Friday, Sept. 16

Up at 6:30 to get ready to go to water aerobics. Before I left for the pool, Hubbie left to go to a town about an hour away to take the camper to a repair shop.

I arrived at the gym dressing room around 8 a.m. and proceeded to get wet under the cold shower (doing this is supposed to help acclimate me to the cold water of the pool). But as I was getting ready to climb the stairs to the pool, a group of ladies came downstairs declaring that the pool was just too frigid for swimming today.

I was told that the elusive part for the boiler that has been on order forever and must have been traveling by mule train, had been delayed for quite a while in Atlanta (no planes, trains, or trucks there, I guess). But it was at last scheduled to arrive today and is supposed to be installed over the weekend. So maybe the pool will be ready by Monday, though I doubt it could warm up very much in just a day or two.

If I'd had a clue we wouldn't have aerobics this morning, I would have gone with Hubbie. But since I had the morning to myself, I warmed up with a couple of cups of coffee, hit the shower, and then settled in to read my novel.

Mother came over around 10 a.m., and because it was a chilly day, we made a pot of homemade tomato soup. While it simmered, Mother decided to abandon the jigsaw puzzle the cat dumped on the floor a couple of days ago and choose another one to begin.

While she worked on the puzzle, I read my novel until lunch time. Hubbie arrived around 11 a.m., and at lunch, we had the soup with grilled cheese sandwiches.

As for the camper, it turned out that something about the heater was clogged, and once it was blown out, the unit seemed to work. Hubbie had already blown it out, but I guess the shop had better equipment for this. There was no charge for the service.

After lunch, Hubbie and I went to the hydroponic farm to get tomatoes. No one was in the little store to help me. If I'd known how to turn on the digital register, I could have weighed the tomatoes and left the required money. But instead I had to wait a few minutes for the owner. Before I left, she showed me how to operate the register, in case she's not available in the future.

From there, we went to a couple of wholesale stores, at one of which we found plastic goggles to wear while riding our bikes.

Back home, I resumed reading my novel until the local newspaper arrived. In it, I noticed that the college down the road from us is again offering season tickets to productions and events during the fall and spring. We bought season tickets last year and enjoyed all the events.

Since there were capacity crowds at the events last year, and folks without season tickets had to be turned away, I decided I'd better go right away and get our tickets. The paper said tickets could be purchased either at the college or at a local bank.

The college is only about a mile from our house, so that's the first place we tried. But the business office was closed, and we were directed by an employee to the fine arts center. There, we were told that everyone was busy with a payroll project.

So we went to the bank, where I obtained the tickets with no problem. Seems strange that it was more difficult to buy tickets at the facility sponsoring the events than at the alternate venue.

Funny: at the college, we noticed a fat Rhode Island red hen meandering the yard and pecking at the grass in front of the administration building. Since it looked so well cared for, we figured it must have wandered to the college from a nearby residence. Hubbie joked that it might be the school's mascot. Guess not, since the school has no athletic department.

Later, I cut up boiled potatoes, onions, and the remaining beef roast for a beef hash supper, which we had with a choice of Lima beans or butter beans. Mother went home afterward, and Hubbie and I watched TV, as usual, including an R-rated 2009 movie comedy called, "Tenure." An English professor at a small college aiming for tenure is threatened by a good-looking female PhD go-getter who comes onto the staff and is also aiming for tenure.

A second movie we saw was the 2008 Lifetime Movie Network feature, "Solstice." A group of high school friends go on a trip to an isolated house in the Louisiana swamp area for a last summer get-together before going off to college. One of the girls lost her twin sister to a suicide a few months before. Strange things happen, and the girl uncovers a disturbing secret about her sister.