The parking lot at the Social Security office was packed, so finding a spot was difficult.  As expected the waiting room was also packed, which made it all the more surprising that I didn't have to wait terribly long to be called to a window.  

Unfortunately it turned out that Joan was not actually going to be the one to help me, but instead just pass the paperwork along to someone else.  I was given the option of waiting to see the initial results of that - except that 1) I could only hear about my case, not Tom's since he wasn't there, and 2) she had no idea how long the wait would be since "the system was down" (and turns out it had been down since yesterday) so the situation was not especially hopeful.

I opted to leave, and "should" hear something in the next couple of weeks.

Drove over to Foothills to check on the class and snap some pix for the website.  Everyone was hard at work, there were very few smiles, and the comments ran along the line of, "I need a beverage - preferably the adult kind!"  

All of which reinforced the wisdom of not signing up for the class...  

Here's a pic of the teacher with what the finished project will look like:

I stopped in at the nursery and picked up another oleander for Alex to plant.  There were some "animal" plants, but unfortunately it was difficult to see my cellphone screen in the sunshine and my pic of the giraffe chopped off its neck and head.

Brownie and I made a trip to PetSmart (he's always up for a visit there!) to buy some more packets of his wet dog food.  It would be nice to buy more than a dozen servings at a time, but one box is all they ever seem to have out on the shelf.