Wednesday, December 30

We were up at 6:30 this morning, so I could get ready to take Mother to her ophthalmologist appointment at 8 a.m.

Weather predictions last night were for possible light snow or sleet this morning, but fortunately nothing much happened. At the clinic, a decorated Christmas tree stood in front of a picture window, and shortly after Mother and I were seated in the waiting room, we looked out the window and saw snowflakes drifting down...very "Christmasy" on this fifth day after the big day.

A few minutes after 8 a.m., all the patients who'd had surgery yesterday were marched to exam rooms in the back. Mother's exam went smoothly, and we were out of the clinic around 8:30.

It spit slush on the way home...something between snow and sleet that turned into rain. Otherwise, the weather was winter-nippy, but not too bad, since there was no wind.

Mother went to work on a new jigsaw puzzle when we got home, and Hubbie and I ran errands...to a grocery store to get on-sale grapefruit (yuk, I don't like this fruit, but Hubbie and Mother do), potatoes, and sour cream to make more fruit salad. From there, we went to the bank, to the appliance store to pick up our upstairs TV, to the cable TV office to order another DVR for upstairs, and to the WDCS.

At the cable TV office, we were told that we would either have to take the DVR home and install it ourselves, or pay an installation fee to have someone come do it. Well, we protested, since the old cable box isn't working. It began giving us problems a couple of weeks ago, and then today, when we hooked the TV up, we found the cable box doesn't work at all anymore. It's our understanding that the cable company is responsible for maintaining or replacing non-working boxes, sans charge. So we'll see what happens.

It's been one thing after another with the upstairs TV...first it was thought that the problem with the unit was the remote control, and it took forever to get a new one, and then when that didn't help, the tech decided it was the TV's sensor. Today, after waiting forever for the new sensor to come in, he repaired the TV. And now it's the cable box.

We're glad, though, that the TV is still under warranty, because otherwise it would have cost us $147.99 in repair charges! Or else we would have ditched it for a new one.

We went to the WDCS to pick up a few groceries for when Niece and her family visit on Friday. Great-Niece emailed yesterday to see if we would be home for New Years, and of course, we will. We don't know if they will be here in time for lunch, or won't be here until after lunch to join us for dessert. And we don't know if they can stay for supper. So now we are prepared for however much time they can spend with us.

Back home, Hubbie and I made another batch of fruited popcorn, because he wanted a batch that tasted less like molasses and more like caramel. Then he popped two more batches of popcorn to bake in the oven for 15 minutes. He claims that baking popcorn crisps it, while simply air popping it makes some of the kernels taste like cardboard. I hadn't noticed that, but I'll take his word for it.

Later, he heated the popcorn again before we settled in to watch our favorite college basketball team play to a loss. Phooey. With the popcorn, we had glasses of fresh squeezed orange juice with pulp. This afternoon, I'd juiced a bag of oranges, because we found them too tough, membranous, and stringy to peel and eat in sections. The pulpy juice was sweet and good, though. Mother took the orange peel halves home to scrape for making zest.

For supper tonight, Mother boiled wheat rotini pasta to add to leftover chili. The chili, stored in the freezer, was leftover from last week. It came in handy tonight, when we didn't feel like cooking from scratch. We had the chili-mac with slaw and cottage cheese.