A new camera, shoes and a lousy movie

Too much of a good thing? For the second Saturday in a row, Mrs. Poolman and I changed our plans for a dinner out because we ate too much at lunch. It’s a shame to spend money on a nice restaurant dinner when you aren’t really hungry. We need to change that pattern in the next few weeks, as we have a gift certificate at a local Greek restaurant that will expire in mid-August. Don’t want it to go to waste.

Lunch was just part of a busy Saturday. After lunch at our favorite Mexican place, we went shopping. I have been putting off buying a new digital camera for some time. I have a digital SLR that belongs to my job, but is assigned to me full-time. However, my 8-year old “point and shoot” camera finally gave up the ghost a couple of months ago. I have been doing on-line research and reading a lot of reviews. I ended up going to Best Buy and purchasing a Canon Powershot A4000. I think I will like it.

From there Mrs. P and I went shoe shopping. You have no idea how much I absolutely HATE shopping for shoes. I have gouty arthritis in one of my big toes so finding shoes that don’t torture me can be an extremely frustrating and painful experience. I will “milk” a pair of broken-in shoes long past their natural death, just to avoid having to go shop for a new pair. When I find a brand and style that work, I usually stick with it.  That is why I came home with a pair of Rockport Eureka (11-wide) casual shoes. They look amazingly like the brown pair I’ve worn to work almost every day for the past two years. Exciting, huh?

I was scheduled to read at 5:30 Mass so that didn’t leave much time left in the afternoon. I have been trying to recruit some new lectors for the Saturday evening masses. We are down to six lectors, which means our names come up every three weeks. That isn’t a problem right now, but when the fall hits, the weekend schedules become much busier.  I know Mrs. P and I will be totally occupied for at least seven Saturday evenings between Labor Day and mid-November.  I’ve asked a number of people if they would join this ministry, but so far, no takers. Ugh.

We finished off our Saturday by ordering a pizza and renting a movie. (We are SO exciting!) We thought “Wanderlust” with Paul Rudd and Jennifer Anniston looked cute. I am very glad we didn’t spend $20 to see it at a theater. If you like to watch Jennifer Anniston being herself, go ahead and waste a couple of dollars and hours of your life. Otherwise, don’t bother. The story is about a yuppie-couple (Can you still use that term?) who are forced into unemployment. On their way to live with his brother in Atlanta, they stumble onto what must be the world’s last hippie commune in North Georgia. It has an R-rating mostly for vulgarity and one nudist guy in the commune who treats the audience to repetitive full frontal shots. There is plenty of guy-nudity, but almost none of the female sort. In any case, it’s a pretty stupid film that is not well written or acted.  My recommendation – take a pass on it. Definitely keep it away from the kids!

Tomorrow, we’re off to the beach for the first time this summer.

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Happy Thanksgiving!

We’ve been off of work for two days and it’s been busy.

Wednesday was mostly filled with preps for having a house full of folks for Thanksgiving the next day.

It works!

One project on my list was to repair our front post lamp. As I have mentioned before, I am not the handiest of homeowners. (I could really have used “More Than an Electrician” for this.)  Anyway, I figured if I could take it apart, I could see what was broken, buy a part and put it back together the way I found it. Well, it wasn’t as easy as that, but I got it to work all the same. The connections to the ceramic “socket” were rusted out and came disconnected. It wasn’t helped by the fact that the “floor” of the lamp housing was full of the remnants of about a zillion dead gnats, mosquitoes and other bugs. There is no need for a blow by blow description of the project. Suffice it to say, that courtesy of the guy at Ace Hardware, I found a replacement part, although not the exact same thing, and with a little improvisation, I managed to put it back together. When I turned on the power, the bulb lit up and it didn’t smoke, spark or catch fire. I call that a success.

Late in the afternoon, we took our lab to the vet.

Casey the Lab

He is getting older, although since he was a rescue adoption, we don’t know exactly how old he is. He has been moving very stiffly, and in the past day has seriously favored his back right leg. The vet reported he probably has arthritis, but he also has a torn ligament in the knee of his back leg. We are faced with a tough decision. There is surgery available to repair the ligament, but it is very involved, would be very painful for the dog, not to mention quite expensive. Given his age, I think we are going to treat the arthritis with medication and see how he does with the leg. We had a similar experience with our previous lab, and were very unhappy about the outcome. We allowed her to be opened up to remove a tumor. It turned out she had extensive cancer. They just closed her back up and sent her home. She died a few weeks later, but it would have been much more comfortable for her, if she hadn’t also had to recover from a major surgical incision.

Thursday dawned bright and sunny. I got up and went to 9 am mass. We have so many blessings, I really felt the need to give thanks “in person.”

After mass, I cleaned up the back yard, since I knew our Thanksgiving gathering would overflow to the courtyard and patio.

The courtyard

The patio

Mrs. Poolman did most of the cooking for this event. It is unusual for me not to be more involved, but I was occupied with the back yard, vacuuming the house, and so on.

The official “kick off” was to be at 4 pm, but our son and girlfriend (Poolboy and GF), and daughter and husband (Writer Princess and SIL) came a little early. We were joined by our friends/neighbors the W’s, Fran who works with Mrs. P, and SIL’s brother and wife who were holiday orphaned this year. We had one “holiday widower” in the group. Mark’s wife is a nurse who works with Mrs. P. She had the holiday duty, so Mark came over with their adult daughter. All told, we had 15 people for dinner. We almost always have a joint holiday celebration with the W’s. They contributed a fried turkey and various side dishes to the menu, to go along with our roasted turkey, baked ham and about a ton of other stuff.

The "spread"

As expected, we had more food than you could say grace over, and everyone seemed to have a good time. At least, if they didn’t enjoy it, they faked it real well.

It was a good day and I suspect we’ll be eating leftovers for awhile. Love those turkey sandwiches!