A busy week? Yes and no.
Apr. 21st, 2006 11:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bunrabIt's not like retired people can say they're truly busy. But I have had other things to do besides post journal entries. Some of those other things have included naps and sock knitting, which I'll admit are not real compelling excuses. Well, the socks are compelling to some people, not everyone.
So here's what the week's been like:
Tuesday, visit from the visiting nurse. Probably next week will be her last visit; we've clearly got the medical stuff under control.
Wednesday, band rehearsal for the Montgomery Village band. There's a concert coming up on Sunday, so this was a dress rehearsal. It went well. For once, we didn't try finding any new and shorter routes from here to there, and so did not wind up on any dark and unfamiliar country lanes. As usual, we came back by way of the DC Beltway and then up I95 - although it's slightly longer in miles than cutting across Route 108, it's much faster as long as it's not rush hour, which by 10 p.m. is over, even in DC. (NYC is the only place I know where rush hour continues until midnight or so.) Anyway, coming home by I95 takes us through Laurel, and we usually stop at the Silver Diner for supper. The SD includes sodium counts for several of their menu items, which means I can eat stuff that's actually on my diet; add to that that the food is excellent and our usual waitperson, Tracy, is a really nice person, and you can tell why we go back every week. The chicken potpie is not one of the low-sodium entrees but sometimes I get it anyway - it is still much lower in sodium than any frozen commercial pot pie, and it's enormous, so it serves as lunch the next day as well. And it's the tastiest chicken pot pie I've ever had. Yes, that even includes The Bakehouse, whose whole-wheat crust potpies are excellent if you happen to be in South Austin.
Thursday, went over to the library in Columbia to raid their shelves for another couple weeks worth of reading. They have a much better supply of murder mysteries than Baltimore County does, and also more new books. Both Howard County and Baltimore County seem to have far more new books than the Austin Public Library has ever had; a difference in funding levels, I suppose! Also stopped by Target to pick up some stuff to further organize and continue unpacking.
Today, Friday, it's a bit cooler again. We needed our jackets. We drove over to Smyrna, Delaware, to see my dad and stepmother's new place. They just moved down there from Maine. So they are now between 1.5 and 2 hours of almost half their children - me here, my brother G also in MD, my sister S in PA, my sister T on Staten Island, plus a couple more kids just a little further out on Long Island, and one of Mom's brothers and his wife also live only a few miles from them there in DE. Their new place is nice. The neighborhood is a relatively new subdivision/tract, so there's not a whole lot of trees yet - it has that raw look that new neighborhoods have. But the houses are nice, and theirs is a good size. They've mostly bought new furniture, and their house, unlike ours, looks like a house where real grownups live. You know, matching furniture, you can see the surfaces of things, there aren't piles of mail and magazines slopped into every corner... Downtown Smyrna is older, and there are quite a few colonial-era houses there. Unfortunately, most of them have been covered in vinyl siding. It's sort of jarring, seeing a house with the original brick and so on, right next to a house with the same frame and layout but all vinyl siding. You can hear the colonial "bones" of the house screaming from under there. There are some nice restored commercial buildings, though, and sometime when it's not chilly and raining we'll go back and spend some time in their town museum and walking around downtown. I took Mom's dog for a walk, too - it's a small yappy sort of dog, a Silkie terrier, but she's sweet when she's not yapping, and she's very funny. She appears to have some accidental cat genes - she rubs up against people's ankles, likes to jump into laps, and is picky about her food. Which nicely balances out our cat, who clearly has dog genes - he drinks from the toilet, plays fetch, and eats every bit of food that ever falls, including lettuce and corn. And spaghetti and tomato sauce. And beans and onions and cilantro. Some carnivore. Anyway, it had really started raining by the time we headed back thisaway. But here we are safe and sound.
Isn't that exciting?
Sunday we're playing a concert at an Air Force retirement home in Virginia. Stay tuned, if you'll pardon the pun.
