Name that Pub!

Here's our new basement bar! We need a name and we're welcoming any suggestions from the blog readership. We like names that juxtapose two concepts that aren't normally connected with each other, like "The Lamb and Oak", or "The Toad and Sweater". We also like unexpected noun-adjective combinations, like "The Happy Trout", or participle-noun combinations like "The Flying Daffodil". Just post a comment with your ideas!

Police Log

Stolen Drink Shipment Police are still investigating a theft report received Dec. 10 at 2:45 p.m. According to the report, someone had stolen a 56-carton shipment of chocolate milk from a local elementary school. The school's cafeteria supervisor said that the theft has been "off and on" since October. No suspects were named in the police report. Disorderly Conduct Police received a report Dec. 4 at 9:55 a.m. that a woman was screaming and cursing at emplyees of an animal shelter on Ridge Pike. When police arrived, they learned that the woman had applied for pet adoption six days before and was furious that she had to wait one more day. Police asked the woman to leave the shelter without further incident, but she resisted. The woman was cited for disorderly conduct and permanently barrred from the shelter.

To-do list

Final preparations are being made for Sarah's arrival/Christmas. Here's the to-do list: 

remove extremely large dead tree from front of yard (see posts on "Tree excitement" and "Good Tree/Bad Tree")

clean, discard any dust bunnies larger than a human head (only if clearly visible in dim winter light)

throw out leftovers from refrigerator that were here when Sarah left in September

set up new bar in basement

return Sarah's stuff that we've been borrowing to her room

check to make sure Planty (Sarah's plant) is still alive yes, it is

lose 5 pounds in case of possible holiday overeating

scrape algae from glass of goldfish tank

Christmas cards

Well, Sarah will be here in a few hours, and there are still a few things to do, so...

Trees: The good and the bad

The Good Tree: Here's our Christmas tree, all decorated with new LED lights, which seem to be unusually blue. Peter is tantalizing Sandy with a dog treat to get her to stay  in the picture. The Bad Tree: Here's the tree that fell over on Sunday, after the highway people moved it out of the road and into our yard. Supposedly the tree  service was going to get rid  of it on Monday  and Tuesday. They started working on Monday, cut off a few  branches, and  then left because "they had a lot of storm work to do".  Um, well...wasn't this storm work? I seem to remember a storm. We haven't seen them since.  It kind of reminds me of Sarah's adventures with the Internet service/heat/electricity in her apartment (see her blog for details), although fortunately not on that scale.

Tree Excitment

About 6:00 today we discovered that the big sycamore tree between our house and the neighbors had completely fallen over and was blocking Gravers Road. We had a bad rainstorm last night and the ground must have been really wet. I have mixed feelings about that tree because it was rather attractive in some ways, but it was always dropping big branches all over the yard. It was a very very large tree. We called 911 and the police came and closed off the road. Peter's friend's car was actually parked along the street there, but luckily the tree had missed the car by about a foot! The highway department is getting it off the road now. Peter and Rich are outside supervising. I am performing the important service of updating the blog. The tree service and the insurance company  have been alerted.

misc.

Cat Naps: As the weather gets colder, Whitey and Olive seem to spend more time curling up together on their chair. Humans are rarely  allowed on this chair when the weather is cold and the cats need it. If I try to sit on the chair, Whitey will look at me in a polite but  pitiful and exasperated way until I go away,  even though there's actually plenty of room for both of us. Police Log: Vandalism in Conshohocken Police received a vandalism report from a resident of the 500 block of Spring Mill Avenue at 9:13 p.m Nov. 4. A neighbor told police he watched two female juveniles walk over to his neighbor's bench and take two pumpkins. The neighbor told police he knocked on the window and the two juveniles dropped the pumpkins and ran down Spring Mill Avenue and up Sixth Avenue. Police checked the area but could not locate the juveniles.

