Friday, March 11

When I came downstairs around 7:30 this morning, I was greeted by the awful television news that an 8.9 magnitude earthquake, creating a massive tsunami, had hit Japan. Naturally, we spent quite a bit of time today following continuing news reports.

I was late getting around to it, but I finally did a treadmill session and resistance exercises after breakfast. Mother came over mid-morning and worked on her jigsaw puzzle.

Once I was ready for the day, Hubbie and I took a stack of area rugs to a laundromat to be washed...I don't like washing them in my home machine. A couple of miles from home, Hubbie remembered that we forgot to bring detergent, so we turned around and came back to fetch it.

We noticed going, coming back, and going again that four police cars, lights flashing, were pulled alongside the road, with several officers investigating a truck, the bed of which contained scrap metal. A man, in handcuffs, was being led to one of the police cars. A woman stood by the truck with her head down on her arms.

Once we got the area rugs started washing at the laundromat, we drove out to the hydroponic farm to buy some tomatoes. I learned from the farm's social network page that tomatoes were available today, but I called this morning just to make sure, because they sell out pretty quickly.

When we arrived, we saw that the house next door to the farm had burned. I inquired about it, and the woman in the farm store said that it happened about a week ago. An older woman and her three-year-old grandchild were injured, but not seriously, in the fire. The house, though, was totally destroyed, leaving only a black shell.

I bought a half dozen beef steak tomatoes, one of which I sliced for BLT sandwiches at lunch.

Then we returned to the laundromat, a business that is located next door to a florist, which is conveniently located next door to a store-front funeral home. Until recently, the funeral home so prided itself on its attractive caskets that it had an open one displayed in the large front window.

Anyhow, we needed to wait only four minutes for the washing machine to stop, and then we were on our way back home.

We didn't accomplish much after lunch. Mother continued her jigsaw puzzle, Hubbie watched a basketball game on TV, and I read a magazine that had been included with my tomatoes. The magazine had a couple of cute articles...one about a woman's adventure trying to crack black walnuts, and one about heritage cookbooks.

Around 4 p.m., I took the chocolate scones, that I'd sliced into bite-sized portions, to the art gallery.

Earlier, Mother had fixed a pot of veggie soup, using leftover veggies that we'd saved in the freezer from various meals. She added the veggies to a base of browned beef, carrots, onions, and celery cooked in a combination of beef and chicken broth, a can of diced tomatoes, and lots of spices, including garlic. Just before supper, I made a batch of bran muffins to go with the soup. It was a yummy supper.

Afterward, Mother went home, and Hubbie and went downtown to the art gallery, where a water color artist demonstrated his techniques. Only about ten people showed up for the event. Neither Hubbie nor I are artists, but we felt we should be supportive.

The artist is very skilled, and I love his work. Both Hubbie and I were intrigued by a particular work of his, done in Italy. It's so precise that I felt I could have just walked right into it. Most watercolors I've seen don't show this kind of precision. I learned during the evening that the artist was an engineer before he retired, and he is a very exacting, detail-oriented person.

One of this artist's works is featured both on the cover of this year's film festival magazine, and on our county's monthly slick magazine.

We were back home around 7 p.m., when we watched the 1992, R-rated movie, "Final Analysis," starring Richard Gere, Kim Basinger, and Eric Roberts. A psychiatrist (Gere) gets involved with a woman (Basinger), who supposedly becomes pathologically intoxicated drinking the smallest amount of alcohol, which renders her violent. She and her equally disturbed sister entangle the psychiatrist in murder.