So here's what the week's been like:
Tuesday, visit from the visiting nurse. Probably next week will be her last visit; we've clearly got the medical stuff under control.
Wednesday, band rehearsal for the Montgomery Village band. There's a concert coming up on Sunday, so this was a dress rehearsal. It went well. For once, we didn't try finding any new and shorter routes from here to there, and so did not wind up on any dark and unfamiliar country lanes. As usual, we came back by way of the DC Beltway and then up I95 - although it's slightly longer in miles than cutting across Route 108, it's much faster as long as it's not rush hour, which by 10 p.m. is over, even in DC. (NYC is the only place I know where rush hour continues until midnight or so.) Anyway, coming home by I95 takes us through Laurel, and we usually stop at the Silver Diner for supper. The SD includes sodium counts for several of their menu items, which means I can eat stuff that's actually on my diet; add to that that the food is excellent and our usual waitperson, Tracy, is a really nice person, and you can tell why we go back every week. The chicken potpie is not one of the low-sodium entrees but sometimes I get it anyway - it is still much lower in sodium than any frozen commercial pot pie, and it's enormous, so it serves as lunch the next day as well. And it's the tastiest chicken pot pie I've ever had. Yes, that even includes The Bakehouse, whose whole-wheat crust potpies are excellent if you happen to be in South Austin.
Thursday, went over to the library in Columbia to raid their shelves for another couple weeks worth of reading. They have a much better supply of murder mysteries than Baltimore County does, and also more new books. Both Howard County and Baltimore County seem to have far more new books than the Austin Public Library has ever had; a difference in funding levels, I suppose! Also stopped by Target to pick up some stuff to further organize and continue unpacking.
Today, Friday, it's a bit cooler again. We needed our jackets. We drove over to Smyrna, Delaware, to see my dad and stepmother's new place. They just moved down there from Maine. So they are now between 1.5 and 2 hours of almost half their children - me here, my brother G also in MD, my sister S in PA, my sister T on Staten Island, plus a couple more kids just a little further out on Long Island, and one of Mom's brothers and his wife also live only a few miles from them there in DE. Their new place is nice. The neighborhood is a relatively new subdivision/tract, so there's not a whole lot of trees yet - it has that raw look that new neighborhoods have. But the houses are nice, and theirs is a good size. They've mostly bought new furniture, and their house, unlike ours, looks like a house where real grownups live. You know, matching furniture, you can see the surfaces of things, there aren't piles of mail and magazines slopped into every corner... Downtown Smyrna is older, and there are quite a few colonial-era houses there. Unfortunately, most of them have been covered in vinyl siding. It's sort of jarring, seeing a house with the original brick and so on, right next to a house with the same frame and layout but all vinyl siding. You can hear the colonial "bones" of the house screaming from under there. There are some nice restored commercial buildings, though, and sometime when it's not chilly and raining we'll go back and spend some time in their town museum and walking around downtown. I took Mom's dog for a walk, too - it's a small yappy sort of dog, a Silkie terrier, but she's sweet when she's not yapping, and she's very funny. She appears to have some accidental cat genes - she rubs up against people's ankles, likes to jump into laps, and is picky about her food. Which nicely balances out our cat, who clearly has dog genes - he drinks from the toilet, plays fetch, and eats every bit of food that ever falls, including lettuce and corn. And spaghetti and tomato sauce. And beans and onions and cilantro. Some carnivore. Anyway, it had really started raining by the time we headed back thisaway. But here we are safe and sound.
Isn't that exciting?
Sunday we're playing a concert at an Air Force retirement home in Virginia. Stay tuned, if you'll pardon the pun.
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Date: 2006-04-23 09:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-04-24 03:02 am (UTC)June 11 should be fun - that's Maryland Community Band Day at White Marsh, and both bands we're in are playing - and have back-to-back time slots, so I need to switch from one sax to the other with no recuperation time in between! A challenge!