Thanksgiving

Here we are in our dining room just about to sit down and eat our Thanksgiving dinner. It was a very warm day (70 degrees!) and so we were able to barbecue our turkey outside, which turned out great. Besides the turkey, we had green bean casserole, wild rice, glazed carrots, stuffing with smoked oysters, sweet potato hash browns, cranberry sauce (whole cranberry sauce AND jellied cranberry sauce (with lines!)) pumpkin pie made with a pumpkin from the garden, American sparkling wine (méthode champagnoise) and, in honor of Sarah, with a nod to France, Beaujolais Nouveau, 2007. Well, we always have Beaujolais Nouveau, but anyway... We followed dinner with a viewing of Saturday Night Live commercial parodies and a showing of "Slacker". Sandy was very grateful for the nice turkey scraps she got. Whitey appreciated a small serving of whipped cream. Olive  was grateful because she had a choice among three warm and very immobile laps for her post-dinner nap. We elected not to get up for the 5 a.m. Black Friday opening at Boscov's.

Japan Update

On Saturday night after the meeting, we visited a Shinto temple on Enoshima Island, which was very pretty. It seemed to have some Buddhist elements, too, because there was a big statue of what could only have been a Buddha. The big ceramic bag in the picture is for donations. There were supposed to be some interesting shops on Enoshima Island, but they were closed by the time we got there. There's also a famous lighthouse,but I think that was closed, too. After Enoshima Island, we went to Fujisawa for dinner, and ate in a nice Japanese restaurant. I was sitting with a Finnish professor from the University of Tampere (Kristina) who had lived in Japan at one time. She introduced us to "Shabu Shabu", which is a kind of Japanese fondue or hot pot, where several people cook their food together in a communal pot. The picture shows Kristina and Doug at work on the Shabu  Shabu. Our pot had fish and some vegetables in it, along with some soy sauce kind of thing and some peanut sauce for dipping the cooked pieces. It was pretty tasty, but kind of plain, because the cooking liquid was just plain water. The room was a traditional Japanese dining room, with low tables and a recess in the floor under the table to put your feet. They also had little cubbyholes outside the room for your shoes, which you don't wear in the room. After dinner, we were going to go back to our respective hotels. Unfortunately the train to Yokohama, where Kristina was staying, had stopped running (this is about 11:30), and Kristina didn't have any way to get back. Luckily, my room was a double with only me in it, so she came back with me and stayed in my room. She even happened to have her toothbrush with her, which was a piece of good luck. She was a handy person to have around because she could speak and even read Japanese. In the morning, on the way to the train station, I finally caught a glimpse of Mout Fuji! It looked just like its pictures,and was extremely beautiful, with a nice snowcap. Unfortunatly I didn't have time to take a picture, because I was a little late for the train, so I didn't want to stop. I tried taking a picture later from the train, but I don't think it turned out. Ok, I didn't take this picture, but this is pretty much what it looked like. I had to make a train connection to get from the local train to the Narita Airport Express, which I was deathly afraid of screwing up. I even got my courage together to ask a Japanese gentleman if this was the train to Narita -- my first foray into Japanese other than "hello" and "thank you". It actually was the train to Narita, so I got to the airport safely. Side note: Cultural observation about many Japanese people -- I don't think they understand the concept of "person who doesn't speak your language", because they would often keep chatting merrily away to me and the other people in my group, while receiving back only blank, clueless stares. They never seemed disappointed that I wasn't understanding them, though. The flight from Tokyo to Dallas was pretty uneventful, except that my in-seat entertainment system didn't work and I finished my book (a novel about Cleopatra) before we even took off. I started out by memorizing the Sky Mall catalog,(the extra-thick Christmas edition). I'm always amazed at the stuff you don't need that's offered for sale in the Sky Mall catalog. For example, a pet dish with a cover that automatically lifts up when the pet approaches, which is supposed to keep the pet food fresher ($34.99). Another example would be a copy of Harry Potter's wand for $35. Last but certainly not least, the One Ring (just a copy!) was available for sale for $129. Thank goodness Sauron didn't have a Sky Mall catalog. After finishing the SkyMall catalog, the only thing left to do was sleep, which I did more or less successfully. My new earphones did an incredible job at blocking out the airplane noise and they also sounded great. I was even able to watch part of "The Fellowship of the Ring" on Packy (my PDA) and hear everything perfectly. It turned out that my flight was the pilot's last flight before retiring. Apparently there's an aviation tradition that when a pilot lands for the last time before retirement, fire trucks come out and spray arcs over the plane, which was pretty cool. By the way, the landing was probably the smoothest I've ever experienced. It seems that thirty years of practice helps. We landed in Dallas and I went through customs and immigration without any problems. While I was waiting for my suitcase I was visited by a very cute drug-sniffing dog. He smelled my bag, seemed to notice my package of green tea rice balls (labeled "for your happy tea time"), took another sniff, and then moved on. It must be hard work for a dog to ignore interesting smells that aren't what they're trained to look for. After we got on the plane to Philadelphia, the captain came on the loudspeaker and told us that we would be delayed by an hour and twenty minutes because of bad weather in New York. We actually ended up with a slightly shorter delay, and got to Philadelphia around 6. It's nice to be back!

