Joan on the Road

Tuesday was such a rainy, nasty day that we delayed our lunch out with Mary until Wednesday. Good decision! It was a lovely day for lunch with our youngest granddaughter at PF Changs. Here we are at Chang's.

I love the lettuce wraps (crisp iceberg leaves wrapped around a warm chopped chicken, water chestnut concoction) and Jim hit the jackpot with the Honey Shrimp. It was all very good and topped off with a Lucky 8 dessert, chocolate filled pastry sticks to dip in carmel and roll in toffee!! Wow! No need to cook dinner that night!

Thursday was car maintenance day. While Jim took the car in for an oil change I vacuumed and cleaned house. Oh, it's so much easier to do when "himself" isn't around :). Jim asked the mechanic to check out the "sticky" gas pedal. Once or twice a day the gas pedal would stick on acceleration from a stop and we'd get a big lurch. Not a good thing. So they checked it out right away and said there was "schmutz" in the throttle body (I don't think they used that word) and they'd have to clean it. $165 later it's cleaned.

We first learned about schmutz from our mechanic, Phil, in Florida. He worked for an hour or so trying to find the problem with our air conditioner, then pulled off the dash switch and blew in it. Lots of schmutz came out and the AC started working. I love the Wikipedia definition: dirt that moves :)! Since then we've been attached by schmutz several times. Currently, our Bose system has schmutz in the sound connection so we have to blow in it periodically. We need some canned air for a really big blow!

Jimbo came by to scan some black and white negs on our Nikon CoolScan. I had it all ready after scanning 1978 slides all afternoon. While he scanned I cooked up a skillet of Spanish Rice. I was out of chili sauce so it wasn't as yummy as usual but it filled our tummies. We enjoyed seeing the pictures he is putting together in his portfolio for submission to Cal Poly. He's hoping to return there for his senior year.

We closed out the evening with a movie from Netflix, A Beautiful Mind. It's been long time since a movie held my attention and brough tears to my eyes but this one did. What an acting job by Russell Crowe. I'd like to watch it again but I'm not ready for that intense emotion.

Looks like our weekend weather here in SoCal is going to be beautiful so maybe I'll get some picture taking opoportunities :) We'd planned on going to Bryan's baseball opener but the games were cancelled. The stupid athletic director didn't arrange for umpires so the team is SOL. We do have Hilly's 20th birthday to celebrate on Sunday. Yikes! Three grandkids in their 20's! I'm sure Sunday will be a great family day and my camera will get a workout.