More Errands

Mom went to get her hair done yesterday in advance of heading to the Reunion. They are so nice to her down there. Cindi (Cindy?) especially. She even gave mom a free blowdry. While mom was doing that, I went to the post office and had the mail held until Tuesday (Monday being a holiday and all). And stopped in at the Beautiful Beef and Brew. No Lorraine again. Apparently she has decided to stop working on Wednesdays. Without asking or mentioning it to me! Well, grrr. Christie was there, though, which was a pleasant surprise. Her last day is Saturday, which was an unpleasant surprise. Oh well. Life is that way sometimes.

Next, off to Rite-Aid to get mom her blood pressure medicine. We also couldn't find mom's toiletries travel container, so picked one up there. Had a nice interaction with my phavorite pharmacist. Sigh. Oh, and mom's medication was free! How awesome is that? I had forgotten that (since I only get it every three months...).

After errands we came back and did little. Mom was mostly packed, though later in the day we did some more packing. She wanted to add all sorts of things that were already packed. And wanted to carry all sorts of stuff in the car, from which I had to dissuade her as she won't only be in my car on the next leg of her travels. I got her pills together and started to pack myself. I also cleaned the kitchen decently and put out the garbage. Yay! Now, all I need to do is finish packing my own stuff, clean out the car, pack the car and we will be ready to head off into the sunrise. Well, East, at least. Wish us luck!

Mom at the Salon being attended by Cindy (Cindi?)

The yellow rose bush did great this year!

Pretty!

Not the brightest candle in the Menorah

Sometimes I wonder about myself. Am I going gaga already at 28? Oh, wait, I am 51. I guess I can go gaga if I want to! Mom and I did laundry yesterday. We didn't have as much as we usually have, so I decided to use a smaller machine - to save money and water and all that sort of thing. I put the clothes in the machine and asked mom to get some more quarters. When she came back, I asked her to put the quarters in, which she did. I added the soap and the detergent. Time passed. The machine stopped and I went to get the clothes out - but they weren't ours. Eeeek! Turns out that I somehow got confused after loading the machine and managed to wash some cute girl's clothes a second time. Ours didn't get washed. Oops. More quarters (so much for saving money and water) and eventually laundry was accomplished! Yay!

I had a minor epiphany or two yesterday.

First one - what to do while mom is off vacationing with Juliet in Maine for a week: go to beer places and do things that I otherwise haven't done with mom around. Sadly, no women to invite back to the house. Oh well, having everything takes too much time. :) There are a few beer places that I have wanted to visit for a while. Trying to get to them all may not be possible, but it is the challenge I have given myself for the week (ish) that mom will be away. Of course, I have other tasks to do, but those oughtn't to be too onerous and time consuming. I realized that Monday is Memorial Day - which messes things up a little bit. It will take some planning, but I am good at that, sometimes.

Second one - how to fix a problem in Flippety - not letting more than two tiles be flipped up at a time! Yay! All Fixed!I think it is in decent shape - again - still. Now I want some beta testers and am about to go to a beta test site that matches people up with testers. I would rather have friends and family test, but so far, no one has come forward. Poop.

Today is haircut day and tomorrow we head to Mom's 60th college reunion! Wish us luck!

Buttercups! Weeds but still pretty

Big shufflings in Geneva!

Mom helping at the Laundromat!

Packing

Mom and I spent part of the day yesterday getting her packed for the reunion and her visit with Juliet in Maine. After the trip to North Carolina in December of last year, I knew that I would have to get more involved this time around. I let her do as she thought was needed and then came back and helped her fill in what else would be helpful. Sigh. I tried to make it fun for her and to involve her a bit. I think she needs more socks in general. Maybe when I am out and about today - I am doing a laundry load and hitting the library and running a few other errands - I will stop in at Wal-Mart and find her some more socks. Lately, if a sock has a hole in it, I toss it. Oh where oh where is my darning egg and darning needle when I need them? Oh, right, I never had any. My mom used to darn socks for us. Long ago...

I also worked on Flippety a bit. Still looking for a few people to beta test - they need to be running at least iOS 5 on their iPhone - regardless of which phone it is. Though I think only 3g and better can run iOS5...And looking for someone silly enough to help me with graphics and such. I haven't started looking in earnest for someone yet. Oh, and I have decided, that as soon as I actually start working on my next project, I am going to document the whole thing. And I can't decide whether I want to do the mobile (as in the art piece that spins around) or a "quarters" game one. I can do the whole "document it" thing since I have a blog. Hmm, you probably already know that...

