TONY ISABELLA’S DAY OFF

Outside of posting my blog, I spent Saturday relaxing and running
errands with Sainted Wife Barb.  Our first errand was taking Simba
(our cat) to the Animal and Avian Medical Center for an exam and a
few shots (panieukopenia, feline rhinotracheitis, calici virus, and
rabies).  Our previous veterinarian closed last year and this was
a first visit to the veterinarian who had purchased that company’s
records.  The visit could have gone better.

Simba is an outdoor cat and does not like riding in a car, even our
extremely comfortable van.  She howled and mewled loudly during the
entire 15-minute ride.  In the examination room, she turned into a
demon-cat with ears reared back, lots of hissing, and much baring
of fangs.  The vet and her assistant looked terrified.  Simba let
me hold her tightly, but she was clearly not going to be anything
close to a good kitty.  I agreed to let the vet sedate Simba, then
come back for her in a few hours.

In the reception area paying the bill, I learned that Simba’s files
listed her having bitten an assistant at our previous veterinarian.
Poor baby.  She’s not even four years old and she has a black mark
on her permanent record.

With a couple hours to kill, I took Barb to lunch at a new Medina
restaurant: Sushi on the Roll.  I had a chicken rice bowl and she
had a vegetable rice bowl.  Lots of food and very tasty.  We shared
a delicious fruit roll, as well.  I can see myself getting take-out
from this place on occasion, especially since our favorite Medina
pizza places have exhibited a noticeable decline in the quality of
their wares in recent weeks. 

Take-out and fast food will be less frequent at Casa Isabella this
year.  It’s a combination of wanting to eat healthier, save money,
and “live off the land.”  We have two refrigerators, a freezer, and
a large pantry.  When all of those start looking a little emptier,
then we can splurge a bit.

It was a sunnier and warmer-than-usual-for-the-season afternoon, so
we took the van to a do-it-yourself car wash.  I went all out and
even bought a new hanging air freshener for the van.  Strawberry.
So strawberry that the interior smelled like a strawberry sundae.
I plan to move the thing to the back of the van until it loses some
of its potency. 

When we picked up Simba at the vet’s, she was glad to see us, but
very groggy.  She never made a sound on the drive home and actually
seemed to enjoy looking at what little she could see from her cage.
When we got home, her bottom half couldn’t do what her top half was
wanting to do.  That was both heartbreaking and hilarious. 

One of us stayed with Simba the rest of the afternoon and evening.
She was back to her old self by Sunday morning.  Very early Sunday
morning.  But I had to get up to post my blog anyway.

The rest of the day was spent putting away holiday things, watching
Horrible Bosses (acquired from our library), and reading newspapers
and other things.  It was relaxing, which, of course, is what we’d
hoped for from the day.

The “big” question is: what do we do with our Christmas tree?.  We
bought a new, less expensive and easier to maintain tree this year.
We still have the old one, but that’s mostly because we’d made the
switch too late to donate it anywhere.  Our son Eddie is convinced
our problems with the old tree stem from it being stored all year
long in our unheated storage unit.  So I want to keep the new tree
somewhere in Casa Isabella.

Barb has rejected my brilliant idea that we keep the tree in our
upstairs family room - I usually call it “the addition” but, as it
has been there for seven years, I’m trying to break myself of that
habit - and just move it to a different spot.  Then, every month,
we would decorate to fit the events of the month.  For example, in
February, it would be a combination Valentine’s Day/Black History
Month/Presidents’ Day tree.  After carefully considering this for
five seconds, Barb pronounced the idea “stupid.”

I told her I could ask my bursting bevy of blog readers to make and
send us appropriate decorations.  This did not sway her.  The tree
is still in the upstairs family room, but its remaining days there
are few.  Sigh.

As for Horrible Bosses...it’s a okay film.  It was sometimes very
funny and sometimes dragged.  Good performances by Jason Bateman,
Charlie Day, Jason Sudeikis, Jennifer Aniston, Colin Farrell, Kevin
Spacey, Jamie Foxx, and in a hilarious cameo role, the amazing Bob
Newhart.  Biggest surprise was that John Francis Daley, who plays
psychologist Lance Sweets on Bones, was one of the writers of the
movie.  Good for him.

We enjoyed Horrible Bosses.  It’s not a movie worth paying today’s
high movie theater prices to see, but as a free library rental or
a cheap video rental, it was fine.

Barb’s reading consisted of Saturday’s newspapers and a number of
online articles on her iPad.  Mine consisted of newspapers, a good
chunk of Miss Fury: Sensational Sundays 1944-1949 by Tarpe Mills,
and several stories from Showcase Presents Batman Volume 5.  I’ll
be reviewing Miss Fury in one of this week’s bloggy things and the
Batman volume in the next “Tony’s Tips” column I write for Comics
Buyer’s Guide.  As for the newspapers...

I don’t write as much about current events and politics as some of
my readers would like.  I’ll try to make up for that in tomorrow’s
bloggy thing.  See you then.

© 2012 Tony Isabella