Thankful

Thanksgiving menu:

Roast turkey
Mashed potatoes
Gravy
Baked sweet potatoes
Stuffing
Green (shelly) beans with bacon
Black olives
Cranberry sauce
Yeast rolls
Pumpkin pie
French Silk pie

We had a very traditional Thanksgiving dinner today. My father had eye surgery yesterday, so my parents very understandably didn't want everyone over today; I would have invited them to come to our house, but Daddy couldn't drive yet, of course, and they had planned to just have a very quiet dinner at home (they ended up having my sister and my niece over), so we had our own turkey dinner here.

I called my mom yesterday and got her recipe for stuffing; it turned out fine, but it wasn't as good as hers, of course. Bob cooked the turkey, which turned out beautifully; he mashed the potatoes, too, and made gravy. I cut up the onions and celery for the stuffing, and made vegetable soup while everything was cooking, and afterwards I washed dishes.

We used my Fiestaware dishes, and my grandmother's silver, and had the dozen red roses that Bob bought me for my birthday as the centerpiece.

It's really starting out to be a lovely birthday weekend. We got up fairly early and spent the morning cooking, then ate right at noon. I took a nap in the afternoon, and this evening I watched Wings of Desire, which I had never seen. I bought the DVD a few months ago, but just hadn't gotten around to watching it. I had been talking to David earlier today and he asked me what we were doing tonight; I told him nothing, probably--Bob was going to go to bed early so he could get up before dawn to go hunting tomorrow, so I might watch a DVD . . . I said I was thinking about watching Wings of Desire, and he said that he had it on DVD, too, and why didn't we watch it together?

So that's what we did, with me here, and him in England. We had an iChat window open, and it was very companionable. Bob and I had turkey sandwiches and pie at 7:00, then Bob went to bed.

He's sleeping now (his alarm is going to go off at 1:15!) and I've been trying to do a little picking up, although I'm trying to be very quiet so I don't wake him up. I made him turkey sandwiches to take tomorrow, and he has a cooler full of food for the weekend. He'll be gone until Sunday afternoon, and I don't have to work tomorrow, so I'm planning on having a quiet weekend--sleeping in, if I can, and doing a few fun things. I almost forgot that I'm getting my hair cut on Saturday. Thank goodness I looked at my calendar tonight. I thought I might see Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire tomorrow night, if the theaters aren't too crowded. That would be a nice birthday weekend thing to do, I think. And of course I'll go out and do a little shopping. Not much, but the day after Thanksgiving is traditionally the first shopping day of the Christmas season.

I need to get Christmas music loaded on the iPod. Barb sent me Brian Wilson's What I Really Want for Christmas CD for my birthday, and Bob gave me an iTunes gift card, and Janel sent me the Love Actually soundtrack, so I have a bunch of wonderful new Christmas music. Oh, and I bought the Il Divo Christmas Collection with my last Amazon commission.

I was reading someone's blog the other day who mentioned that they don't play any Christmas music until Thanksgiving, and then after Thanksgiving that's all they play, starting with the drive home from wherever they spent Thanksgiving, and I thought that sounded like a pretty good tradition, which is why I'll probably spent some time tomorrow loading up the iPod with my thoroughly eclectic Christmas music collection. Jimmy Buffett and Crash Test Dummies and Leon Redbone and Beausolseil . . .

This is the "head" that my folks gave me for my birthday. I gave my mother one for her garden a few years ago, and she decided I needed one, too. I love his expression.

My mom called tonight, and my sisters, and my brother, and one of my nieces. My other niece sent me some Einstein Brothers gift certificates for my birthday, so I'll probably have lunch there tomorrow. Barb sent me some of my favorite Aveeno Stress Relief bath products, and the Brian Wilson CD, and a wonderful pine scented candle in a holder shaped like a Christmas ornament, and a new journal, and a little box that she made herself out of a greeting card.

