So Saturday Nancy and I went for a walk, maybe two and a half miles. Sunday I ran two miles. Today I ran two miles. Hey, three in a row. What I need to do is run or workout every day.

Busy weekend, never did get around to putting up an entry. Yes, I did, as usual, post remarks on various other websites and exchange email, etc. Also spent time trying to figure out why my index page seemed to work okay using IE but not with Netscape. Meghan spotted the trouble, messed up table tags. I had added and changed too many tables nested within tables, working on it within the geocities editor (which doesn't provide a very big window) and had managed to step on myself. Internet Explorer (and WebTV as well, thanks Doug) were able to figure things out, but Netscape just put up title and background and then stopped. I happen to like the background (I've used it since 1996) but I don't think many people would come to my site just to look at blue sky with white clouds.

Oh, one thing I did do late Saturday morning was to donate blood. I usually try to give two or three times a year, but back in early Feb. last year I had some oral surgery which included a bone graft to my jaw at the base of a tooth, which mean I could not be a blood donor for twelve months.... I had been looking forward to being able to donate the next time there was a blood drive at work, but Saturday morning I got a call from the Red Cross inviting me to donate so off I went.... They noted that I had passed eight units ("one gallon") since I had moved to Rhode Island and gave me a very nice coffee mug (I like coffee mugs... seems to me that back in New York State I got tie tacks for the one and two gallon marks and don't think the three gallon mark was celebrated). Please -- if you are able -- be a blood donor -- you could save someone's life.

Saturday afternoon Nancy and I wandered through some stores. Our dining room furniture is seventeen years old (and looks older!)... the table still works (if covered) but the chairs are trashed. In fact, only four of them have survived and they're in bad shape. So, for more than a year now we've been talking about replacing it. (Do you get the impression that we don't always jump into things?) A year ago January Nancy had dragged me through some local antique shops. I should put antique in quotes; I'd just call it used furniture. We aren't talking about really beautiful antiques worth thousands of dollars here. The stuff she was looking at was more in the eight hundred to twelve hundred range. To me, that's just plain expensive used furniture. So my daughter and I went to a furniture store and found something we liked for around two thousand. Nancy had said if I saw something I liked that I should buy it, but I didn't want to get something without her seeing it. She did go to that store with Jennifer but couldn't find that particular dining room display (it's one of those very, very large furniture stores, something like three acres of display area). So, we've managed to just keep putting off getting anything. A discount store was having a clearance sale on chairs. So we bought one, around twenty-five bucks, brought it home, and Nancy put it together Sunday morning. It seems to work. Looks okay in the room and is okay for sitting... We decided to buy more chairs and keep the existing table... Just ran out of time on Sunday so never did get back to pick up more. I'll have to try tonight.

We were empty-nesters Saturday night, not only were Jennifer and Sean out for the evening, Jennifer was sleeping over at a friend's house and Sean was going to a birthday party where the guys were planning to stay up all night playing video games, etc. So I invited Nancy out to dinner. We went to one of my favorite local restaurants -- The Mews Tavern -- which has sixty-nine different beers available, good food too. We got there just before eight-thirty and were told that there would be a half hour or so wait (about what we had expected)... so off to the bar to wait. We were disappointed that they had stopped carrying Whitbread, but I managed to console myself with a Foster's and Nancy ordered Bass ale. We had a good time hanging out in the bar -- one of Nancy's co-workers was there with her boyfriend and we chatted with them for a while. A table was available just about as we were finishing our beers -- good timing. We both ordered fish and chips (good pub food... although they also have good grilled chicken breasts and I've heard good things about their pizza) and shared some buffalo hot wings. I ordered "nuclear" strength and Nancy had a couple -- I've had their "thermonuclear" strength wings in the past - wow! - How hot are they? Hot enough that when I was eating them beads of sweat were forming on my forehead and although I was willing to share, none of the friends I was with would try any. (The menu recommends having a supply of Preparation H at home.) With the nuclear Nancy and I just needed another round of beer.

Sunday just disappeared in busy activities. Nancy spent a lot of time cleaning and rearranging things in the kitchen cabinets and I got involved in that to a slight extent. I made some lasagna. Some? Okay I made two jumbo pans of lasagna, some of which we had for dinner last night, some for tonight, and the rest for the freezer. Yummy, good lasagna! I also finally moved our rabbit back to her outdoor hutch and yard. She seemed very happy to be outside again. Two mile run. Fix my index page. Get very upset with television. I don't watch much tv on my own initiative. Most television that I see is because somebody else is watching something, but I do like to watch The Simpsons and The Sopranos, both of which are on Sunday nights. So, at eight p.m. interrupted cleaning up the kitchen to watch The Simpsons -- no Simpsons, instead Fox had one of those stupid awards programs on. Okay, back to the kitchen. Around 7:40 asked my daughter to yield the computer so I could check email (which is when I got Meghan's helpful note) and then I fixed my index page and then dashed to the living room to turn on The Sopranos ... but there was some other program in their place... we get two HBO channels, so I was clicking back and forth between them... was this a movie that was running late? A few weeks ago because of the superbowl, HBO held The Sopranos back until ten p.m. to be sure the football game was over. Was something like that happening now? Some big NBA or NHL game? Find the tv listing section of the paper. The Sopranos had been moved to eight o'clock. Damn! HBO, you have pissed me off. Now I'm going to have to watch the Wednesday night rerun, which means I'll have to remember to turn on the tv Wednesday night at the right time. Guess I'd better check the tv listings also, just to make sure they haven't moved things around on Wednesday night as well. (I swear there was no announcement last week about changing the time schedule.) Oh well, I've already mouthed off about this in Meghan's discussion forum.

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