So today brother J came by for the afternoon. He worked the weekend, so has a few days off, mid-week. He and his wife, also initial J, did a course for Emergency Medical Technicians, with exam last Friday. They both passed; he found out by logging in to the state web site just after he arrived.

So toxicfur and I took the opportunity to go to The City on an Adventure.

We got haircuts in the mall.

And then we went to Office Depot to buy paper and a few CD-Rs (since the tunes we brought along mostly need burning to disk before we can play them in the vehicles we have available to us). And to a grocery store, to buy wine.

A couple weeks ago, now, we went out to eat, while tf-mom was in the hospice care center. They had wine sampler trees on the menu; 3 2-oz glasses of selected wines. The amount seemed about right, and one we picked had Menage a Trois, Bogle Petite Serah, and something from Rex Goliath. We didn't much like the Rooster Wine, but the other two were quite nice. And we found them both at the grocery store in The City. The closest thing we could find in our local town was Bogle Merlot, which was nice, but not that nice.

And then to Port City Java for some grounded coffees to take home. All the lights in the Gents' were out. And the Barristas on duty didn't seem to know where the spares were kept. This a literal stone's throw from Corporate Headquarters, so you'd think...

Can you tell we've been in the small town a bit too long? It was actually exciting, going to an actual city with traffic and stuff.

Home again. Warm up leftover lasagna; the stuff microwaves very nicely, and also goes very well with the Menage a Trois. Tonight, tf-mom seems to be feeling pretty well. She's tired but alert, and able to follow some of my allegedly witty stories if they're not too involved.

I now have about a week and a half of annual leave left. I guess we should decide pretty soon if I should stay or go home for a while, to save some for later. I think perhaps tf-mom is trying to hold on to see her first grand-kid, who's due around 1 Feb. She's pretty much the same, from day to day, as far as I can see (from my seat, admittedly, in the second tier of care-givers). So, I dunno. We go on, day to day.

I have a story for the WFC about 1/3 written. I have a plot outlined in my head; I just have to find some time to write it. Oddly, I'm not doing anything else, much, but still.

I am trying to learn some music; and decided today that it'd be easier if I could print out the scores (I have pdfs for most of it). So I hooked tf-mom's printer up to my iBook, it seemed to know what it had, so tried printing one. Nice, 4 page score, with @ and $ and % where the heads of the notes should be. Apparently they're some font or other that wasn't translating. With help from notafurry and lm on #husi, I download an absurdly huge driver, installed (and rebooted, thanks be to HP, the merciful, the almighty), and, well, it works now. I hope the computer will still talk to the HP Laserjet we have at home (which is a different model).

Anyway, I printed some stuff. Hence the need to replace the paper I used.

Tonight's excitement is tf and tf-mom watching American Idol. They're doing auditions, which are really painful to watch, unless you're into watching people who think they can sing embarrassing themselves in public. Maybe I'll work on my WFC story.