David sent me The Tarot of the White Cats. (As I type this, I have a black cat lying on my lap with her chin resting on my left wrist; I'm lucky they let me type at all.) This deck is really sweet. The symbology is very close--in some cases identical--to that of the Rider-Waite decks, except with cats!

I was sad that my parents weren't going to have Thanksgiving dinner for everyone this year. It isn't the first time--my mother had surgery a few years ago and we skipped Thanksgiving. I was also feeling guilty that, since they weren't going to host a dinner, I didn't step up to the plate and host it myself. My rationalization is that our house is too small for the whole family, and it is, but that doesn't make me feel any less guilty. So I've been something of a ball of misery the last week or so, although I think I probably hide it well (except from Bob).

That's why we called my mom for her dressing recipe, and why we had the very traditional dinner--Bob wanted to recreate my mom's Thanksgiving dinner for me. I kept trying to tell him that food is really very unimportant, that I would truly have been just as happy with a turkey tv dinner, and he said he knew that, but he was going to make me a real Thanksgiving dinner anyway. I'm glad he didn't listen to me. It was really a terrific day.

I'm very blessed, and very thankful.

We had Thanksgiving dinner at Bob's parents' house last Sunday. I took a few pictures, but they weren't very good--the picture quality was good, but I seemed to catch everyone with their mouths open and their eyes closed. This was really the only good one--our niece Tabatha, who likes to have her picture taken, and who obviously is very photogenic:

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Can't focus

Last night I started reading Charlaine Harris' newest novel, Grave Sight, and couldn't put it down. I finally did put it down, at about midnight, but only because I was yawning so hard I couldn't focus my eyes.

Harris is the author of several other series' that I enjoy--the Sookie Stackhouse "Southern Vampire" series (which I see by Ms. Harris' website may be made into a television series), the Lily Bard "Shakespeare" series, and the Aurora Teagarden librarian mysteries. The Sookie Stackhouse ones are my favorite--Sookie is a waitress at a dive in Louisiana; her sometime boyfriend is a vampire who died around Civil War time, and another close friend is a werewolf. Her boss at the bar is a shapeshifter, too, although his other persona is usually a dog. The books are a lot of fun. They're exactly what I look for, my favorite kind of book--something a little different, a little humorous, something with an "edge" that doesn't take itself too seriously.

When I saw that the new book was coming out, I assumed it was a Sookie Stackhouse mystery, so I was a little disappointed at first to find it was a new series. But I'm really loving it, and I hope she writes a lot more about these characters. The book is called Grave Sight. The protagonist, Harper Connelly, was struck by lightning when she was a teenager, and ever since, she's been able to find the dead. Police departments that have unsolved cases will call her to see if she can find a missing person, assuming that person is dead. She's no good at finding the living.

Her stepbrother Tolliver accompanies her and protects her, and it's the interplay between the two that I found most interesting. Their almost secret language, the glances that say exactly what needs to be said. A really exceptional book, I think. The first chapter is posted at Ms. Harris's website, as is the first chapter of the next (May 2006) Sookie Stackhouse novel, Definitely Dead.

I'm not doing very well on my NaNoWriMo novel this year. I've only got about 12,000 words. I'm going to try to write over the coming long weekend, but I'm pretty sure I won't reach 50,000. Which is okay. I'm not going to beat myself up about it. But I am going to try.

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Furniture!

I'm sitting here writing on our NEW COUCH. Yes, we have a couch again. How long has it been? A year, I think.

When I was out at my folks' house last weekend, they were talking about having so much stuff, and worrying about it, and saying they needed to get rid of things, and my mom was talking about having kept so many old things thinking that we would want them some day, but then realizing that we probably don't have any more room than they do (and we don't). They said, "Is there anything that you want or need?" and I said, jokingly, "How about a couch? That's really the only thing that I need," and they said, "Yes! Take ours, please."

