(no subject)

I usually post at the end of the day, but I forgot a few things in my rush to get to sleep last night. The most important one, at least to me, is that Aunt Eileen and Kim decided to visit one weekend earlier. This means, among other things, that I'll be seeing Grandpa two weeks after chemo instead of three. It also meant that instead of the $167 fare I'd had locked in for the next weekend, plane tickets were a minimum of $400, more or less. We decided to burn some frequent flier miles -- the penalty for making a reservation for less than two weeks was far easier to deal with than the full fare.

While I was grocery shopping or making dinner yesterday (possibly both), my wonderful husband retrieved the pictures I took over the weekend. He's put them into my LJ photo gallery, so once I've gotten rid of all of the bad examples of photography (cough) I'll post a link to them. I plan on working on that tonight as well as finishing the current phase of my project. Thai Gem, from where I get my pretty shiny rocks, has a "make a deal" section. I'm thinking of seeing if I can make some on this upcoming order. Even if all of the gems together do cost less than one setting, it won't hurt to save some on the gems.

Our kitties were very cute yesterday. First there was Gail, who was sitting on top of the bathroom cabinet watching me as I showered. Partway through she came over to peer at me directly, then abruptly began grooming herself. I wonder if she's finally figured out the correlation between showers and grooming. Even if not, it was cute. The other time was Thena, who has become markedly sillier since we got Gail. Last night she was doing the very silly on-her-back-waving-her-paws-in-the-air thing, and any time it looked like we might pass without paying Foo tax she'd make a cute little pet-me sound. I missed those two almost as much as I missed Andy.

(no subject)

Today was fairly productive, in that I managed to complete my three major goals. The first was to find all of the make-an-offer (MaO) pages for the 11 types of gems I'll be buying (12 if Thai Gem gets some 2.5mm blue zircon in before I order). I also made an executive decision and discarded two of the stones I'd settled on since they were clean to very slight inclusion. All of the gems I'm getting will be clean or better. I'm also waffling on the emeralds, but hopefully that one will work itself out. I've come up with a battle plan for the MaO -- I'll do so with the most expensive stone first, and if I end up with an appreciable savings, I'll try the others. If it turns out they only go down to the price they have listed elsewhere, I'll just skip it. I'll probably write about the MaO more once I've tried it.

The second accomplishment was to get a bunch of prescriptions filled. I had to do some running up and down stairs at student health due to happy fun summer vs fall semester fees, but it certainly didn't hurt my blood sugar. Then, since Wal-Mart said it'd be about half an hour for my prescription there to be filled, I took a nice brisk walk around the store. All in all, I figured I got enough exercise this afternoon that I only went for half a walk this evening.

As I mentioned in my earlier post, Andy was kind enough to get the photos of my visit to Rome off of our digital camera. Today I picked out the nine best and made a gallery of the visit. I'll probably be making an album for each of September and October as well.

I'm also planning on finally doing something I'd meant to for years, and now I'm kicking myself for not starting it sooner. Grandpa's coughing every few words, so I don't know if this'll work at all, but I'm going to buy a tape recorder and a ten-pack of tapes, give it to him, and ask him to talk about anything -- family history, stories about growing up, stuff about Grandma, whatever comes to mind. I also want to do this for Grandma Shad, Bill and Jean (Andy's maternal grandparents) and Jeanette (Andy's paternal grandmother). At some point in the future (when they can't record any more) we'd make a CD or ten out of the tapes and give copies to everyone in the family. Any family members who are reading this and would like to chip in, please let me know. Between my jewelry project and the recorders, I'm not sure I'll be able to cover everything, even splitting up the project over two or three years. Also, any family members reading this who might be interested in keeping a journal should let me know, and I can get you started for free.

One good thing about Grandpa being afraid of computers is that I can write about gift ideas here and never have to worry that he might happen upon them. My idea for his gift in October is to ask folks (any Pilny who is reading this has been officially notified :) to send pictures of them with Grandpa or Grandma or Mary. The photos can be from anything; special occasions or just hanging out. I'll scan all of them for posterity, then make a nice scrapbook for Grandpa. Egad, I suddenly realize how much I'm getting myself in for. I think I'll consider it make-up for having been unemployed and useless for so long. I may have to save the scrapbook for real Christmas; I'll see if I can get people started on the pictures and go from there.

Tomorrow I get to pretend I'm a responsible housewife, yay! For technical reasons I need to wait until September to order the shiny rocks, so housework will keep me from obsessing too much until I can do so. I'm really hoping the MaO thing isn't just yes-no; I love the whole bargaining thing. Oops, there I go talking about my project again -- time to go do some dishes.