Lucy's Vet Visit and Some New Collages and Movie Watching

You can read about Lucy's vet visit here. Real exciting that was.

New collage in the shop.

Nesting.


Baby Birds in the Nest.


We did some movie watching this weekend. Cheap movies from the Red Box, and I'm so glad our first choice was cheap because it was one of the worst movies I've ever seen and I couldn't even finish watching it, I just got way too annoyed.

What was the annoying movie? Due Date. STOOPID! And BORING! And a total waste of a dollar.

But last nights movies were way better. Keith missed most of the first movie because he fell asleep at 7pm, fully clothed and with his work boots on, all stretched out across the bed. It was The Kids are All Right and I really enjoyed it. I like both Annette Bening and Julianne Moore anyway, and this movie was very entertaining and well acted. Keith woke up in time for the next movie, The Town with Ben Affleck, and I really liked that movie too. Those were well worth $1.00 each.

Quiet Weekend

Firstly, go read today's cat blog post.

And now, What We Did Over The Weekend.

Saturday morning Keith went over to get a haircut since all the kids at work have been teasing him about looking like Bozo with his hair sticking out from under the sides of his hardhat. While he's driving over to get a haircut the check engine light comes on. The car had also been really hard to start for a few days so we were thinking that it was time to get a new battery. Unfortunately with these newer cars with all the computer stuff in them, you can't just pop a new battery in, all of the computer junk has to be reset or something. So, after his haircut he goes over to the dealership where we just finished getting windows fixed and tune ups and new brakes and all that other stuff, and he ends up sitting there for about 4 hours while they are putting in a new battery and figuring out why the check engine light is coming on. It has to do with a fuel injector or something that hasn't been working right for a while but has been readjusting itself to where it didn't need fixing just yet. But it will soon and it's not something they fix on a Saturday because Saturdays are just for oil changes and stuff. He would need to take a day off work and we are not going to have him do that for at least 3 or 4 months since he just barely went back to work and it really wouldn't look good to ask for a day off when you've only been back at work for a week.

Anyway, that pretty much took up his whole day. We hadn't been to the grocery store yet, so we thought we'd just go get something to eat instead of scrounging around the cupboards for some thrown together dinner. I suggested we try Sizzler since they have that salad bar and he's been wanting a steak dinner, so we drive across town to Sizzler and pull into the parking lot just in time to see about 50 people walking across the parking lot and going into Sizzler for dinner. I think they came from a tour bus or the nearby motel, but we really didn't want to wait in line behind 50 people for a so-so steak dinner and salad bar, so where to go? There is a Marie Callenders and a Mimi's Cafe just down the street, but there is also a place we had thought about trying called Coconut Joe's in a nearby shopping center.

We had to park halfway across the parking lot because Coconut Joe's is right next to the Dollar Theatre and everybody was going to the movies, but Coconut Joe's didn't look too busy. I had alway assumed it was a regular restaurant and thought it might be kind of expensive, but we were pleasantly surprised to find out that it's an order at the counter semi fast food hamburger place with beachy decor, fake palm trees, and old sixties surf movies playing on numerous TVs. I ordered fish and chips and Keith got the grilled chicken dinner. It was pretty good, and we'd probably eat there again, they did have a couple of salads on the menu and of course lots of hamburgers.

Then yesterday the weather turned rather chilly with clouds moving in and a chance of sprinkles. We did our errands, Target for our meds and cat food, then to the grocery store. We were getting kind of bored in the afternoon and didn't feel like working on any projects but couldn't think of much else to do. We thought about going to a movie but figured it would be way busy on a Sunday so we did the next best thing and rode the bikes up to Blockbuster to pick out a movie or two. We haven't rented movies from Blockbuster in years, and there were so many movies that we hadn't seen that it was hard to choose. We ended up with Solitary Man and The Green Zone and watched those and had a lazy afternoon.

What's Up This Week

Um, not a whole lot yet. It is supposed to get up to 107 degrees today. I set my alarm for 6:30 today in the hopes of getting out for a bike ride before it's 107 since I haven't been out yet this week. We went for our annuals at the doctors on Monday morning and then yesterday morning were at the blood lab at 8 am for our blood work. We didn't get out of there until almost 9. I hadn't been to the doctor in almost 2 years, last year being the year of Putting Everything Off because we were (and still are) extremely poor. After Keith getting his colonoscopy and lots of blood work last year that ended up costing us about $800.00 in co-pays I decided that nobody else was running up any medical bills last year.

