Backwoods Sports Bar ; Silk Road lecture ; 'A Serious Man' ; IKEA trip
(posted from home)
(This post covers 1-5 March, 2010)
------------------------
Friday, 5 March-
This morning we both wanted to get out of the house. We drove down to the Baltimore IKEA to look for a table for Mom and Dad. As I've been running errands this week I've stopped at several furniture stores and just wasn't seeing anything even close to what we want. Then I thought of IKEA's mix-and-match tables. You select a table top, leg-base, and post in the combination you want. They also have some interesting designs for saving space. We bought one years ago that stores against the wall with a 2 x 3 top but it easily converts to a 3 x 4 table for four. Very slick!
On our visit today we found several good candidates and I shot video clips of them. But our shopping was cut short by a call from our real estate agent in Michigan. We had learned earlier this week that the deal on the house had fallen through just before the settlement date when the prospective buyer was unable to secure financing. But today we have two new offers. Labashi took the offer info down and we cut our shopping trip short and headed to Bethany to discuss them with Mom and Dad.
After talking them over we called the agent and made a counter-offer, then had a nice, long dinner with Mom and Dad at Bethany's fancy dining room.
After supper we did a few little things in the apartment. We mounted two light fixtures and swapped out one of Mom's chairs for a storage cabinet for her books.
Back home, we watched an episode of 'The Closer', Season Four.
-------------------------------------
Thursday, 4 March-
This morning I had to drive up to Camp Hill for an appointment with a dermatologist. I've been trying to fight off a minor-but-irritating rash but it doesn't seem to respond to the solutions of my Google-powered self-diagnosis. Time to see a professional.
That afternoon I picked up my prescription and did some grocery shopping, then returned home and caught up the blog.
That evening we watched 'Survivor- Heroes and Villains' and two episodes of 'Breaking Bad'.
-----------------------------------
Wednesday, 3 March-
This morning Labashi drove off to her annual physical exam so I took advantage of her absence to install a new webam on her computer. After seeing the great picture and sound from Dad's new webcam, I happened upon a deal on the same camera on Dealnews.com and bought one. Installation was very easy and the camera works well with Skype but I'll have to wait until Labashi gets home to see how much improvement there is in the shot.
I had an errand to run in at Wal-mart so took care of that and hit the Starbucks and had a nice chat with my barista-buddy Jackie. On the way home I picked up a DVD and we watched it after supper.
Our movie tonight was 'A Serious Man', the latest Coen Brothers film. This one is a bit odd in that it doesn't wrap up in a traditional way. It seems to leave you hanging. But after seeing the extras and listening to the Coen brothers comments, we came away with a better understanding of what we had seen.
We also watched the pilot epidsode of the TV series 'Breaking Bad' on Netflix DVD. A high-school chemistry teacher finds himself under tremendous personal and money pressures and decides to use his chemistry skills to advantage. The plotline will sound familiar to 'Weeds' fans but the question for us is this: does the writing hold up after we get familiar with the basic idea?
-----------------------------------
Tuesday, 2 March-
I spent much of the morning writing up instructions for Dad for using Skype Video and for the GPS, then wrote an email reply to a former hiking buddy who had recently contacted me.
Late in the day we drove to Shippensburg to attend a lecture at the university. This was a lecture on the Silk Road by a Yale professor who was visiting to give the History Department's annual World History Lecture. The professor was Valerie Hansen, who has written extensively about the Silk Road and Chinese history and has spent nearly a decade in China. She is writing a book called 'A New History of the Silk Road'. Her presentation tonight suggested the Silk Road wasn't as busy as previously thought.
Labashi was very interested in the presentation because of a paper she had written on Greek trade while she was in college as a returning student in the mid-Eighties. Unfortunately, an hour lecture is just long enough to raise a lot more questions than it answers so we left with mixed feelings. We understood the point of the lecture, it's just that we have so much more to learn before we could have any sense that we understand what the Silk Road trade was about.
