Quiet Times & A Lot of Reading

Linda is still under the weather with a very bad chest cold.  Her coughing has got so persistent that I met her sister Donna to get some cough medicine with codeine.  We met at Direct Buy, which is a catalog showroom for members.  Donna is a member, and she helped out Matt & Suzanne by ordering some baby furniture.  They saved about 50% on the entire order.  Baby furniture has sure changed since we had kids.  Now it all converts to larger beds as the child grows, so it makes sense to order good stuff that will last a long time.  They are very happy with their choices.

Since we’re staying in one place this summer, we have renewed our interests in reading, and using the local libraries.  We started this in WA when we camp hosted in Olympic National Park.  You can read that blog entry by clicking here.  We also use it in AZ when we stay at Happy Trails.  Here is Laguna Woods Village, we have access to the entire Orange County Library system to look for books, place them on hold, and have them shipped to the local branch.  It works well, but its a little slow, and can take up to 3 weeks to get a particular book. 

While we were in AZ I started reading police procedurals set in York, England.  The author is Peter Turnbull.  The nice thing about series books is that you really get to know the lead characters, kind of like a TV series.  Now I’m reading a series of English Village mystery books set the Dales area of England.  The author of these books is Peter Robinson.  I seem to be stuck on Peters.  He started writing in the middle ‘80s and you can see his progress as a writer over the period of time.  What’s interesting is that he emigrated to Canada before he started writing.

Both of these authors write interesting books that give you real insight to English life in the small villages and towns.  I highly recommend them for a great summer read.

More later with a report on Linda’s health and our exciting life.

One Week Later

It’s been a week and I haven’t left the condo since I got home from the hospital.  That’s got to change! I don’t want my new hip to freeze up from lack of use.

Things have been pretty quiet.  I’ve enjoyed a few phone calls and emails-Thanks for that.  I’ve watched a few movies and a lot of baseball games, especially the Dodgers.  They’ve done really well since my surgery, so it’s been fun to watch them sweep Arizona and San Diego(Sorry Ken & Donna).  And I finished another mystery, The End of Road by Sue Henry.  It’s a cozy kind of mystery, set in Homer Alaska.  I learned a lot about Alaska, and enjoyed the book.  Just the kind of book I needed, calm and analytical. We’re planning on a trip to Alaska in 2012, so I plan on reading up all I can on the area.

Saturday Linda attended our niece Tiffany’s graduation from the Cerritos College Dental Hygienist School.  She looks pretty happy about it! That’s her Mother, Donna, with her.  Donna is Linda’s sister.Linda’s Mom is on the left, and of course that’s Linda with Tiff on the right.  Linda took most of the pictures since I couldn’t be there, and she did a great job.  If you want to see all of the pictures, click on the following link:

http://picasaweb.google.com/winequest/TifSGraduation#

My big announcement today is I retired the walker and I’m just using a cane.  There’s still a lot of pain, especially just above the knee, but when I put weight on the leg, it doesn’t hurt very much.  We’re still trying to get the insurance cleared for Home Health Care and more Physical Therapy.  Until then I’ve been doing my exercises.  Now I’m going to go outside and walk more to build up some endurance.  But I’m going to take it easy and not push real hard.  We don’t want any relapses.