Japanese Restaurant, ISO ATM

The restaurant we went to last night was interesting. I think it was supposed to be a typical casual Japanese restaurant. The menu had some unusual items, for example, it offered horse sashimi (raw horse meat), fried squid guts and squid testicles. Anthony Bourdain would have liked it. Someone ordered the horse sashimi and said that it tasted like "raw meat". I skipped that special treat. The other thing about the restaurant was that everyone there was smoking like crazy. It was impossible to enjoy eating with all the smoke. Still no sign of Mt. Fuji, though. Every day has been too cloudy. Supposedly you can get a really good look at it on a clear day from here. That was really disappointing. The room that we're having our meeting in is amazing -- it has three enormous screens. The big one looks like it's about 10 feet high, and it has two smaller ones on either side. I feel like I"m negotiating an international treaty or something. Here are some pictures of the building at Keio University where we're meeting,  the W3C office,  and the meeting room. We've all been on a constant quest to find an ATM machine that accepts American bank cards. Sometimes they're closed, other times they just spit out our cards with a flurry of Japanese receipts that probably say something like "are you kidding?". I did manage to get some money at the airport, but I didn't get quite enough, so hopefully I can find an ATM and get some more. Someone said that the ATM's at 7-11 take American cards (yes, 7-11 is everywhere here). We'll see. Tonight we're supposed to go to an interesting place called "Enoshima Island".

Hello from Japan!

I boarded the flight to Tokyo in Chicago. Here's a nice picture of Chicago that I took from the plane. The plane was fairly full, and unfortunately I had someone sitting next to me. She was a young American woman who was on her way back to Taipei. At first she was quite chatty, which I found alarming at the start of a 12-hour flight, but she stopped talking after a while (see the reference to "Talkative Airplane Seatmate" defined as the lowest level of companionship in the posting on "Aunt Gretchen's Visit"). She was also a little on the chubby side, but fortunately not so much as to intrude into my seat. It was also annoying that the person in front of me put his seat all the way back at the beginning of the flight and left it that way for the next twelve hours. The flight was extremely long and boring. It was interesting because, since we just kept going west, it was light the whole time. It was also interesting because it was almost all over land, going over northern Canada, Alsaka (I think I flew right over Rachel's head in Fairbanks) and then down along the coast of Siberia for the last few hours. You wouldn't think that going to Japan would involve mostly flying over land. I watched pretty much everything available in the way of entertainment, which there wasn't much of. I did learn to enjoy "Ugly Betty" and "Everyone Hates Chris". We had two bad meals of chicken with rice and glop; plain glop in one case and curry glop in the second case. I was kind of hoping for sushi, but there were only a couple of small sushi rolls on the side accompanying the first glop. We also had a snack of a dried up roll with ham and cheese on it. The airport in Tokyo is nice, with plenty of English signs. It took me awhile to figure out the ATM machines. They wouldn't give me any money. I finally figured out that the problem was that I was asking for 300,000 yen, which I thought was $300, but it was really $3000. I also encountered the traditional squatter toilet. Thank goodness Rachel had prepared me for that with her wise advice. I did notice, after it was too late, that the bathroom also provided plenty of Western toilets. I guess the squatter was just provided for the older, more traditional, Japanese lady who doesn't believe in new-fangled gadgets. I managed to get on the correct bus to Tsujido station, where I was met by my colleage Kazuyuki. He took me to a nice casual Japanese student hangout where I had an enormous pile of sashimi, with miso soup and rice. The sashimi was fine, although it wasn't any better than what you get in America. It was, however, much bigger and much cheaper than what you get in America. Kazuyuki is famous for his work ethic, and I was afraid he was going to make me do some work after dinner (this was about 10 p.m. after being up for 24 hours or so) but he took me back to the guest house. Well, he did try to get me to take a walking tour of Keio University, but I told him I was too tired. Kazuyuki had done a lot of work on our workshop, so I gave him a t-shirt that registers wi-fi signals, and I think he was very impressed. Today I got up at 8:00 for breakfast, which was a croissant and something like a dinner roll, like a French style of breakfast. Luckily I had brought an "oatmeal to go", which I ate for "second breakfast". Then I went back to sleep. I almost had a crisis when I tried to take a shower and the water wouldn't get hot. I had already given up and washed my hair with cold water when I realized there was a separate switch for the hot water heater. There was a thermostat on the water faucet going up to 50 degrees C. I don't know how hot that is in F, but I do know it's really, really hot. I turned the temperature down to 30, and it was still really hot. Well, that's about it for now. It's really warm here. It feels like it's well over 70. All the clothes I brought are too warm. Maybe I can find a souvenir t-shrt.