-----------------------------------
Monday, 1 March-
This morning I did some work on Labashi's PC to be sure Windows, Explorer, and the Adobe products are all up to the latest patch levels. That also led me to upgrade Skype to the latest version, which, in turn, led me to call several family members on this subject.
Yesterday I sent everyone an email to let them know Mom and Dad now have Skype Video and I'm encouraging others to set it up so they will be able to have video chats in the future. My thoughts o this aren't particularly well-formed but I'm hoping video chats will help the family members who lived close to them and therefore would now have a ten-hour drive to see them to keep in touch.
Around noon I received a panic call from Labashi. She needed a folder for Mom's long-awaited appointment with an orthopedics specialist and had forgotten the folder. With the appointment only a half-hour away I realized I'd just barely make it and that only if everything went well. Sure enough I saw there was a traffic jam on the expressway. I jumped off at the nearby exit and took another route but kept getting behind slow drivers. By the time I made it to the office I was late but fortunately they were still in the waiting room; I had made it just in time.
I had rushed up there but took my good old time going home. I stopped at the local Starbucks and read the paper, then browsed through the Borders magazine racks and then checked out the furniture department at Bon-Ton and nearby Gish's Furniture store, fruitlessly searching for a small table for Mom and Dad's apartment.
On the way home I stopped at a new restaurant/bar called the Backwoods Sports Bar to check out the menu. Labashi and I had talked of dropping in there but she's not enthusiastic about either the 'Backwoods' part of the name nor the 'Sports Bar' part so I thought I'd better reconnoiter.
I had a good time there. I met the owner and talked at some length about the place and its history as the former Bumper Bob's Seafood Restaurant and as Gia's. I enjoyed the stories and when I later told Labashi, she was jealous she had missed hearing the stories from the owner directly. In any case, she's now interested in going there sometime soon.
But we already had plans for this evening. We had supper at the Hillside.
*************** END OF POST ************
(posted from home)
(This post covers 1-5 March, 2010)
------------------------
Friday, 5 March-
This morning we both wanted to get out of the house. We drove down to the Baltimore IKEA to look for a table for Mom and Dad. As I've been running errands this week I've stopped at several furniture stores and just wasn't seeing anything even close to what we want. Then I thought of IKEA's mix-and-match tables. You select a table top, leg-base, and post in the combination you want. They also have some interesting designs for saving space. We bought one years ago that stores against the wall with a 2 x 3 top but it easily converts to a 3 x 4 table for four. Very slick!
On our visit today we found several good candidates and I shot video clips of them. But our shopping was cut short by a call from our real estate agent in Michigan. We had learned earlier this week that the deal on the house had fallen through just before the settlement date when the prospective buyer was unable to secure financing. But today we have two new offers. Labashi took the offer info down and we cut our shopping trip short and headed to Bethany to discuss them with Mom and Dad.
After talking them over we called the agent and made a counter-offer, then had a nice, long dinner with Mom and Dad at Bethany's fancy dining room.
After supper we did a few little things in the apartment. We mounted two light fixtures and swapped out one of Mom's chairs for a storage cabinet for her books.
Back home, we watched an episode of 'The Closer', Season Four.
-------------------------------------
Thursday, 4 March-
This morning I had to drive up to Camp Hill for an appointment with a dermatologist. I've been trying to fight off a minor-but-irritating rash but it doesn't seem to respond to the solutions of my Google-powered self-diagnosis. Time to see a professional.
That afternoon I picked up my prescription and did some grocery shopping, then returned home and caught up the blog.
That evening we watched 'Survivor- Heroes and Villains' and two episodes of 'Breaking Bad'.