We'll see what the insurance will or won't pay on this year. I hate insurance companies.

We rented a few movies this weekend, going to the rental box in Vons which had turned into a Blockbuster rental box (if you can't beat em, join em) which was only $1.00 per movie and didn't even charge sales tax like the Red Box does, but Blockbusters rental boxes take FOREVER to get the movie out and when you return it it takes FOREVER and you are standing there wondering if it is going to credit you with returning the movie or if you'll be paying $1.00 a day for it for the rest of your life.

Anyway, we watched Hot Tub Time Machine, silly silly movie but funny, funny at the same time. No Oscar winner there, but fun and silly to watch. Then we watched The Road, which was so totally opposite of Hot Tub Time Machine, very dark and depressing, but excellently acted. Depressing, though. If we have a nuclear war any time soon I don't think I'd want to survive and have to eat the cats first, children next.

After we took those two movies back we got Ghost Writer and Gamers, again totally opposite types of movies. Ghost Writer was really good and reminded me of Hitchcock movies from the sixties, the dark style of filming and the dramatic music and intrigue. Gamers was a little boring at parts, lots of blood and guts, but the premise of the whole thing of mind control and video games interesting.

What else? Oh, we had a good dinner last night, when I was trying to come up with the week's menu Keith suggested cheese ravioli, which I never think to make and I don't know why, because how easy is cooking up ravioli and warming up some spaghetti sauce anyway? I steamed a cauliflower to go with it, and how easy is that when you use the plastic steaming bags that you can buy in a box right next to the tin foils and plastic wraps. Put your vegetables in the steaming bag and into the microwave for a few minutes and they come out perfect and no pots and pans to clean up. So ravioli will definitely go into our dinner menu rotation from now on.

Did anyone else watch America's Got Talent last night? It's the semi-finals now, exciting stuff! I'm still kind of embarrassed that I got hooked on this show but it's the ONLY reality type show that I am hooked on, so...

That Prince Poppycock is one good looking man in real life. If he doesn't get a gig being Prince Poppycock on a stage somewhere he will get one as an underwear model or posing for the covers of romance novels, that's for sure. I'm also partial to the one singer who did the Joe Cocker song last night, he's pretty good. And the ballroom dancer kids, they're fun to watch. I was really disappointed in the goth magician's act last night, the first time I saw him I thought he'd be going somewhere but after last night the only place he'll be going is back home. And that poor girl singer from YouTube, sorry, you just don't have a good enough voice.

Can't wait for next week's show!

Long Weekend- Yawn

We had a rather ho-hum holiday weekend. We didn't barbecue anything for the Fourth of July because it's not payday yet and our cupboard is kind of bare plus we don't even HAVE a barbecue if we even had anything to barbecue on it. We thought about going up to Tehachapi for their Hot Dog Festival and Fireworks, what could be more festive than hot dogs, right? But we had no money for the extra gas to get up to Tehachapi, so maybe next year we'll go.

We did rent some movies from the whatever company it is that has a box at Vons, it's not Red Box, and even though the box is red if you try to return a Red Box movie there it won't work as we found out a few months ago. Duh. We watched The Book of Eli which was totally stupid, and Crazy Heart, which was good, and then actually rode the bikes to Vons to return them the next day. We haven't ridden the bikes in a long long time but it was fun to get back on them even though by the time we got ourselves together and the bikes cleaned up it was getting really really hot. When we returned those movies we got two more, The Blind Side, which we both liked, and It's Complicated, which was not all that great. At least you're only spending a buck for a stinker movie, not like if you had spent $50.00 on admission and popcorn for a lousy movie.

We almost forgot that it was Fourth of July while watching The Blind Side until I heard banging and popping noises and the cats started running around the house going WHAT IS THAT NOISE!?! and we remembered what day it was. We only had a few houses on our street who did fireworks, so it wasn't too noisy.

Last night after dinner we took another bike ride around the neighborhood and it was really nice and pleasant with the sun going down and the day cooling off. Our neighborhood is in a big area called Riverlakes, there is a lake here that we never see because it's in the rich part of the neighborhood, but no river unless you count the irrigation canal. We live in the 'bad side of the tracks' ghetto next to walmart part of the neighborhood, and as you ride the bikes up towards the golf course gated community part the houses start getting bigger and bigger and nicer and nicer.

Then it's back to our ghetto street.