Thursday, April 15

Happy Income Tax day! Hope everyone gets their forms in the mail before midnight. We filed early, so it's out of our hair, thank goodness.

The "Tea Party" groups were out in force today. Recently, on the parking lot of the college where I go for water aerobics, I noticed a bright yellow truck with shell. On the windows of one side of the shell, the truck owner painted this political view..."Gun control: hold it with both hands." On the back of the shell..."USSA: United Socialist States of America." And on the other side of the shell: "Call for an Article V Convention."

Interesting.

We slept until around 7:30 this morning, and then I did a treadmill session after breakfast. While I was doing that, Hubbie took several broken appliances, like a microwave oven, coffee pots, etc., to a recycling center.

Once I was ready for the day, I tested photographic chemicals by using a pinhole camera to expose a piece of photographic paper. I was hoping for sunshine for this exercise...last night, TV forecasters had predicted sun all day today. But during the morning news, a forecaster noted that it was sunny everywhere in the state except for one county...guess which county.

Oh well, it took a little longer, but I still got results. The chemicals work, though they are past their expiration dates. Hopefully, I can get through next week with what I have on hand without the chemicals getting completely exhausted, and then can get fresh chemicals for my next residency in July.

This afternoon, three of us...Mother, another member of our scrapbook club, and I went to the Extension Service office conference room for our meeting. The other member was about 30 minutes late arriving, but when she did, she brought a basket of rubber stamps (at my request). I spent most of my time using the stamps to make several cardstock pages of various motifs and greetings to use in making cards for Caring Hands Hospice. Mother and I also completed a few scrapbook pages, so it was a productive meeting.

We were back home around 3:30. Mother went home after that, and later Hubbie and I went to a steakhouse for supper. I had a combo platter of chicken and ribs, with sweet potato, and Hubbie had a combo plate of steak and broiled shrimp, with baked potato. I brought the ribs, half the chicken, and half the sweet potato home. We ate the rolls, but our sweet waiter brought us a take-home box of four more to go with the leftovers. So we'll have all of this tomorrow night with salmon fillet.

In an adjoining booth at the restaurant, there were a couple of young women and two children. The little boy, about two years old, kept squealing. We were grateful when they left. At the other adjoining booth, the waiter, in an act of flirtation, fashioned lots of lemon slices into a flower-like decoration, which he placed atop a pretty young woman's glass of water. I'm sure the restaurant manager would love to see this kind of waste.

Spent the rest of the evening watching TV, including "Mozart and the Whale," a 2005 PG-13 love story movie, starring Josh Hartnett and Rahda Mitchell, about two people with autism, both savants, whose dysfunctions get in the way of their romance.