-----------------------------------
Wednesday, 3 March-
This morning Labashi drove off to her annual physical exam so I took advantage of her absence to install a new webam on her computer. After seeing the great picture and sound from Dad's new webcam, I happened upon a deal on the same camera on Dealnews.com and bought one. Installation was very easy and the camera works well with Skype but I'll have to wait until Labashi gets home to see how much improvement there is in the shot.
I had an errand to run in at Wal-mart so took care of that and hit the Starbucks and had a nice chat with my barista-buddy Jackie. On the way home I picked up a DVD and we watched it after supper.
Our movie tonight was 'A Serious Man', the latest Coen Brothers film. This one is a bit odd in that it doesn't wrap up in a traditional way. It seems to leave you hanging. But after seeing the extras and listening to the Coen brothers comments, we came away with a better understanding of what we had seen.
We also watched the pilot epidsode of the TV series 'Breaking Bad' on Netflix DVD. A high-school chemistry teacher finds himself under tremendous personal and money pressures and decides to use his chemistry skills to advantage. The plotline will sound familiar to 'Weeds' fans but the question for us is this: does the writing hold up after we get familiar with the basic idea?
-----------------------------------
Tuesday, 2 March-
I spent much of the morning writing up instructions for Dad for using Skype Video and for the GPS, then wrote an email reply to a former hiking buddy who had recently contacted me.
Late in the day we drove to Shippensburg to attend a lecture at the university. This was a lecture on the Silk Road by a Yale professor who was visiting to give the History Department's annual World History Lecture. The professor was Valerie Hansen, who has written extensively about the Silk Road and Chinese history and has spent nearly a decade in China. She is writing a book called 'A New History of the Silk Road'. Her presentation tonight suggested the Silk Road wasn't as busy as previously thought.
Labashi was very interested in the presentation because of a paper she had written on Greek trade while she was in college as a returning student in the mid-Eighties. Unfortunately, an hour lecture is just long enough to raise a lot more questions than it answers so we left with mixed feelings. We understood the point of the lecture, it's just that we have so much more to learn before we could have any sense that we understand what the Silk Road trade was about.
-----------------------------------
Monday, 1 March-
This morning I did some work on Labashi's PC to be sure Windows, Explorer, and the Adobe products are all up to the latest patch levels. That also led me to upgrade Skype to the latest version, which, in turn, led me to call several family members on this subject.
Yesterday I sent everyone an email to let them know Mom and Dad now have Skype Video and I'm encouraging others to set it up so they will be able to have video chats in the future. My thoughts o this aren't particularly well-formed but I'm hoping video chats will help the family members who lived close to them and therefore would now have a ten-hour drive to see them to keep in touch.
Around noon I received a panic call from Labashi. She needed a folder for Mom's long-awaited appointment with an orthopedics specialist and had forgotten the folder. With the appointment only a half-hour away I realized I'd just barely make it and that only if everything went well. Sure enough I saw there was a traffic jam on the expressway. I jumped off at the nearby exit and took another route but kept getting behind slow drivers. By the time I made it to the office I was late but fortunately they were still in the waiting room; I had made it just in time.
I had rushed up there but took my good old time going home. I stopped at the local Starbucks and read the paper, then browsed through the Borders magazine racks and then checked out the furniture department at Bon-Ton and nearby Gish's Furniture store, fruitlessly searching for a small table for Mom and Dad's apartment.
On the way home I stopped at a new restaurant/bar called the Backwoods Sports Bar to check out the menu. Labashi and I had talked of dropping in there but she's not enthusiastic about either the 'Backwoods' part of the name nor the 'Sports Bar' part so I thought I'd better reconnoiter.
I had a good time there. I met the owner and talked at some length about the place and its history as the former Bumper Bob's Seafood Restaurant and as Gia's. I enjoyed the stories and when I later told Labashi, she was jealous she had missed hearing the stories from the owner directly. In any case, she's now interested in going there sometime soon.
But we already had plans for this evening. We had supper at the Hillside.
*************** END OF POST ************
posted by Bezabor&Labashi | 23:59
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