Oct 15 - Batavia to Reading to Phoenixville to Reading

With lots of time to make this trip, we decided to get off the interstate, well at least get off the too-familiar interstate.  We headed directly south from Batavia on 63, joining up with I390 that becomes I99 and then the future I99, winding through the mountains/hills covered in yellows and oranges and the very occasional red.  It was a beautiful Fall trip. 

We stopped at a gas station restaurant and had lunch, an omelet for Sandy and a not-too-skimpy salad bar for me.

Before leaving Batavia, we stopped at Walmart.  I needed some sort of sweat shirt / hoodie, which I found and also decided to do something about my broken watch band on the Tag.  I wasn't expecting to find a band, but rather looked at what they had to offer in cheap watches.  I found one for $8 so now I not only don't feel naked, I can tell the time. 

We made Reading around 3:30, meeting Emma's bus at the corner.  She ran off the bus, didn't see us, then came back and gave us both hugs.  She then raced home and she, Zoe and Matthew were out on the swings with the day-sitter; Sara was running errands.  Jeffrey was coming home from a business meeting in Las Vegas, arriving home around midnight.  We didn't see him but his car is out there this a.m.

Shortly after 5pm we set off for Phoenixville for dinner with Mariadela and Leonas.  Marda was also there !  Although Sandy had seen M&L in the interim, it's been four years for me, long overdue.  Leonas is planning on retiring in 2017 ... perhaps we'll see them more afterwards ?  They've yet to get to our northern abode, nor has Marda but Sandy and she will probably manage that in 2016.

Back with Sara around 8:30, Emma was still up but went down shortly afterwards, as did I.

Before leaving the cottage, I was doing my usual backups and thinking that it would be great if I had Quicken and Office on the laptop.  The laptop setup is pretty lean app-wise although I did load Open Office.  I thought briefly about doing that and then had a brain-wave -- I can run VMware under Windows 10 and then run my PC Windows 10 on top of that !  So I downloaded VMware and did that setup.  It works quite nicely.  W10 on VMware on W10 seems kind of silly, but it works.  So I can now bring my entire environment with me, or at least mostly.  I'd actually thought about booting the laptop with linux but was reluctant to wipe ouit my W10 ... but of course I could have also set that up in a separate partition.  I may still do something like that, we'll see.

Also I stand corrected on the Jays win.  I was thinking that they'd won the AL pennant but that was only the AL East.  Next up KC.

Today we'll see Doris and Wayne for lunch but before that, the French Toast lady will of course have to do her thing for Emma and Zoe ... and perhaps Matthew.

Onward !