and scrubbed my hands and they still stayed dirty.

Well, I realized, it was the new shirt! It was such a dark grey, but it had a purplish cast, and I figured the color ran when I started to perspire. Quite aggravating...maybe some people don't mind going around with grubby fingers, but I certainly didn't want to.

We had supper at Howard's Delicatessen tonight. The food was fine. Nothing spectacular, but not bad. We both had the open-faced roast beef sandwich. Not real roast beef, but not slimy deli meat, either. James had the mashed potatoes with his, but I settled for beef, bread and gravy, with a side of sliced tomatoes. We decided to have dessert; the French silk pie is good, but the cream on top was too sweet; about halfway through I just scraped it off and ate chocolate and crust.

We had JoAnn coupons, so went there after supper. This was a 25 percent off everything, even sale items, so we tried to gather up them. Slim pickings, but we did get a gift, and I also bought some coloring books to go along with the crayons I bought at Publix today. All the back-to-school things are on sale, and I found boxes of crayons for fifty cents. I plan to pair them with the coloring books as something to put in the Toys for Tots barrel at Christmas.

Came home through the park and got stuck in traffic in downtown Marietta due to a combination of it being the monthly Friday "art walk" and an accident at a railroad crossing (there is a car with no front end anymore). It was only when we were home and changing clothes that I found out the real truth: it was the pants that were the culprit for the mess on my hands. My socks were all blackish-purple around the ankle, and my legs from thigh down to the top of the socks had a purple cast! I had to walk into the shower and scrub off my legs before I could change. Too strange!

(Incidentally, I wanted to call this entry "Dyed in the Twill"...but they aren't. Heh.)

Labels: annoyances, chores, clothes, errands, food, shopping

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 11:12:00 PM

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So after we both finished work tonight, we decided to try out Zoë's Kitchen, the new Mediterranean restaurant near Bed, Bath & Beyond. We both had steak wraps (only James had cheese with his), which were good if a trifle peppery for my taste, but then one grain of pepper is one too much for me! It came with a yogurt-like dipping sauce that cut the pepper, which I appreciated. The side dish, rice pilaf, was quite good as well. We'll be back.

James had a $75 gift certificate to Men's Wearhouse that expires on Sunday, so we went across the street to see if we could find something. He bought a nice green shirt, a shade between sage green and mint green, to wear to his sister's wedding. The computers died when he went to check out and it seems like it took us forever to get out of there. Sometimes I miss manual cash registers!

I also have a coupon, to Lane Bryant/Catherine's, and wanted to check out if they had anything nice in my size for the wedding, so we nipped over to Cumberland Mall, only to find the Lane Bryant there is closed, replaced by some big clothing store called XXI. Again, mostly stuff for younger folks.

There's a Payless shoe store on that level, and, just on a whim, I wandered in. Shoe shopping is always such an ordeal for me, and I didn't have the correct socks on, but this was a strong whim. First I had to search for shoes my size, which were hidden next to the kids' sizes! I looked at slipper-type shoes, but I didn't like at all how they fit, and oh, how they hurt! Don't they make shoes with arch supports anymore? Plus they had awful, hard shoes with that dreadful thong that goes between your big toe and the next one. Ugh. I've hated those since I was a kid; they'd always make big blisters between my toes. They also had one pair of traditional pumps that looked like they were right out of an episode of Mad Men. Didn't want those, either.

But in with the 6 1/2s I found a wedge-heel type shoe with a criss-cross type front that was a stretch elastic under a patent leather (well, plastic these days) strap. I tried them on, and...well, they weren't half bad, but were too big, even with my bulky white socks. So I found some in a 6, and those fit even better. I think when I have the proper socks on, they will be fine. I wouldn't want to wear them all day, and I'm going to have to walk carefully because they are strapless in the back, but I think I can manage through the few hours of a wedding party.

And then, because they were having a buy-one, get-another-item-half-off sale, I looked around and found a cute little silver purse on a long chain. It will be fine for me to put my phone and my wallet in for the wedding.

And this took less than twenty minutes. I was not only aghast, I was agog.

So if last night you saw the ghost of an older woman walking around looking astonished, don't worry, because it was only my mom wandering around in shock from my voluntarily buying shoes without whining.

