Sunday

March 4, 2001

The sun is shining! Yea! It's so cool and beautiful.

Time for walkies. We just do the neighborhood but we walk to Northland and back to Upper Crust at 45th and Burnet and back home. Pretty far.

We buy tacos at La Victoria Bakery and eat them outside Upper Crust with UC coffees. We talk about the places one can reasonably walk to from our houses. Thinking about it, we can walk to lots of things, just like New Yorkers, in our neighborhood.

six Mexican restaurants
three coffee shops
a hamburger place
two sub shops
a grocery store
a drug store
an Italian place
a liquor store
a dry cleaner
a breakfast restaurant
a public library
a cafeteria
a laundromat
two garden stores
a bed and bath store
a Harley Davidson rental place
several antique and thrift stores
an antique 'mall'
several barbers
a gift shop
a hearing aid center
doctors and dentists
two pet shops and several vets
and more

Heck...we are a real neighborhood. This could be very convenient when we retire. Of course, the weather is inhospitable to walking a lot of the time, but that's OK.

���

We see FFP's mom in her yard at the end of our walk. We stop to talk to her and end up looking around the yard, talking about garage sales and his dad's collection of old golf clubs. We take their mail to go to the post office including their tax return.

And the mail is enough of an excuse to send us on a visit to BookStop and Gardens after we drop the mail off at the post office. We've gotten good at going into the bookstore, sitting down and looking at magazines and books and then leaving the store empty-handed.

At Gardens we look at the expensive and over-priced goodies and then buy some Gerber daisies for the front porch for $13. It's amazing to get out of there for less than twenty bucks.

���

Since we have people coming over, I try to take control of the mess. The books, magazines, catalogs and newspapers spilling everywhere. The shoes in the public areas.

Nothing asserts the passage of time like a daily journal or a stack of newspapers. Time is so relentless.

���

Sopranos. All these friends swarm over the kitchen and cook. We pour various delicious Italian wines. For some reason, my cold decides to start asserting itself. It starts with a croak in my voice over wine. I eat the good (and huge) meal and wash dishes, vaguely watching the show. I'm not a big fan, but since FFP is I've come to know some of the characters. I'm feeling like my breathing has been short-stopped by the end of the party and I have to take some Tylenol Cold tablets to open things up. I try to read the Sunday paper and fall asleep fitfully in my chair. I refuse to be sick, but illness does not always refuse me. I wake up at 4AM and take some more cold medicine and get in bed. It's going to be a rough Monday.

���