For dinner, I took leftovers from The Basin Pub and added some stuff. It is sad how few crowns there are in frozen broccoli. Oh well.

Mom actually made a mostly coherent list of things she wants to do and other things she wants to take with her on the trip! That is great! Sadly, I cannot convince her to also get her nails and feet done. Glarg.

Thank you Mary F for sending me that pdf file! Great information!

Dinner

The Best Exotic Adventurelet

Mom and I went on another adventurelet yesterday. I think she is more energetic in the warmer weather. Maybe we need to move her to a warmer clime. If only we could pick the house up and plunk it somewhere else...

We headed to Rochester for a viewing of The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. I saw a trailer for this a long while ago and it looked entertaining. And mom is a big Judi Dench and Maggie Smith fan. And I have always been intrigued by India and things Indian.

I put the addresses of the movie theatre and the possible pub for dinner into my phone. In the car, I set the GPS to the first address. Uneventful drive with mom nattering away about the trees not being thinned enough, and isn't it great that she got me an E-Z Pass and wow, another E-Z Pass place and "it's a long way." Yippee! We got to lovely Pittsford, NY and I couldn't find the theatre. Finally, ok, not too long afterwards, actually, I asked a local looking lady where the cinema was - she told me it was at the other end of the mall, so that's where we went. And lo and behold, the cinema had no big sign. It had a marquee and that was about it. How anyone is supposed to find it who hasn't been there already is anyone's guess. The theatre the movie in was huge. 200+ seats I would guess. It got to be about a third full, I think. We sat in my favorite seats - middle, middle, sometimes called the Director's seats.

The movie was great. I would definitely watch it again. It had its cliche sorts of moments, but overall, very enjoyable. I loved the India atmosphere. Really want to visit there now - for at least a month or two. Maybe three. Actually the movie was too short for my taste (at about 2 hours). And Tena Desae. Goodness gracious.

After the movie, I reprogrammed the GPS and headed to The Basin Pub. I wanted to go someplace that offered local beers - and the The Basin Pub was on our way home. Bushnell's Basin in fact. A place in a strip mall, the inside was comfortable-ish. Mom and I sat in the only available booth in the back. Our server was decent, the food was ok and I had two good beers - Roc Brewery's Mild Dark Ale (very tasty) and ThreeHeads Skunk Black IPA (also good). The bartender was knowledgeable and nice. If there were a Saucer around, she would make an excellent Beer Goddess. And if I go back, it will be for the beer and the bartender!

Yay adventure-lets!

Mom wearing her Beervana Shirt

Movie Poster

Look, no sign!

'Nuff said!

Roc Brewing tap

Clams Casino - not my favorite, but ok

Three Heads Skunk Black IPA

Don't we look thrilled?

My ok Chicken French

Mom's sauerkraut-less Reuben

My Wifi is being weird

We live in the heart of a college campus. And the campus went wifi in a big way a couple years back.  I guess they boosted their signal recently, because every time I open my computer now, the first wifi that my laptop locks onto is the college's, not the private, more stronger one here in the house. It is a smidge frustrating. And I am not sure if there is a way to fix it. We shall see eventually. It isn't so annoying that I am strongly motivated to do anything about it.

I am happy that gas prices are down a little. And happy that my car gets 38 miles to a gallon. Well, at least when I am driving around by myself. We shall see what happens on the big driving that happens in the next few weeks and months.

Not a lot has transpired in the past couple of days. I have been working on my app - Flippety - and it is in decent shape. I need to find someone to help me with graphics. And I am going to buy Texture Packer and try that. It looks like it could be useful. We shall, of course, see.

Yesterday, mom and I went shopping. We went to, ugh, Wal-Mart. She needed to get white clothing for the traditional march/walk thing at her Reunion later this week. Always fun to shop at wal-mart! And today we may be heading to Rochester to see a movie - The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel - with Judi Densch. No, Judi is not going with us, she is in the movie. It is not getting very wide distribution so we have to travel to Rochester to see it. Then maybe a pub afterwards! Yay! And tonight is Sherlock on the BBC. Yippee even!

Another X-Xmas tree :(

Peony has almost popped

Garlic-Cheese toast!

More tiny tot steps

Hi there blogophiles! Thank you so much for stopping by today. For some reason, I thought it was Saturday. It could be because Thursday night, last night, is sort of my Friday night. I went to the Leaf Kitchen and showed off my app. Yay! It is so nice to be able to show it on my phone rather than just talk about it. E is gone from there for good now, which is sad. Oh well. Life goes on. I had a fairly tasty cider - Apricot Pear - I could have done with more apricot taste - but both tastes are fairly subtle in all cases. Followed by a Victory Storm King - they are trying to get rid of that beer for the summer and I am helping.