We walked the length of the mall, too, and bought a pretty wedding card (and I had a Hallmark coupon to do it with!).

But...wow. Shoes. Wonders will never cease.

Labels: clothes, food, shopping

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 11:01:00 PM

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Yeah, I know. Yuck. Spring has finally arrived. It went up to the high 70s on Saturday, but it was saved by a nice breeze. Slightly cooler today and clouds keeping the glare from our eyes. The Bradford pear trees have seemingly exploded in blooms overnight and form huge snowballs on their stocky trunks.

Anyway, my compressed Friday off was a great relief, as I have been exhausted by all the changes at work. I slept in until nine and would certainly have gone longer had I not wanted to fritter a day off sleeping. Believe me, I was tempted, as I am awakened by creaking knees and hurting hips several times a night.

I spent the day cleaning house and dubbing off a couple of things on the DVR that I'd recorded for James, Toward the Unknown (with William Holden, the story of a disgraced Air Force pilot who was "broken" by the Koreans and now no one thinks he can be trusted, so when he claims there is a structural problem in a new plane, no one believes him) and Thunder Birds, a World War II film with Preston Foster. I discovered that when I record standard ratio films (4:3) off TCM, I need to record off the standard def channel, not the high def one, as the pictures are small when recorded through the DVD recorder (which isn't high def). If he wants a decent copy of Toward the Unknown (lots of military jets), he's going to have to buy it from TCM's shop. I finally vacuumed those damn stairs, cleaned the bathrooms a bit, swept the kitchen, put a bunch of stuff away, and listened to the Cadfael story Monk's Hood on BBC Radio 4, and felt aggravated that I didn't get more done. There's a boxful of books downstairs that needs to be shelved, at least!

James was home a little early after having a doctor's appointment, so we went to Red Lobster since we could make it just in time to order lunch. Never figured out why I can get scallops easily at lunch and for supper it's like pulling teeth. We also stopped at Michael's with a coupon, dropped in at Dollar Tree (stocked up on more Pears' soap), and finally treated ourselves to ice cream at Bruster's.

Oh, yeah, and I gave Willow a bath. She behaved pretty well and didn't squirm as much as usual. It's just hard on my knees and my back to lean over the tub, especially when I'm pretty much rooted to one spot due to the toilet being so close. But she's clean now for Sunday, which is her fifteenth birthday.*

Saturday was the Farmer's Market, and a nice day for it; we had to abandon our jackets by the time we got downtown. We bought cucumbers, tomatoes, a pot roast pot pie for Sunday, and goat cheese. When I got to the Big Daddy dog biscuit booth, I decided to try their new gluten-free cookie, made with garbanzo beans and flavored with several things including banana and cinnamon. When I told the proprietor that Willow was going to be fifteen, she tossed in a big shamrock-shaped dog biscuit for free!

We also did the shopping at Kroger after having breakfast at Chick-Fil-A (yay, oatmeal!). They were waxing the concrete part of the floor and the person doing the waxing had not finished, leaving big glops of brown-stained wax all over the floor. By the time we were picking up our last items, the smell of the stuff was making me queasy, so was very glad to check out and go home. Wish they would have done it earlier, when fewer people were in the store.

James headed off for his club meeting in the afternoon, and I had intended to at least go get gasoline, plus go to the bank to see if my new debit card worked (I accidentally used the old one before going to the Farmer's Market and was soundly told "Card has expired!"). But I ended up doing more chores, including vacuuming the bedrooms, plus working on a wallpaper for James' e-reader. Soon he'd arrived home and we were headed out for a treat: dinner at the Colonnade and then a night out at the Atlanta Radio Theatre Company's performance of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.

The Colonnade was crowded as always, but we had an efficient waiter and were served promptly. I had the turkey as always, but James decided to have the short ribs, a favorite of some of our friends. Alas, the cook was a bit off tonight and James finally asked the waiter to take it away, as it was overcooked in some parts and greasy. Instead he had the turkey, which sat much better.

We arrived at the Academy Theatre early enough to have a nice chat with Daniel and Clair, both who have had colds, and John Campbell, before it was time for the performance. The opening play was Visions of Vampires, a production we had seen the end of during our Sunday at AnachroCon. James was iffy on it, but I enjoyed it, including the running gag about watercolors vs. oils. The part of the play in which a spirit spoke through a living man was quite scary; I saw a few people get up and leave.

