After we saw the total eclipse in 2017, both our minds turned toward this year's event. Since Evansville, Indiana, would be in the path of totality, and was just a short drive over the Ohio River from Owensboro, Kentucky, where we stayed in 2008 to see the Remember WENN play (and met Jen Payne!), we had toyed with the idea of staying in Owensboro—and hopefully being able to eat at that terrific barbecue buffet again if it was still in business!—then driving over the border early in the morning to see totality.

Unfortunately, the last seven years have been...well, a fat bitch. A TURP, four hospital stays in 2022, UTIs and falls...James was in poor shape physically and mentally I wasn't a barrel of laughs. So we made no plans. And watching ABC's "Eclipse Across America" segment later in the week was depressing as well as thrilling. But, can't be helped. Instead on Monday we watched what Atlanta had of a partial eclipse (about 85 percent) from our driveway. It never got dark, or dusky, but the light, to me, had this silvery cast, and the temperature did noticeably drop and the wind picked up.

My favorite part of the eclipse was past peak: about ten minutes after what we got of totality, the mail lady came by. She said "Can I see? Can I see?" and I said yes and she stopped the mail truck in the middle of the street, jumped out, and I let her use my glasses!

Kept busy this week: Tuesday I shelved books in the library, returned all the fannish things I dragged out of the closet looking for the eclipse glasses to the closet and concatenated all our vacation souvenirs in one drawer in the spare room (where I found the eclipse glasses).

Wednesday James had a stellar workout at PT, and then we went to Barnes & Noble, which I suppose was a bad idea because I bought two books (but...they were history books and one was half off...) and the SVU magazine.

A victory on Thursdays: no more followup trips to the dermatologist! James' nose is now well enough to take the daily Band-Aid off. We also had an appointment with the sleep doctor—he's gonna see if he can get James a new C-PAP unit, but James will probably still need the sleep study first—which I had to leave early because I had my checkup scheduled for late this afternoon. As usual Dr. Mobley was over an hour late; thank goodness I had someone to chat with (thanks, Vanessa!) since James was stuck out in the waiting room.

Friday we went out to the Costco David (therapist) recommended to us, out where Macland Road intersects with Charles Hardy Parkway (which turns out to be the other end of Dallas Highway; it changes name when you hit the Paulding County line). In fact, we went through Dallas Highway and stopped at their Walmart first—nicely kept, but their sugar-free candy assortment isn't much; we did find more mushroom-flavored rice sides (but, horrors, they're on clearance! mushroom rice goes with everything). The Costco was not quite so empty as David described, but we walked around and picked up a couple of things.

Even though I do not "redd up" the house in summer, I did get some lawn decorations this week. There's nothing like neighbors having cookie-cutter bland front yards to inspire you to put up more decorations. I got a butterfly, bird, and blue flower, a rainbow pinwheel, and a tiny bunny to go between two mushrooms (do those garden decorators actually know what those fly agaric mushrooms are? LOL). I put them up on Sunday and trimmed the nandina, which was starting to look like it stuck a root in an electrical socket.

Labels: books, chores, decorations, events, food, health, magazines, nature, science, shopping

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