Stock Up Happenings – With surgery looming, and the inevitable long recovery time, The Wife, MIL, and me ventured forth to stock up on yarn and crafting supplies. Well, they went to stock up. My goal was to assist and look for shelving or risers or such to help organize my growing collection of toys. Particularly since I have two more Alpha/Legioss coming in the fall/winter. I also had one other request, which we’ll get to later. We stopped in at Michaels, which resulted in a large quantity of yarn. The Wife’s being doing some of her projects in bigger yarn, and she seems to prefer the stuff at Michaels. She also tried one of the newer drive-through coffee places that have been popping up around Bradenton. Then we went down the road to Hobby Lobby, where more yarn was acquired – along with a bunch of other stuff. We have the same issue with Hobby Lobby that we do with 5.11. We go in for a specific thing and come out with a bunch more. After checkout was the real reason we needed to go to Hobby Lobby second – my favorite milk tea spot. We came out with good boba.

The secondary reason for my commenting on what is essentially a routine shopping trip – the acceleration of the shopping seasons. When we walked into Michaels, we ran smack into a large Halloween section with a variety of decorations and decor items. Okay. Kind of understandable. Even though it’s more than three months and a season change away. Then in Hobby Lobby and it was like fall colors were vomited on the first three rows. Are we already in Thanksgiving? Go a little further and the Christmas stuff was being lined up to be disgorged onto the shelves. Okay, even that hit my curmudgeon side.

Dinner Happenings – MIL wanted to take The Wife and me out for dinner to celebrate our birthdays, and she want the family along. After some back and forth, we finally settled on last weekend. Then, The Brother came down with something. And with surgery happening, we decided to meet with him at a later date. Then BIL came down with the flu, so he and his wife bowed out in an abundance of caution. So, we were left with MIL, The Wife, Wife’s Niece, Wife’s Nephew, and the Grandniece. We decided on trying a new Italian place across the main thoroughfare from Ward Manor’s subdivision.

The food was pretty good and we had a nice time enjoying everyone’s company. From there, we ended up taking Wife’s Niece and the Grandniece to our favorite ice cream spot. Nephew begged off because he’s not much into sweet stuff. Grandniece had one request – cookies and cream ice cream with lots of sprinkles. Which she got in a waffle cone. The ice cream shop recently moved into a new spot, and part of their decor is a church pew running down one side like a bench with some tables. I’m sure it sounded good and fit in with the “aesthetic image” of down home vintage. Except a pew really isn’t designed for table side. Which makes sitting in it while eating a sundae a bit challenging. Still, damn good ice cream.

Minor Tech Victories Happenings – Those who know me know that I’m a trackball person – and my favorite trackball is the Logitech MX Ergo. For the longest time, I used one at work and one at home. Then my home one was dying – because it was a first iteration, first run model. At the time, Logitech annoyed the Ward household, so I switched my home one to one of the newer Kensingtons. On the basis it was lower cost, and it was supposed to be competing with the MX Ergo. I was never really happy with it compared to the MX Ergo, and last week, it finally started acting up. Heck, I’ll go back to my Ergo. Well, the new one has some slight improvements. Such as not needing Logitech’s little dongle to connect. Which means I now have one trackball for both work and home computers! And one less thing needing a micro-USB.

Five Year Happenings – The Wife just celebrated five years at her current job. Which surprised both of us. Her work sent her a list of things she could claim as her five year reward. She went through the list and didn’t see anything that drew her immediate interest. So, she asked if I saw anything. We went back and forth and finally agreed on a new Pelican cooler.