Thursday

There's a football game across the street tonight with lots of pre-game activities and concerts. Normally this would mean Do Not Leave The House By Car at all. But, I'm still out of ice cream and now it's getting critical. So I'm going to slip out after I finish this entry and my coffee and make a run to the grocery store and gas station and then hurry home and Not Leave The House By Car again until morning.

I've got nothing out of the ordinary on the agenda for today. Which is actually fine. For some reason my brain is not with it today. I normally use my swim time to solve world problems or work out small little conundrums. Today, I got in the pool and at what felt like about lap 3, I looked at the clock to see I had been swimming an hour.

These are the kind of days when it's good to have no responsibilities. Heavy equipment and I would have issues. I do think I can get to the grocery and back, though.

The ice cream crisis is over... whew!

There is a little chain of groceries (chain-ette really) near here. One of the stores is near my library branch of choice. There are bigger groceries near the pool and so easier to pop into but this little Red Apple is worth the special trip and becoming more so all the time.

I'm not a big produce fan but they do have really good produce. Their meat is really good and they do cuts that really suit me. Plus they carry some pickles I love (that no one else carries) and they carry some milk that I like in quart cartons that no one else does.

And, now, they have android pay in addition to Senior Discount Every Day. So... I like them alot.

Today they had tomatoes that I know aren't any good but they look like they might be better than horrible and I'm desperate. We don't have enough uninterrupted hot sun for long enough nor soil good enough for decent tomatoes. Our very very very best - late August tomatoes bought at a farmers market and grown with love - are the flavor and consistency of any January tomato in the South. It's a crime. People around here think of tomatos a salad filler and spaghetti base only. A tomoato sandwich is foreign animal here. But, my tongue remembers the glory of a fat juicy sweet delicious tomato from South Jersey or even my Mom's backyard in North Carolina. And I'll pretend that's what I'm eating in my tomato sandwich for lunch today.

So groceries put away. Cuke and onion sour cream salad marinating in the fridge. Dishes washed. Cat fed. I'm off to sew.

Today's sewing...

2 dolls and 24 faces. I was on a roll and then Google came out with solitaire and an hour left the building. I'm trying to keep it to an hour but I think I'm losing. I'm a sucker for solitaire.

Hell, I'm a sucker for card games and it's my father's fault. The very minute my hands got big enough to hold cards, he taught me how to play gin rummy. And then he taught me the nuances of how to play well and how to trash talk. First grade interrupted my card shark career. When I couldn't find him to play gin with or my brother or sister to play Go Fish or Old Maid with, I played solitaire.

As a family, we played Yahtzee but when we couldn't find all the dice we'd play I Doubt It or hold cribbage tournaments.

In college I played bridge for beer money. After college I played tournament bridge for many years. I was part of an online gaming beta in the late 80's early 90's (1200/2400 baud dial up modem) called Sierra Online. I played bridge there, canasta and I think some cribbage.

And then Windows included Solitaire on the computer. Holy moly. I probably tossed at least a year or two towards that effort. Today, the minute I saw what Google had done today, I was a goner. Sigh.