I said, what? Are you kidding? and they said no, that Daddy had never liked their new couch (they had bought a new one a year or so ago), and Mom liked it, but it was really too large for their living room, stuck out too far. I said well, yeah. I'd love to have it, but had to ask them several times if they were sure. I said that I would ask Bob what he thought, and let them know, but I figured if I wanted it, Bob wouldn't have any objection, and he didn't.

I guess it's not exactly what I would have picked out if I had been picking, but it's fine, and it's a couch, and it was free, so what's not to like? It's practically brand new, they never really used it unless they had company, so it's hardly used at all.

Bob and John went out and picked it up today in John's pick-up. The cats checked it out thoroughly, of course.

It apparently passed muster.

Here's another cute guy who wasn't in the office the other day when I was testing out my camera, Dan:

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New toy, cute guys, and a contest

Our new camera came today. It's a Canon Powershot SD200 that I ordered from Amazon. The price has been lowered another ten dollars in the couple of days since I bought it, and I got 10 free holiday cards, but they've upped that to 25 now, so that's worth another twenty bucks.

As soon as the UPS guy delivered it--and I opted for free shipping, but even though they said it could take up to two weeks, I got it in five days (I ordered it last Friday), so I sort of feel like they made up for it in the shipping--I plugged the battery in to charge, and flipped through the manual. Once it was charged, I took it down the hall and took pictures of the guys in the art department (Dave, Jeff and Kurt, and Simon, of course). Aren't they cute?

I've absolutely fallen in love with the products from Indigo Wild. My health club occasionally has this kind of weird, rough-looking soap in the bathroom, and it smelled wonderful, but I never really paid any attention until this weekend, when they had some little sample bags by the soap dishes, printed with the Indigo Wild URL. I, of course, checked it out when I got home, and it's a local company that makes this wonderful, natural aromatherapy soap and other body products.

I requested a catalog, and they sent me an email coupon for a free bundle of sample "slices" with an order, so I placed an order for another bundle of sample slices, plus a couple of sampler bags so that I could try out the rest of their products. In addition, they sent me more samples--several small body lotion samples, more soap, a perfume sample, etc. Everything is lovely, and it smells so good. And I love supporting a local business.

So I was thinking--my birthday is in a week, and in the elementary school tradition of bringing treats on your birthday, I thought I'd give away one of the sample bags. I can't find it on the website now, so they may have discontinued it. Anyway -- oh! I can take a picture of it!

So anyway, I thought I'd give it away. A little mini birthday contest. So send me an email with the subject "Birthday Contest" and I'll draw a name on my birthday--which also happens to be Thanksgiving (I love it when that happens!)--and send the sampler bag to someone.

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Map

I mentioned this in the weblog, but I don't know if everyone reads it -- I created a Frappr! Map where you can put a virtual "pin" to indicate your location, and leave your name and a message. It's kind of cool to see where everyone is from, and see pictures, so if you can, please go add your pin!

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Psychic dreams

I've had some kind of interesting dreams lately. And while I know that almost no one is interested in someone else's dreams, the one Saturday night had kind of an interesting twist.

On Sunday I went out to my parents' house for lunch. I ended up spending the whole day there--they had birthday gifts for me, one of those wonderful big stone "heads" for the garden (I'll take a picture of it once I'm allowed to get up--Dinah is lying on both of my arms while I type), a clear glass candy jar shaped like a snowman, a set of cats-in-baskets salt and pepper shakers, and a gorgeous copper bee thing for the garden--and we had a lot to talk about, so I stayed from lunch and on into and through dinner.

For some reason, while we were eating dinner, I was reminded of my dream. I dreamt that I was living in an apartment with three other women, but I was still married to Bob, who apparently didn't live there. Bob was mad at me, so he was going to go on a date with one of the other women. I asked him how he knew her, thinking that he had set up a blind date after having met her online, but he said no, that he'd known her for a long time. I said, "Well, I'm not going to tell you to have a good time!"

