Tuesday, August 23

Up at 6:30, but skipped my exercises in order to get ready to go to another town to shop and have lunch with Hubbie's sisters and nieces.

Along the route to the other town there are many fields of soy beans and rice. Today, crop dusters skimmed the fields, spraying the crops. One of them, flying dangerously low, seemed destined to plow right into our van before it rose up over the power lines at the last second. Crop dusting, to me, seems like a death-defying job.

We arrived twenty minutes before the bicycle shop was open, so we drove around awhile, until the store opened. It didn't take long to choose a bicycle for me, but the appropriate size for me was not on the showroom floor. But we were assured that one could be assembled in the next day or so. We hastened to let the employee know that we lived in a town about two hours away, and it wasn't easy to make a trip over there every couple of days. So the employee agreed to assemble the bike today by around 4 p.m.

Since there was plenty of time before lunch, we stopped by a hobby store, where I bought card stock, glues, stickers, and a punch.

I spent quite a while browsing the store, and one thing I noticed was that the Christmas trees and decorations are already on display. It's too soon to think about Christmas.

So I thought about Christmas. We need a new nativity set (one of the cats broke two of them last year), so I browsed the available ones. There were a lot of very nice ones, but all were a bit pricey. So we decided to wait until they go on sale.

By the time I finished shopping at this store, it was time to go to an Italian restaurant to have lunch with Hubbie's family. Until we saw her in a little tiara that declared her a "Birthday Girl," we had forgotten that today is Great-Niece's eighteenth birthday. We didn't come prepared with a card, but I happened to have a couple of discount cards from an intimate apparel shop...one for a free item, and another for $10 off another item. So I gave these to her, and she seemed to appreciate them.

For lunch, Hubbie and I had soup, salad, and bread sticks. Others chose pasta dishes, but since we knew we'd be having leftover lasagna for supper, soup was a better choice for us.

After a very nice visit with Hubbie's family, we continued our shopping...at one of the stores that has a sale every weekend, where I found nothing I wanted, and at club warehouse, where we picked up grocery items for ourselves, Mother, and Sis.

From there, we went to the mall, but just as we were inside the door of a bookstore, the employee from the bicycle shop called to say my bike was ready. So we took one turn around the bookstore, where I found nothing I wanted, and then headed to the bicycle shop.

The bicycle I chose is a pink 7-speed with wide tires and a wide seat. The only choice of colors were pink or black, and I didn't want black. Before we paid for the bike, I tried sitting on it. It was obvious the seat needed to be lowered, so the employee cut off a portion of the pipe the seat is mounted on, but it still wasn't low enough, so he cut another hunk off it. Now it's low enough that I can put my feet flat on the ground. Like a little kid, I'm now anxious to try out my new bike.

What's wrong with this picture: leaving the bicycle shop, we passed a hospital campus, across from which is a large cemetery. Perched on and standing beside the low concrete wall that surrounds the cemetery, a sizable group of hospital personnel were taking a cigarette break.

Around 3:30, we headed home. It was sunny when we started, but soon became overcast, which was a good thing, since the air conditioner in the van is still not operating efficiently. It barely cools, which is okay when the sun isn't shining right through the windshield, like it would have been today as we headed westward to our town.

About fifteen minutes from home, a thunderstorm, complete with a lightning show, cropped up. It was still raining when we arrived in our driveway, but didn't last too long afterward.

Mother and Sis had prepared our supper of lasagna, French style green beans, salad, cottage cheese, and buttered bread made from hamburger buns. Following supper, Mother and Sis continued working on a jigsaw puzzle that they began yesterday, and which they finished tonight.

Later, we watched a 2006 Lifetime Movie Network feature called, "Past Tense." A widow's young daughter has dreams that she's being murdered. The mother investigates and comes to the conclusion that her daughter was murdered in past life. They work together to find the psycho killer. Surprise ending.