Karen

I am really embarrassed to have to say that we went over budget this week. You would think that $300 would be plenty for two people, but it just didn’t work out that way this week. It was the purchase of those hair products that put us over the top, but we needed them and they will last us for a couple of months, so there, I have justified my indiscretion on the money front.

We went out to breakfast three times, all at Cracker Barrel; out to lunch once at that Mexican grill place; and out to dinner once, last night on our way home from Montezuma Castle. (more about that trip coming soon)

So, the bottom line for this week: in the hole by $39.37. Since we were under budget last week by $36.80, that means for the two week period, we’re in the hole by $2.57. I’ll work harder at it this week. Sigh.

We finally did feel better today, so we drove up to visit our friends Lynda and Charlie but they were not at home. And since I got that letter from the passport agency telling me that my birth certificate and passport photo was not to their liking, I decided to look for a place to get my passport photo take again. Well, for the first time, since I took the first one. And yeah, they accepted the one I took of FabGrandpa and printed myself, because they sent him his passport card, so I guess they just decided that no one could look as good as the person in my photo and rejected it as too good to be true, hahahah!

Did you know that the portrait studio at Wal-Mart does passport photos? I should have known, you can get everything else you need there. So, for $10.82, here it is:

They even put it in a little card case. After I got the pictures, I thought, well, what a coincidence, I am wearing that same orange shirt that I wear everywhere I go, so when I cross the border, I will probably be wearing the same shirt. See here, and here.

We went to Circuit City to see what was on sale because they are going out of business. But, the TV’s were not marked down much, and were still higher on a so called clearance sale than they were at Best Buy. We have been looking at the flat screen HDTV’s for over a year, but have just not found one in the price range we wanted to pay that we could both agree on, until today. No, the money for it did not come out of our spending money budget, because we have budgeted money for a new TV. We got a Insignia HDTV 22″:

I know I have told you that we have both been sick since we got to Phoenix, but this is getting to be really ridiculous. We got here October 29^th, so that it has been, what, more than two weeks that we have been grumpy, frumpy, whiney, snotty, and all the other seven dwarves combined. And quite frankly, I am sick to death of being sick. I want to go play, I want to have some fun, I want to be able to just sit down and read or play computer games without having to blow my dang nose every five minutes!!!

We have decided we must be allergic to Phoenix. We have lived in very rural areas for about two years now, first in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, then in north Georgia, and then at the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. Because it is so rural in those places, there is not much traffic, therefore, not much pollution. We have had no nasal/sinus/breathing problems, except when we were in Atlanta and now in Phoenix.

So, when we went out to breakfast at Cracker Barrel, we borrowed their yellow pages book, and called about a dozen health food stores and herb stores, looking for one that sells our favorite brand of herbs. No luck. No one here sells them, except for one store way down in Tempe about a hundred (or 35) miles away. Through a lot of traffic.

Then, we decided to go to Target, which is just a couple blocks down the road from Cracker Barrel, because FabGrandpa needed some new pajamas. Well, he wears those long flannel pants that tie at the waist, but he calls them his pajamas. After we found him some of those, we paid and started to leave, but then I saw a Salon Supply place. We needed some of that way expensive shampoo and conditioner that is the only one he will use, so I went in to see if they had some. Of course, they did, and whoo hooo! It was buy two get one free. So, for ONLY $49 I got one bottle of shampoo and two bottles of conditioner, which is good because I use the conditioner, too.

In the same shopping center, there was an herb shop called Hi-Health. We decided to go in to see if they had our brand of herbs. They did not. But they did have another brand that had the same combination we were looking for—Fenugreek and Thyme. The combination of Fenugreek and Thyme will dry up clogged nasal passages and get rid of sinus problems for us in just a few minutes. We got those and a bottle of Echinacea and Goldenseal. We have never used that particular combo, but it is supposed to clear up chest congestion.

We both took some in the truck before we left the parking lot. And, let me tell you, I feel better already. Maybe tomorrow we can go outside and play.

I stepped outside for some fresh air, and was surprised by this beautiful end to the day. This picture does not begin to show how big the sky is, and how beautiful it was:

This was looking the other way, to the east. The sky was a vivid pink giving way to purple at the edges of the sky: