Old Guys Rule
Wednesday 4 October 2006, 12:12 pm
Today is my birthday ... the big uh-oh. No, not that one, or that one.
Yep,
that one. Na na na na na na na na. They say it's your birthday.
Na na na na na na na na. It's my birthday too yeah.
(Beatles music playing in the background ...)
Road Trip
Quick summary: on Thursday, we went to the
San Diego Zoo. On Friday, we
hopped back on the freeway, and 90 minutes later we were checking into
a hotel in Anaheim, ready to spend the rest of the day in
Disneyland.
On Saturday, Mary let me have my birthday wish and I spent much of the
day at the
Buena Park Coin Show while she took a tour of OC rubber
stamp stores. On Sunday morning, we went to
the Vatican
Calvary Chapel Costa Mesa and heard
the Pope pastor
Chuck Smith in person. Then we stopped at a few more rubber stamp stores,
getting on the freeway around 3:30 pm and arriving back home around 9:30.
Saturday
At the coin show, I bought two Indian Head Cents, two Peace Dollars,
one Walking Liberty Half Dollars, one coin from the Netherlands,
a Dansco album, some Christmas presents, and about 50 inexpensive
Buffalo Nickels, enough to jump-start a new set.
Sunday
Before going to the coin show, I scouted out some local rubber stamp
and scrapbooking stores and put up some Google maps on the laptop.
Mary went to two of them while I was at the coin show. The next day,
Sunday, we went to the rest of them, but several were closed on Sundays.
I remarked to Mary that Orange County is reputed to have more Christians
(and more Republicans, eh) than LA county or the San Francisco Bay Area.
Anyway, one of the stores had just opened in its new location that very
day, which lent extra excitement to the scene. It was a scrapbooking
store but Mary found a mother lode of ribbon there.
Whither September?
I spent much of September trying to complete a set of Indian Head Cents
I started a few years ago. It was really a complete set minus only two
coins, but when I started putting the set into a Capital holder, I found
that many of the coins were pretty crummy and should be replaced. A few
dates right around 1870 are difficult to find in nice condition. I visited
five local coin dealers and one coin show in Fairfield, and I nervously
placed a few
bets bids on Ebay. At this point, I still
have two coins I definitely want to replace, and four others I'm still
not sure about. But the rest of the set is looking pretty nice.
Birthday Plans
Mary's making me a flourless chocolate roll cake, and we bought
some extrememly lo-cal Breyers ice cream that looks promising.
We've been barbecuing our own hamburgers lately, using some recipes
and advice we found in a recent Sunset magazine. We did make one
important discovery, though: don't lace your meat with pineapple!
We did this once, and the meat wouldn't hold together afterward.
It all feel through the grates on the grill! Oh, well, it was way
overdue that I clean that thing anyway. Mary put the remainders
in a skillet, but it still fell apart and served more like sloppy
joes than like hamburgers.
It's noon now, and we still haven't left for my birthday lunch yet.
I think we'll go to Casa Azteca because we can have a great lunch
and still count the calories.
Uh oh ... Mary's brand new Black and Decker mixer just broke! Now we
need to go out and buy another one so she can finish the birthday
cake.
