Home Again, Home Again, Jiggity Jig

Finally.  Back home.  Mr. L left late this morning to return to San Antonio for a band rehearsal and a doctor appointment on Monday.  Then he'll come back here to get his newsletter written, printed, and mailed before the first.  Then we'll both head down to San Antonio to do some yard work in preparation for winter.

We have another Grand Tour planned for May 2014, but I'm seriously considering postponing it to May 2015.  I'm sick of traveling, and the Hershey trip seems to not be fading, so I'll have to deal with it.  The Grand Tour trip I have some input into.  Thankfully, being sick on the trip gave me the leeway at the beginning side to stay in the truck for some of the antique stops.  That didn't do much to alleviate the stress of him looking for places that are supposed to exist but may not and communicating the directions to me the driver who had to integrate them into the reality of real life traffic conditions and roads that differed from a truly terrible 2013 edition of Street Atlas USA. This results in many derogatory statements that Mr. L did not recall making when I finally related how offensive I found dealing with him.  I need to remember to chalk that annoying stuff up to just trying to execute his plan, which is usually very good, but I still don't like it.  I chose to stay in the truck for a lot of antique shops, but Mr. L would call if he saw something he thought I might like, and I'd go inside and look.  We have a few perennial places that I willingly chose to wander through, and that resulted in polar bears and the Eleventh Edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica following us home.

This is what Mr. L found which resulted in me losing my bench out of the rain for a couple of hours at Hershey, but it was worth it, I think:

Four guys loaded it into the back of the Navigator in pouring rain.  Mr. L and I unloaded it (with a little of his ingenious finesse).  Mr. L noticed holes on the bottom for casters, so we found some, modified them to fit, and installed them after we got it unloaded from the truck.  This is what's called an Ideal 85 slider box.  It dispenses cold drinks for a dime by sliding them to the dispenser area, inserting your dime, and pulling the bottle out.  Some of you may be old enough to remember these from when you were a young kid.


The Good Stuff:

• The scale shows I weigh five pounds less than before we left for Pennsylvania.  I'm pleased about that.
• Sneaky was just fine while we were gone but seemed happy to have us home.
• The vet staff discovered an ulcer on Natasha's eye while she was there and began treating it.  She went back for a follow up visit this morning, and she's doing much better.  We go back again on Wednesday.  The ulcer itself isn't a good thing, but the staff discovering it and getting her treatment was. 
• Ajax and Rossie were cuddled together on the shelf in their enclosure when I got there to pick them up.  Rossie was in the back and fully shielded by Ajax.  He's such a good uncle cat.
• A Books-A-Million clerk in Mississippi talked me into re-activating my Books-A-Million membership, despite having no store near me, when I stopped into pick up some bargain journals I've been looking for.  Apparently, it includes free shipping from the on-line store.

The Not So Good Stuff:

• Lady gave Neal the vet tech a hard time while she was there (this poor guy has borne the brunt of claws and teeth from my kitties, but he's a sweetheart with them all).  She was so mean to Tarzan, they had to separate them (I thought Lady and Tarzan could get along as roommates, but I guess not).  No wonder poor Tarzan was hiding under his towel when I got there to pick them up.  Lady is not adapting well to having the kittens in the house (and, yes, it's been a year). Dr. Val says, "There's always one.  Especially with that many."  She and Floyd are getting along well, although even Floyd defers to her.  Lady, Floyd, and Tarzan were sleeping alongside one another on the bed last night.  I'll note Floyd, Lady, and Tarzan are approximately the same size and weight, so they are relative equals.
• My digestive system is still not 100%.
• My head seems to be swimming as I try to figure out the best way to implement Product Launch Formula for me.  It's all a learning curve, and I'm treading water for now, but I'm still trying to sort things out.  

The Week Ahead:

• The lawn mower has been pleading with me to change it's oil (Really -- the hour meter was flashing "change oil" the last time I mowed), so I need to change the oil before I do much mowing.  I may mow part of the yard to get the engine warm, but it needs to be done.
• Do the revision work on Beginnings
• I cannot find my original download of the image, so I can't redo the author name on it.  That means I'll need to find another image, and I'm just less satisfied with the ones I'm seeing (why isn't this image still up there and available -- I'd buy it again if I had to instead of just re-downloading it).
• Figure out a newsletter template -- the one I'm trying to work on Aweber is not working for me.  Well, it's working, but I don't really like it.
• Do preliminary work for NaNo -- I'm attempting to do 100 500-word flash pieces, so I need to come up with a LOT of ideas to start with.
• I purchased OptimizePress, but I'm having trouble sorting out just how I'll use it.  They have a lot of tutorials on the member page, so that is probably a good place to start.
• Get stuff put away from the trip.  The house looks a wreck.