Monday, Dec 9th

A pleasant day in the valley, but we are back to long pants today.  It rained a bit, less than a 10th of an inch and the temperature got up to about 18 C, there was a funnel cloud on the north west end of the city where they got a lot of pea sized hail [it looked like snow on TV], but a long way from here.
  There was a forecast for hail west of here, we delayed going out and when we left went out to the post office first.  I needed to mail a Christmas card and a stamp for a second one.  The line in there was brutal, so I went to the self serve kiosk [like an ATM.  When in line the lady behind asked if that was all I had.  When the lady ahead heard it was, she offered to sell me two stamps, which I gladly accepted, giving her a dollar.  Put the stamp on my letter and left.  When I got to the truck, Marg was impressed at how quickly I got out of there. Marg got some bananas some more Christmas cards and very small water bottles [filled] as she likes them better in her purse than the large ones. 

It was there we saw the robot cruising up the aisles, it had on a Walmart vest and what appeared to resemble a face painted on the top of it.  Not sure what it was doing, probably putting more people out of work.  She also got some small candy canes to put on the envelopes of some.  We never use the self pay stands at Walmart.  Marg's disabled parking pass is certainly coming in handy at some of these large parking lots.
  Then it was down to the billiard store that was closed yesterday and was also closed today.  Arghhh, all the way to Stapely for nothing.  Stopped at a mega Walmart in Mesa on the way back and got the things I needed to fix a pool cue.  Started for home heading down University where Marg spotted a sign for a book sale.  It turned out to be a small community library and I bought 7 pocket books, all Westerns of course.  The price was right at 25 cents.
  When we got home we had lunch, tuna on some very nice rye bread we picked up the other day.  Turned out very nice.  After lunch Marg did enough Christmas cards to put a dent in her finger.  Not sure how many that was.  I went to play pool.  There are fewer people playing so far this year, but that will increase as people get here.  Had good games today [all but the one where I made the 8 ball too early] and a few laughs.
  Supper was brats and fried potatoes tonight, very nice.  Dessert was the mini-apple cobblers Marg made the other day accompanied with a scoop of ice cream.