Yesterday was Ginger day - mom went to the shower (like going to the gallows) with little argument. Karl thinks that mom should shower once a week - that would be nice - but it isn't going to happen. Mom hates showering - I think it is because we don't have a walk-in shower. If anyone wants to get mom a big present - that would be a nice one! Anyway, she is clean for the time being. Yay! And mom actually spent 25 seconds on the little exercise machine! I don't know what has come over her, but I hope she does that more often...

This morning, I took another tiny tot step on my app - I got the flipping animation sort of working - all it took was figuring out where to put the delay and I finally did - no thanks to all of the folks at Stackoverflow - goodness they are stuffy. I added a reference to Kim Possible (I love Kim Possible) in my question and some guy edited it out. No sense of humor or whimsy. Poop on them even. Now I am looking for testers. Anyone with an iPhone running iOS 5+, I am interested in having you play with the app and let me know your thoughts. I realize I still have a long way to go, but I would appreciate some user feedback.

Beer Wednesday was Beer-a-licious!

Well, beer fun-tastic at least. Interesting day as well. At least I think it was interesting. Heck, I think most of what I think or do is interesting. That's one reason I write a blog. Yay blog! Yay me! Rah, rah! :)

Ok, so I am working hard to try and fix my flipping problem in my iPhone application, Flippety. I made some good steps yesterday, which always makes me happy. I can feel the solution at the edges of my eye - you know how you think you see something out of the corner of your eye, but when you look straight at it, there isn't anything there. Well, that is how this problem feels to me. I actually showed the app to two people at the Beautiful Beef and Brew and they both seemed to get it. That is great! I just wish the flipping thing had worked correctly all the time. Poop.

But I am, once again, getting ahead of myself. I know I have mentioned this before, but part of writing is repetition. Some days, it just seems that everywhere I look, I see attractive women. Other days, not so much. Yesterday was an attractive woman day. Starting with a knock on the door. How weird is a knock on the door? I haven't had a knock on the door very frequently recently, so it seemed like a bit of a shock. When I got downstairs, one of the prettiest women I have seen in a long time was standing on the porch. With a cat. The cat was one I have seen wandering around the yard and campus. Turns out that it may have been abandoned by a student - at least that was the woman, I will call her "J," thought. J works up the street from the house and had seen the cat and thought maybe it was ours. I said it wasn't, and for grins and giggles, I opened the house door to see what the cat would do. It walked inside. I did have an ulterior motive - to see if mom took to the idea of the cat. She didn't. Her concerns were minor, but her reaction seemed pretty negative. And I did agree with her concerns, partly. Eventually I let the cat back out, after talking with J again (sigh) and we decided we would wait and see what happened. I gave J a card and said I would check back in with her after we returned from our trip - in about six weeks. Mom says she wants a cat, but apparently not just this second. Maybe when she is more prepared after we return. I think pets would be good for her. Me, I like other people to have pets. I am enough for me to take care of for the time being. Well, me and mom.

Then out to the Beautiful Beef and Brew. Unfortunately, Lorraine had been released early, so I didn't get to chat with her. Fortunately, K was there as a server. I haven't seen her in a long time so that was good. And even better, the bartender was C. So, for my last visit to the Beef and Brew for a while, it was a good one. I had three beers - Lost Coast Tangerine - great, Wagner's SledDog Doppelbock - good - and Victory Golden Monkey - a Belgian style Tripel - which for what it was was good, just not my favorite style.

Dinner was supposed to be roast chicken from Wegman's, but they were out of them and weren't going to have any more for 20 minutes, so I just bought some raw chicken and brought that home. Slathered the pieces with butter, ground some pepper and dashed some garlic salt on top and baked them for a while. Yay! Add some corn that mom was kind enough to shuck and some fresh green beans, and ta dah! a decent dinner. I had picked up Extremely Loud and Terribly Close from Redbox, since I had forgotten to put out our NetFlix disk in the mail on Monday. It was very good. If I didn't know there was a book (which was great) it would have been even better. Luckily, I read the book a while ago, so the differences didn't disturb me. Glad we watched it!

My bedside table sometimes

Dinner from Tuesday - fresh made shrimp eggrolls, spinach and twice baked potatoes

The cat - who seemed like a nice cat...

Dinner from last night