Once home from Kansas...

I took the last two days of the week that we went to Kansas off, so I could spend some time with our friend Tom, who house-sat and dog-sat for us while we were traveling. On Thursday, I had intended to drive out east and pick strawberries to make strawberry preserves, but the weather had other ideas. It rained like cats and dogs, or as Jess likes to say, puppies and cats, so there was going to be no picking that day. So we went to a nice little comfort-food diner that serves terrific breakfasts and pigged out, then went to a movie in the afternoon, My Life in Ruins. Tom had already seen it and thought it was cute, I hadn't so we went. It was okay, but tedious. I am not the biggest fan of Nia Vardalos. I don't understand what draws her to boring, drippy scripts, but that's apparently her specialty. I was, however, impressed with Richard Dreyfuss, who looks great and acts well, and he basically stole the show from Ms. Vardalos; even with its sappy-ness I still thought he was pretty good. But would I pay even $3 to rent it from Netflix? Nope.

So, Friday, we did get our chance to go out east to the berry farms, and go we did. I picked eight quarts and then we went to another stand where I bought four more. I wound up with about 11 pints of preserves, which I had to make up immediately, so there went the weekend. It didn't matter, it was fun.

On Friday afternoon, Tom and I stopped into an antiques shop and picked up a table for the living room, which I got a great deal on, and when we got home, we played "rearrange the furniture." Tom is an interior designer and so he is always looking for ways to change things up a bit and, boy, did he make some good suggestions. With just a few moves here and there, he brought a much nicer, more comfortable look and feel to the dining room, the front room, and the library. It's nice to have a designer as your close friend!