My Annual Gifts

Yesterday was a busy day indeed.  We began by getting our ears lowered, then a trip to Walmart for some grocery type items.  Judy visited JoAnn Fabrics but left with nothing and then she made a trip to Target leaving, once again, with nothing.

We made an afternoon trip to Harpswell to see if Vi Knight was at her camp.  Sure enough, she was there so we had a wonderful visit.  It was another trip down memory lane for me as Vi (and her husband Ronny) were best friends with dad and mom back in the early sixties.  Ronny was hired as Editor for the Republican Journal when dad was the Advertising Manager.  Along with his Editor responsibilities, Ronny was also the reporter, part time photographer, and assisted dad with the newspaper layout.  They became fast friends and our families had a lot of good times together.

After leaving Vi’s, we took the long way home stopping by Cundy’s Harbor just because we could.  Vi had mentioned one of her favorite restaurants was there and we wanted to check it out.  The Block and Tackle is just a “whole in the wall” kind of place where the locals go to eat.  It’s a place where “everyone knows your name” and you’re only a stranger once.  We didn’t eat there but picked up a menu thinking that Mike, Peggy, Judy, and I would return this week – a trip is planned for Monday evening.

Mike and Peggy with grand dawg, Tut, stopped by for a short visit.  They were out walking the dawg and MIke and Tut needed a drink of water – after all, it’s a whole mile from their house to ours.  Being that our furry kids don’t take kindly to dawgs invading their space, we visited with them outside. 

Once returning inside and pressing the “on” button for our TV, we discovered that it had passed away in its sleep sometime during the day.  We had had a problem with it back in April, but it seemed to resurrect itself.  However, there seems to be no resurrection this time around.  After a little internet research, we found that Samsung TVs have the best overall ratings in the under $500 price range. 

So we made a trip to Best Buy, Target, and Walmart to see what our options were for a new television set.  Walmart had the best deal with a 32” Samsung LED TV on sale for $398 - regular price is $449.  So it found its way to the back seat of the truck.  Now I have a project,  I’ll have to make some minor modifications to the Entertainment Center in order to accommodate the new TV  as our old one was only 26”.

I guess my birthday gifts, Christmas gifts, anniversary gifts, and whatever other gifts for this year will be a new computer and a new television set.  Just another $800+ added to the “One Time Only” account.  There doesn’t seem to be anyway around our annual budget of $42k.  We were trying to see if we could live on $36k so we could build up our “Emergency Fund” – not happening!  Oh well, it is what it is.

Here are a few more pictures of Vacationland from our drive to Cundy’s Harbor.

That seems to be the state of affairs in the Patterson household for this seventeenth day of July, twenty eleven.  So, Take Care Until Next Time  - - - - - - -