Monday, Monday ~

A quick note after a nice day hereabouts. It began early with M creeping out of bed before 6am for the second day in a row, due to her Wounded Knee discomfort (Dr Brado has phone-diagnosed tendonitis/bursitus, I believe). Not long after that we were robo-phoned by the James City County (yes, a county named for a city) school system which was checking to see whether M might choose to exercise her substitute-teacher creds today (no). Then another robocall, this one seeking LA Rew, ended my attempts at sleeping to a Retirement-Appropriate hour. "Sunrise is really pretty down here," M chirped from her perch in the sunroom as I came down, and I'm sure it was. I was sorry to have missed it by so little.

We headed off for the bank and the post office, where a lonnng line of snail-mail-obsessed retirees were lined up for whatever. I surveyed the scene briefly and then returned to the van, saying, "Let's go to Costco," our DLA (Default Life Activity). Once there I tried to persuade M to use one of their free electric scooters, which I've always thought were pretty nifty. I might've limped up to one myself and challenged her to a race to the tool aisle and back. But no, no Rascal for her.

We picked up a few things, including a couponed-down Timex watch with heartrate monitor for moi, which may be fun to mess with. On a gloomier note, I picked up this year's TurboTax since it too has a coupon discount now. (Alert, Costco shoppers!) A hot dog apiece and we were on our way back to the PO, stopping for some $1.59 gas along the way, up 20 cents from ten days ago.

Determined to get a leg up on her knee, as it were, M set herself up in the family room with some DVDs and snacks and ice-wraps whilst I did some more holiday cleanup, putting away the C'mas tree (sniffle) and turning Scooba loose on the sunroom floor. All three floor robots got another workout today, and they are handy little critters.

Do you know what else works? The Scrubbing Bubbles rotating shower-spray machine, that's what, which you can get at WalMart for $12. Hang it on the shower pipe and punch its button as you climb out; it then sprays a solution all around that mingles with the water droplets and slithers down the walls and floor, keeping them amazingly clean with zero effort.

Last eve we resumed our weekly small group and had a nice turn-out, including some folks we hadn't seen in awhile. It went well and we discussed transitioning to new leadership, since M&I don't regularly attend the Chapel any more; happily, the folks we thought best-suited to take it over readily agreed. This evening I went with Pam to the leaders' winter kickoff session at the church. We'll explore a similar group at New Town Methodist, where we're currently attending. [The issue that has eased us out of the Chapel is its failure to appoint any women to its senior lay leadership, perhaps the sole blemish on what is otherwise an outstanding church but one that is important to us.]

I had a nice chat with Caroline and her friend Dave Dean this afternoon, who are bringing about my new blogsite (which you can preview at www.GWAblog.com) as part of C's long-acting C'mas present to me. I'm learning how to remold it as I wish and should eventually have even more toys and widgets attached there than I do here. One of these days relatively soon I'll switch my postings to that new site (after appropriate notice here, of course).

Last night Marcia Budnikas, wife of TJC stalwart Peter, called to say "Channel 6 NOW!! Kingston Trio!!" I turned it on and there was the Trio in a Tijuana jail skit on the old Jack Benny TV show from the early '60s. Were it shown today on the airwaves there would probably be a Latino riot due to its politically-incorrect depiction of Mexicans, but the Trio looked handsome and youthful and sounded very good. They also weren't bad actors.

Time for bed. I can hardly wait to see which call-bot wakes me in the morning.