Well, instead of planting flowers today, I ended up running a lot of errands -- going to two banks, going out to lunch with Dan at Panera Bread (I got to eat lunch at Panera two days in a row!  Soup!! ), getting a prescription filled for Billy, and going grocery shopping. Tomorrow I will go with the kids to get the rest of their school supplies, and then I can plant my flowers.

My friend will be taking three months off, so hopefully she can be with her father until he passes, and also get the estate somewhat taken care of, as she is the executor.  Her father being so sick has been bringing back some pretty stressful memories for me of when my father got so sick and passed. I have been feeling pretty down lately. Perhaps its good that things are so busy, so I can do needed things rather than sit and brood.

I've been watching reruns of MASH on satelite television late at night when I get home. That was such a good show! I had actually forgotten how good it was until I started watching those reruns. I have also been watching Highlander  on dvd. Tonight I watched the first three episodes of the first season. That was another very good show, and the guy who plays Duncan MacLeod is a major league hottie. Dan likes both of those shows, and watches them with me when he is awake.

I have been reading my way through a wonderful mystery series by Alexander McCall Smith called The Ladies' No. 1 Detective Agency Series. They are charming and warm, and the heroine is quite wonderful - intelligent, cheerful, hard working, likes to help others, cunning but very moral, and with a heart as big as her size 22 dress size. And the stories have a unique and lovely setting in Botswana.

The titles are:
The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency
Tears of the Giraffe
Morality for Beautiful Girls
The Kalahari Typing School for Men
The Full Cupboard of Life
In the Company of Cheerful Ladies

Am about to start the fourth Ladies #1 Detective Agency book, The Kalahari Typing School for Men. These books are so charming and warm.

The heroine is Precious Ramotswe, a lady in her 30's, and while not well educated, is very intelligent and wise. She is the sort of person you wish you could have as your next door neighbor.

The first book in the series, The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, tells of how she uses money from her father's estate to found the first detective agency in Botswana. She does this because she wants to help people. One of the most haunting cases in the first book is that of a missing little boy, thought to be kidnapped by witch doctors.

In the second book,Tears of the Giraffe, Ramotswe considers marriage to a good man, and tries to find out what happened to a young American man who disappeared many years before.

In the third book,Morality for Beautiful Girls, Ramotswe must take care of a second business when its owner falls ill. Her agency is hired by a beauty pageant to see if the finalists behave in a moral fashion. She also is hired by an important government official to find out if his family members are poisoning each other.

But these little descriptions only give a bit of the flavor of the books. One of the main characters is the country of Botswana itself -- a beautiful and beloved land -- and one in transition from cattle farms and extended families to one of a more Western bent.