Sandy Gets the Paper

I thought you would like to see Sandy showing off her skills at getting the paper. She's been doing this for many years, but as you can see, she hasn't lost her knack!

Peter's accepted at Purchase!

We just saw the news last night on Peter's "My Purchase" area of the Purchase website! We're so excited! We celebrated by watching a Seinfeld rerun (the one where George refuses to give his ATM code to Susan). I guess we'll have to think of something a little more exciting for a real celebration. We'll fill in the details when we know more.

Dartboards in Peril and Police Log

Dartboards in Peril: Apparently darts in pubs in England are becoming less common as pubs become more upscale and join the "gastropub" movement. Sarah, I hope there are still darts in Irish pubs and that you're getting a chance to play on your trip. Police Log, Plymouth Meeting Journal: On October 20, police observed a vehicle pass by them at a  high rate of speed with an expired registration. Traveling  into the Borough of Conshohocken the operator  of the  vehicle hit a curb and went into a wall when the operator  exited the vehicle and took off on foot. He was caught a  short time later trying to stuff items into a drain pipe.

October 27 Update

Aunt Gretchen sent us a nice book about darts as a thank-you gift for her stay. It has all the rules and strategies  for different dart games and tips on how to  improve your game.  We had an enormous amount of rain yesterday and today, but it's clearing up now. I don't think I've ever seen the creek that high. Here's a picture. If you haven't ever seen our creek, I should  point out that the normal amount of water it contains ranges from "damp" to "just visible". We saw a great movie last night, called "Insomnia" with Al Pacino and Robin Williams, accompanied by  takeout from the Lucky Village.  Al Pacino is a detective who goes to Alaska in the summer to solve a murder. He has trouble sleeping because  it's so light out, and well, maybe he has something on his mind, too. I don't think I've ever seen anyone look so haggard as Al Pacino after a few days of no sleep. I hope Rachel has mastered the trick of sleeping in Alaska in the summer. We're also watching the old BBC mini-series of "Pride and Predjudice" with a young Colin Firth as Mr. Darcy. We think Peter has sent in everything he needs for his application to Purchase, so it shouldn't be too long before we hear, because they have a rolling admission process. He still might have to write an essay -- we're still checking on that. I finished "The Idiot's Guide to Football". It was very informative, although I have a feeling I won't  be able to use a lot of the  advice about what to eat and how to train to make it in the NFL.  It was bittersweet to be able to recognize the "shotgun  formation" in last week's Eagles/Bears  game, because it was one  of their last, desperate, plays after a big screwup right at the end that cost them the game. I didn't need my book to recognize the screwup, though. The problem was a classic --"letting the Bears take the ball as far as they wanted without trying very hard to stop them".

Sarah, do not read this!

Your worst nightmare was the subject of an article in the Philadelphia Inquirer today.  I'll just say that it involves fish, not the fish leaving their world, but you entering theirs. It seems that people pay for this. Do not follow this link!

