The Day After Yesterday

Woke up to continued cloudy and cold. Temperatures here in North Central Florida in the low 40's F and with a wind chill to boot; we bundled up to take care of the ranch critters. Stayed overcast all morning, and we started making alternate plans for the week of ranch work catch-up.

I also needed to make a run for some groceries, so decided to venture into Retail Mania just a bit. Lots of people shopping yesterday, but not excessively crowded in any of the stores I hit when I hit them.

Best Buy first; timing of traffic lights with left-turn arrows appealed to me. I picked up information about a satellite Internet connection system, two DVD's (King Arthur and LOTR: The Return of the King Director's Cut), and a 1 Gb flash memory drive which was on sale, and has a rebate. I also strolled through the computer section looking for that info above, and recorded some prices on CD-ROM drives (for SWMBO) and internal hard drives (for me, to upgrade a desktop machine eventually). Right now, prices for big HD are fairly low.

Right next door to the Buy is a PetSmart. A very brief foray here, to pick up a sexist statement colored collar for one of the Four Kittens of the Apocalypse. Four of Four is the only female in the group, and since all three grey tigers are so very similar in markings, SWMBO wants an easy identifyer. After all, in another week, Four has an appointment with The Vet to have her plumbing broken. (Aside: I've always wondered why people say they take their pets to the vet to be "fixed". They work just fine when they go, but no longer are able to reproduce when they come back. Applying the old engineering dictum of "If it ain't broke, don't fix it," this means one takes one's pet to be broken.)

Then I took the "back road" behind Butler Plaza to Lowe's, There I purchased velcro straps for bundling the light stand tripods for travel, an 8" by 10" lucite panel to make into a film holder for the scanner, cleaner fluid for the same, and looked at screws for refurbishing the floor of Studio 318. What with the water leak over there (still dribbling, which means the gate valve is in need of work, which means either totally cutting the water and capping it or opening the valve to clean it, both of which mean shutting down water to half the ranch), I'm still debating refurbishing the floor of the ancient single-wide to use the structure as a photo studio. If we can keep the expense under $300 to $400 (including fixing the water leak problem) it will happen. After all, I only expected to ever get five to six more years use out of that 25 year old box.

From there, using the back road again to get to a better traffic light, off toward home and Tower Plaza for the Publix: Dog food, Pepsi®, dishwasher soap capsules, and other miscelania. I did forget vitamins, however, and will need to get those sometime today.

We did experience a freeze last night; this morning the thermometer under the house (it's right next to the water supply pipe, and the house has a very high set so that pipe has nearly 4' exposed and I want to know the temperature right next to it) indicated 31 degrees Fahrenheit, and there is a heavy frost over the parking area and the back yard. Glad I spent the time draining the hog water, as that (while not the most pleasant) is much easier than replacing water points that burst from freezing water.

So we'll see; tomorrow may bring the famous Sebastion Quote from Babe to KP Ranch, even though it's technically after Christmas. The hogs won't be thinking about that, though. In any event, whatever work I wind up doing around here, I'm enjoying a week of not going to Hospital.