what I did on my autumn vacation
October 17, 2011

In no particular order:

• Cleaned my car inside and out (Hey--my motto is "every five years, whether it needs it or not!")
• Made a very complex (ATK/Cook's COuntry) recipe for lemon icebox cheesecake
• Spent a lot of time barefoot.
• Read a (very little) bit
• Got my Anglo-Intellectual jollies by watching a helluva a lot of "Quite Interesting" and "Would I Lie to You?" on the internet.
• Played a lot more FarmVille than is usual for me these days
• Washed, line-dried, and mended my electric blanket, so it's ready for the cold weather.
• Bought a new wallet/wristlet thingy--Etienne Aigner, marked down to $7 at Marshalls
• Went out to dinner, guests of P&E. We drove out to downtown Waukesha and had dinner at a sort of pseudo-tapas place called "Generations at 5 Points". The food was served sort of "tapas-style", but it was more the kind of things that you can get Wisconsin people to eat. Example: they have this thing called a "Wisconsin Wellington". It's a bratwurst, covered in saurkraut, wrapped in puff pastry, and served with stone-ground mustard. It was very good, if a little weird as "tapas".
• Got two new purses, due to my SIL's scatty-headedness. One she gave me, the other one Spouse bought from her after she had buyer's remorse about it. I loved it, she decided she hated it, and Spouse relieved her of it and gave it to me as a sort of belated birthday gift.
• Got my bead on by designing and making my first rosary. I'm not Catholic--or even religious--frankly? I don't even believe in a god. But my beloved Auntie is quite devout, and I felt moved to make her a shiny, sparkly rosary.
• Bought a couple of new sweaters. Right before I went out of town, I was cleaning out an old purse I wanted to take along with me--I love my black leather Aigner bag too much to make it travel. Anyway. I found a bunch of gift cards in this handbag, and so I went online to see if they had any money on them. I ended up with a Chilli's card with $17 on it, a Famous Dave's card with fifty on it, and a Fashion Bug card (Christmas, 2007) that had $33.93 left on it. Spent most of the Fashion Bug card on a new magenta cotton sweater. And I got a pretty, fine-gauge sweater in russett at Marshalls for $19.99.
• Lots of loads of laundry--which I dried at home in the old dryer. It is still running, on one particular cycle, and if you can bear the horribly loud clunking, the clothes will get dry.
• Took my dog to the vet, and then to the dog wash. He's now on a diet, BTW. And gets two servings of steamed vegetables a day, as a lo-cal supplement to his reduced amount of dog food. Surprise--he likes them still frozen! He also gets frozen green beans or carrot coins as a "reward", instead of snaps or soft treats. And he begs for them! Go figure. Other than being too fat, he got a clean bill of health, and all his shots are up to date.
• I spent quite a bit of time on the phone, with both Mom and Auntie. Just gabbing away about everything and nothing.
• Celebrated my birthday--OUR birthday--in a low-key manner. Spouse and I just ran some errands, then had dinner at home--grilled strip steaks, baked potatoes, salad, garlic toast, and a strawberry cream cake from Sam's for our birthday cake.
• Sent a belated birthday card to Uncle, along with a short letter apologizing for the lateness, and giving my reasons why..
• Sent a thank you note to Auntie & Uncle, for their lovely birthday package containing a bag of Cerreta's fabulous mixed nuts, birthday cards for each of us, and A FREAKIN' CHECK FOR A HUNDRED SMACKERS! (Said smackers to be applied to the New Dryer Fund, per Auntie's orders.)
• Researched, examined, and ultimately picked out my new dryer; a basic model Speed Queen. All SQ's are built commercial grade, have a 3-year warranty & 7% more heat, and differ between models only in the number of bells and whistles. The fundamentals are the same across all models.


Well, that's all I can think of right now. If anything else comes back to me, I'll edit & add it.

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Reading:Hobby--"The Grand Babylon Hotel "(1902), by Arnold Bennett, "Romance Island" (1906), by Zona Gale. In the general depatrtment, I managed to just barely start "The Land of Painted Caves". Despite having a vacation, reading time has been short. In the few uninterrupted hours I get, I have a choice between reading in peace and quiet, or getting a crack at the TV for watching the stuff I want to watch. I confess, I often opt for the TV. I always think I will get my reading in at bed-time, but more an more often these days, I can't manage a good ten minutes before my eyes go shut on me and sleep overtakes.

Listening: nope

Surfing: I've pretty much been haunting YouTube for the aforementioned QI and WILTY? episodes.

At Random: click here