Aunt Gretchen's Visit

During her business trip to King of Prussia, Aunt Gretchen, a Diamond Charter Club Member, enjoyed the many one-of-a-kind amenities of our establishment. In this picture, Aunt Gretchen arrives. Unfortunately, she was plagued by a persistent paparazza throughout her visit. Here she tries to fend off the paparazza, without success. Aunt Gretchen started off her visit by checking a few emails in the Business Center. After working hard on organizing family photos, Aunt Gretchen and Debbie took a ping pong break in the Fitness Center. We finished off our "workout" with a brisk game of darts. We had dinner at Cin Cin (our favorite Chinese restaurant) on Wednesday. On Thursday, we had dinner here (pasta salad), served on the Turner china, and accompanied by a bottle of Rich's birthday wine, Chimney Rock Napa Cabernet, 2003. Possibly the high point of Aunt Gretchen's visit was a trip to the Montgomery Animal Hospital, where Sandy's sutures were removed and Whitey's weight was checked (he's 7 pounds, 7 ounces, Aunt Gretchen's birth weight! He's supposed to get up to 9 pounds. With a height of 12 inches, his BMI is now 36, which would be morbidly obese for a human. I guess that formula doesn't apply to cats.) We also met a cute puppy coincidentally named "Ernie". We also did the Christmas drawing so that everyone would have plenty of time to shop! Aunt Gretchen is shown here reviewing the list. For taking Rich and me out to dinner at Cin Cin, Aunt Gretchen was awarded an extra 10,000 bonus points toward a future stay.

Plymouth News: A 14 year-old Plymouth boy was caught planning a school shooting at Plymouth-Whitemarsh High School. His mother was also charged with buying guns for him, including an assault rifle! He was actually home-schooled and he wasn't a student. He had been taken out of school  when he  was a freshman because he was getting bullied. I guess he wanted to get back at the kids who were bullying him. It's hard to believe that kind of thing could happen here.  Aunt Gretchen's Visit Update: On a more pleasant note, the Executive Guest Suite is now fully stocked with snacks from the four major snack groups, chocolate, sweet, salty, and alcoholic.  An auxiliary snack station has also been located in the Fitness Center so that Aunt Gretchen won't have to go more than a few feet at any time for a snack. Also, algae has been scraped off the glass in the goldfish tank in honor of Gretchen's visit. Darts: The dart board is installed and we've played a few rounds. We printed the official rules from the Darts Authority so that we know how to play properly. One important rule is that you're not allowed to wear jeans or "training shoes" (that is, sneakers) during a match. Purchase: We visited Purchase College on Friday to see if Peter wanted to apply there. It's north of New York City,  about 2 1/2 hours from here. It's very art-oriented, but there are also a lot of liberal arts students. The students seemed to be pretty diverse. Peter sent in his application today. They have rolling admissions, so they should be able to decide fairly soon after they get all his information. The Eagles: The Eagles won today, 16-9 over the Jets. This is only the second game they've won this year. Police Log: Police received a theft report at 7:19 p.m. October 1 involving a car parked in the 100 block of W. 10th Avenue in Conshohocken. A woman told police two hubcaps were stolen from her car, a 2004 Nissan Xterra. She believes the hubcaps were taken during the previous night.

Darts, Sandy, Purchase

Sandy had her neck lumps removed on Monday. She came home yesterday, and she's doing great! She had a drain yesterday, which I think was annoying her a little bit, but it got taken out today. They'll send the lumps out for a biopsy to see if they're cancer; hopefully they aren't. The dart board arrived today. It's really nice, but almost all the hanging hardware was wrong. For example, a lot of the screws were way too short. Maybe they just put in the wrong hardware package. Anyway, this necessitated a late night trip to Lowes for new screws. For dart inspiration, you can check out the Superstars of Darts website. On Friday, we're going to check out Purchase College, which Peter is thinking about. It's just about 20 miles north of New York City, which should take us about 2-3 hours to get to, depending on how lost we get. Dad's already lining up podcasts, and we also have the Late Middle Ages lectures. 

Home Improvements, Phillies, Police Log

Home Improvements: The new dart board for the basement is on the way! The Phillies: The Phillies lost the first two games of their playoffs with the Rockies. They only have to lose one more game before they're out. The next game is Saturday night in Colorado. I think it would start at 3:30 a.m. in St. Brieuc if you're interested. Police Log: A man reported a credit card fraud to police at 12:41 p.m. September 27. The man told police he was checking his mail the previous night and noticed unauthorized purchases on his credit card bill. There were seven unauthorized purchases totaling $211. The man reviewed the statement and saw the purchases were for access to "porn related" web sites. The man noticed for the past two months, his credit card bill was arriving with slits on the address window. He suspects someone may have cut the envelope and collected his card information to use on the internet, according to a police report.

