CATCHUP

Wednesday we came back to Cross Plains because my DayTimer said I had an Administrative Council meeting. We stopped to eat at our favorite table at New York Hill restaurant where we met Dec. 6. Nancy keeps getting the shrimp basket. I tried the grilled chicken salad. We got home in time for a short nap. I went to the church. They were just letting out from Ash Wednesday service. I found a bulletin from Sunday that I missed and it said AC had been moved to next Wednesday.

Thursday I made the Methodist Men's breakfast. I asked if Russ had read Dale Rollins column in The Livestock Weekly. Instead of writing about quail he discussed the feral hog problem in Paducah. That led to a discussion of all of the varmint problems. Larry Killgo retired from animal control with New Mexico and is an expert on the subject. He said that coyotes are proliferating in Texas. They crossbred with the red wolf and are larger and becoming more of a problem with killing calves as well as sheep and goats. Feral hogs are out of control. He thinks the only solution is a poison bait that they eat in special pens that attract them and die several hours later away from the pen. Right now it is illegal to use poison. Roy Hunter said that the latest method he heard was the use of night scopes for hunters to shoot them because they come out at night to forage and damage. Maybe we can make that a big sport for big city hunters to come out and spend the night shooting hogs.

I got back to the house and just started to look at my email when I realized I was due for a doctor's appointment in Abilene in half an hour. We left and got there a few minutes late but I had to wait an hour which I always have to do. The eye doctor told me that my right eye is a little better but the (good) left eye was a little worse. The left eye has a barely visible wrinkle on the retina. He said there was one third chance it would go away, stay the same or get worse. There are retina specialists in Abilene but we will check it again in 6 months. The cataract is also growing but not bad enough to qualify for Medicare surgery.

Then we spent the afternoon with the plumber who came to check the leak in the Halsell house. We turned the water back on and no leak. He ran the clothes washer and no leak. We turned off the faucets to the washer. Came back after he did some work at my house and it was still dry. I checked it again this morning and everything is OK. I don't know where the original leak came from.

This morning I walked two miles in the nice weather while getting the mail and cleaned the leaves off of the pond. By then it was after 11 when we headed for Abilene ostensibly to pick up some sample blood pressure pills from the doctor's office. I remembered that they closed at noon on Friday. I called but it was too late. Back again Monday. We went on to Abilene where I took Nancy to eat at Abeluo's. She loves Mexican food and hadn't eaten there. I then got the pickup serviced and inspected for another year. While I was getting a haircut there is a Goodwill store in the shopping center and Nancy spent over an hour finding a lot of "new" clothes to wear. I got stuff I needed at Walgren's. I got the pickup washed which I try to do once a year. I sidetracked through Baird so Nancy could see the antique stores and we almost bought a bench that she wanted to give to her oldest son who had a birthday yesterday. It was more that she thought and we didn't load it in the pickup.

We started home when Nancy said we had time to go to CP to buy deer corn. We made that side track and looked at furniture at Hardwicks but it is a little rough and they were closed. I told her to look at Rick Potter's Callahan Furniture on the web.

Tomorrow we will find time to get a nap in, fill the deer feeders and maybe catch up on reading all the magazines, newspapers, write a column and study SS lesson. May even look at working on taxes.