20,000 Leagues was excellent! They solved the problem of this being an all-male story by making Professor Arronax's assistant Conseil his niece, Christine, and also cast a woman as the navigator of the Nautilus. David Benedict captured Captain Nemo's suppressed rage well, and Ned Land was just a big, brusque Canadian rather than an over-the-top Kirk Douglas type. (I did joke to Daniel Kiernan that I missed him singing "Whale of a Tale" and he replied with a straight face that the sea lion never showed up—if you've seen the impressive Disney version of this tale, you'll understand.) 20,000 Leagues has a good deal of exposition and scientific theory, and the script balanced this and the human drama well.

[Left to right: Daniel S. Taylor, Clair Kiernan, Daniel Kiernan, Ron Zukowski,  Dave Schroeder]


Afterwards there was a cake served out in the lobby area, an extraordinary piece of work. The main cake part was made to look like a book, and the top had the squid and the nose of the Nautilus bursting from it with a neat effect, the "cover" curled back with pages of print showing! Both squid and Nautilus were edible.



An uneventful ride home and then on chat for about an hour; by the time one o'clock came I was wiped and could have easily fallen into bed without a shower.

This morning came too early, but breakfast was leisurely. We finally headed out about 11:30 to BJ's for a stock-up trip, as we needed Chex, Mandarin oranges, AAA batteries, and Lysol, and also had some good coupons. I squeaked when I saw the final bill, but really, we didn't buy anything we didn't need, plus I found two pairs of Gloria Vanderbilt "Amanda" jeans in my size and length, a nice cafe au lait color as well as in a dark chocolate brown. They had special "spring" colors, too, in eye-popping pink, yellow, and polka dot, but I avoided those. Sadly, they didn't have the pretty grey ones in my size.

We came home by Publix intending just to get money (the new debit card did work), but found several twofers, including cut watermelon, that notched the bill up a bit. I'm very relieved this weekend is over from a spending point of view, especially after needing to buy gasoline as well! (We took Willow with us as a treat, but she only looked anxious. I suppose I can't blame her, as mostly when she goes for a ride in the car she's either going to the vet or on vacation, neither which she likes!)

I figured it was time to do the taxes. I usually do them right after I get both W-2s, but James's never showed up because his company has taken on a new billing service. We discovered why when they gave him a new printout of it: they had our old address on it! Honestly, we have been here seven years! What old records did they get into? I also decided after last year that I was not going to pay for a TurboTax CD anymore. There is no way our deductions, even with the mortgage payments, are adding up to give us a higher total than the standard deduction for a married couple, and it's just not worth the trouble. I just had to decide on which website I wanted to do the tax return; ended up going to TurboTax because they would file both Federal and State. Still had to pay for the State, of course, but it was less than the price of the TurboTax software, even at one of the buying clubs with a coupon! It took about an hour and at the end of it James had supper finished (the pot-roast pot pie and a salad) and we could go on to happier things, watching the final part of the "dollar house" reconstruction we'd started over the weekend on Rehab Addict, a great episode of one of my favorites, Flipping Boston (Peter and Dave redo a house—in the midst of a seemingly endless series of snowstorms—for a friend who lost a leg in a car accident), and finally Lab-mix, Ibizian hound, and the cutest Pomeranian puppies ever on Too Cute.

Willow had wet dog food for her birthday dinner and then was allowed to lick out the bowl the watermelon pieces were in, and then for dessert was given that huge shamrock cookie. She tried valiantly, but couldn't finish it. Ah, well, there's always tomorrow. (Schuyler glared at her so when she saw Willow with the cookie that I gave her a sprig of millet!)




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* We actually don't know when Willow was whelped. We got her on the last week of May, and they told us she was ten weeks old, so I counted back to a date I could remember. :-)  Schuyler has the same deal: she was just a new baby when I bought her on the Friday of Memorial Day weekend, so I counted back a month and picked out another date I could remember (April 23, St. George's Day and Shakespeare's birthday).

Labels: birds, birthday, chores, clothes, dogs, excursions, food, friends, movies, pets, radio drama, shopping, taxes, television

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 10:43:00 PM

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