Aunt Gretchen's Stay in Plymouth

On her visit to Plymouth, Aunt Gretchen will stay in the well-appointed "Executive Guest Room". As a charter member of our "Diamond Club"  she will find the room well stocked with a wide variety of complementary snacks. The Executive Guest Room also offers the Media Center, where she can watch television, listen to the radio, or play music. Our world renowned "Comedy Collection" of DVD's,  including not  only the usual Seinfeld and Frasier offerings, but the rare "Mr. Bean" and "Mr. Peepers" selections, will also be available. Our well-equipped fitness center, including our brand new "5 pound weights", is also available for use 24 hours at no charge. The fitness center offers a treadmill, weights, ping-pong, and a LCD projector that projects a 60" TV image, to reduce the chances of death by boredom during exercise. As a special amenity, we will provide three of Aunt Gretchen's own relatives for companionship at the Diamond "Bon Vivant" level! Note that this is several levels above the companionship  provided by our basic "Talkative Airplane Seatmate" level.  Use of the pets, Sandy, Whitey, and Olive, is free! Our cockapoo, Sandy, is available for Aunt Gretchen's dog walking pleasure 24/7. Aunt Gretchen will earn 10,000 points toward a future stay for her visit.

The Phillies Won!

The Phillies won their game today and the Mets lost, so now the Phillies are the Eastern Division Champions! This is the first time since 1993 that the Phillies got into the playoffs! Their next game is Wednesday, but I don't think we know who the opponent will be yet. It depends on some games that are still being played and maybe a one-game playoff tomorrow.

The Phillies, Youpala, and Feathers

The Phillies were ahead of the Mets yesterday, but today the Mets won and the Phillies lost, so now they're tied for first place in the NL East. There's only one game left, so after tomorrow they'll either be in first place again, tied again, or behind the Mets. It's too stressful! We found out that one of the Phillies, Jayson Werth, is from Springfield, and his mother, Kim Schofield, was in Aunt Gretchen's class in high school. We have a picture from the newspaper with Aunt Gretchen and Kim Schofield together because they were both MVP's in sports in high school. Aunt Gretchen was MVP in tennis and Kim Schofield in track. We read about a restaurant in St. Brieuc in Gourmet. It's called Youpala Bistrot, opened by a cool young chef who left Paris to go to his home town. It's at 5 Rue Palasne de Champeaux (phone is 02-96-94-50-74). The Gourmet guy really liked it, he said it was the perfect restaurant. However, he said the meal cost 45 euros and the dessert was made from beets, so I don't know if you want to try it or not.

Peter and I had fun with a little imaging project. We scanned a feather at a high resolution and zoomed in on it.

Radio, Lettuce, and Bernie

The big news is that Peter and his friend Kerrie now have a radio show on the college radio station (WRFM) called "Swilly Pete and his Merry Band". Peter actually said he wanted to call it "Smelly Pete", but the guy he was talking to misheard him, which I think was for the better. The radio station is only on the internet, so you have to listen to it on the computer. Peter's show's on at 12-2 p.m. Eastern (18:00-20:00 CET) on Wednesdays. I think that they just plan to play music that they like, along with some lively patter. I got all the baby lettuce and arugula plants put into the garden yesterday. We should have a nice fall crop. I also tried out Bernie. I used it to mend Sarah's bedskirt, which was torn a little bit. I was really afraid that I would break Bernie because it's so touchy. I was even afraid to try changing the color of the thread, so the stitches ended up  being yellow on pink fabric, but they don't show, so I guess that doesn't matter. Bernie did just fine. Finally, Sarah, if you see this, please tell me how to edit my posts so that the lines line up neatly, like your posts do!

Virus Battle, Bernie, Sushi, and the Police Log

Viruses: Yesterday Peter and I bought a new version of Norton Antivirus to try to clean up his computer. We had problems installing it, and then I called Norton for help.  After many fruitless attempts to get it installed with help from Norton (three hours on the phone to India!!), I eventually got referred to the "Elite Senior Support Group". The Elites called back today and they took remote control of the computer. They found and deleted hundreds of viruses (literally!), but even after that Norton wouldn't install. So we're still working on that. Bernie: On the Bernie front, they say he's fixed, and I'm planning to go back to pick him up tomorrow. They want to "show me something", which I think means that they think Sarah's been doing something wrong that causes it to break. I don't really see what that could be, but we'll see. Sushi: On a more pleasant topic, we went to Blue Fin on Wednesday to splurge Dad's birthday present from Grandma and Grandpa. We just told the chef to give us whatever he wanted, with a certain price limit, which was a great idea. No decisions and the food was really good. We had a couple of appetizers, then assorted sushi, rolls, and dessert.  Plymouth Police Log Highlight: (reported in the Plymouth Meeting Journal) A retail theft was reported on August 14 at a Plymouth Meeting Supermarket. A loss  prevention officer saw a woman select chicken from the cold meat case. She placed the price tags from the chicken on three packs of steaks. She went to the cash register and attempted to purchase the steaks for the price of the chicken. Police learned that the woman attempted to pay $12.60 for three packs of steaks totalling $81.89. She was charged with a felony count of retail theft.

Sunday Chores and Monday Updates

I took the sewing machine back to Steve's on Sunday. I didn't talk to anyone about it, I just dropped it off. They're supposed to call and tell me about it, but I haven't heard anything yet (as of Monday). I hope they can fix it once and for all. I also planted some of the lettuce plants in the garden. They were getting too big to keep growing in their pots on the deck! I hope they get a chance to grow a little bit before it gets cold. Peter and I installed Firefox on his computer because Internet Explorer was crashing every time he tried to use it. At least he can access the Internet a little bit with Firefox, but his computer still keeps rebooting for no apparent reason. The other chore we did was to hang up the vintage beer posters in the basement. They look great! It was very cold today -- I think it only got up to about 70 (that's Farenheit, in case you've already started to think in Celsius!) Rich and his friend couldn't take a walk at lunch because there was an armed SWAT team on the Agere grounds looking for an escaped armed robber from a bank robbery that happened in Allentown that morning! Peter and I watched a Colbert for lunch that had Colbert asking for a sign that he should run for president. As he spoke, Viggo Mortenson ran in, wearing a hooded cape. He pulled out his sword and offered it to Stephen.  I guess that was supposed to be the sign!

Whitey Report

Whitey visited Dr. Schrader on Friday,  and he's gained 1/2 of a pound! He weighs 7.6 pounds. Whitey was x-rayed but Dr. Schrader didn't find anything wrong. Whitey has to go back in four weeks for a weigh-in. His goal weight is 9 pounds. We need to give him some fattening cat treats.

Off to France!

Sarah left yesterday. We enjoyed our last family lunch in front of the TV watching a "Frasier" rerun.

  In the afternoon, we headed to BWI airport for Sarah's flight. We met Sophia and her family at the airport.  A last minute repacking job was needed when Sophia's luggage turned out to be overweight! Sarah and Rich have a goodbye hug.

And they're off!

Rich and I headed back, looking forward to a seafood dinner in Inner Harbor in Baltimore. Unfortunately we missed the exit and  ended up having to eat at Maryland House. We had a shrimp basket  and a crab cake sandwich.

September 12 evening

Sarah's been cooking vegan meals for us once a week. We had our last vegan meal tonight, a tasty lentil curry. I've added some pictures of Sarah with her friends, Whitey -- Sandy, Olive and Planty.

September 12

Only one day before Sarah leaves! The sewing machine is still having problems, although Rich figured out how to nurse it through one of its episodes, so that Sarah can at least hem her pants before she leaves. Whitey is eating well. I've added some new links, WHYY, the Philadelphia Inquirer, our webcams, and Plymouth Township.

Life in Plymouth

This is to help Sarah keep up to date on life back home while she's in France.  It won't be as exciting as her blog, "La Vie en Breton", but I hope it will help her keep in touch with life in and around Plymouth, family, pets, local events, etc. Today we took Sarah's sewing machine back to the store because it was jamming and breaking needles. This is the third time it had that problem! The guy who looked at it said Sarah was doing something wrong when she tried to use the buttonhole thing. I hope that was the problem. Her sewing machine seems so touchy.