I was laughing about that as I was telling my folks, and I said, "Oh, and there was a Christmas tree suspended from the ceiling!" My mom said, "What?" And I said, yeah, there was a Christmas tree that someone had hung from the ceiling. We had high ceilings in that apartment.

My mom said, "I saw that on television last night!" She had been watching some kind of decorating program or something, and they showed a Christmas tree that had been suspended from the ceiling. She said it was suspended point-down, and the one in my dream was trunk down, but it seems pretty clear to me that I got a psychic message from her, that she had been thinking about a silly Christmas tree suspended from the ceiling, and I ended up dreaming about it. I mean, why else?

Later, for some reason we were talking about my Uncle James--my mother's brother--who was in the Navy in World War II, and who was on the USS Hornet, an aircraft carrier which was sunk in the Battle of Santa Cruz in October, 1942. My mom remembered that before they had heard about the ship sinking, she and her mother had gone into town to shop and have lunch--a rare treat, living in the country--and to see a palm reader who was visiting the town.

My grandmother, who I am named for, had her palm read, and the palm reader said, "You have a son in the service," and she said that "something terrible" had happened, but that her son was safe. And he was, he had been rescued. The article I linked to said:

A small bomber attack twenty minutes later did no damage, but as Hornet's list increased to 18 degrees, it was clear she was doomed. Captain Mason ordered "abandon ship", and over the next several hours the destroyers and cruisers were kept busy picking up the men - most of whom were in remarkably high spirits - and fending off the small attacks which continued through the afternoon, scoring two more hits on the battered ship.

I think my grandmother, and my mom, and my sisters are I are all a bit psychic. Well, even my father--I remember him telling me about a dream that he had about my brother being somewhere odd, and it turning out that my brother was actually there. My grandmother had several prophetic dreams that I know about. Every time something like this happens, it makes me wonder how many more of my dreams are about actual events, but that they just don't seem important enough to mention, so I never know. Or I don't mention them to the right people.

This morning a friend of mine mentioned someone he knew who had been asked to take care of a cat while its owner was out of town, but she totally blew it off, and said something like, oh, the cat's fine! It can take care of itself.

My dream this morning was that I was on vacation and had asked someone to take care of Doña, but the person I had asked to watch her showed up without her, and wasn't concerned about it at all. I had to rush around and get dressed and run off to see if I could find her, and I was worried that, even if I could find her, how could I keep her safe?

It's interesting how these "psychic" dreams seem to happen all at once.

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Personal chef

Bob's in the kitchen cooking, and I'm in here polishing my toenails and staying out of his way. We have a small kitchen, and there isn't room for two of us in there. I did the grocery shopping--he was waiting for vegetables and herbs that I was buying so he could make beef stew to take on a hunting trip tomorrow--and I was hungry when I got home, but I grabbed a banana and a jar of peanut butter and came in here with my snack while he started cutting things up.

I think once he gets the stew finished and it's cooking, I'm going to make Reubens for dinner. We had them one night last week and they were really good, and I still have some sauerkraut left that we might as well use up. We're also having Caesar salad--does that go with Reubens? Probably not.

I had a good day today. I did all my usual stuff, went to the library and the post office and the bank, I went to the gym and worked out, and I spent an inordinate amount of time at Target. I love Target, although I have to say I was disappointed to read this story about Target supporting its pharmacists who refuse to fill birth control prescriptions.

Liora wrote and asked about which iBook I bought; it's this one, the smallest (12") one. I had always wanted this one rather than the larger one--smaller=lighter/cuter--but also I've recently found out that the larger screen isn't as clear as the small one. It's larger size-wise, but not larger as far as resolution, so I'm very glad I made the decision I did.

When I had looked at them earlier, it cost considerably more (around $300 more) to get the dual drive, i.e., CD burner + DVD player, which is the main reason that I hadn't bought one before. $1,000 was pretty much my limit, so when I saw that the new models had larger hard drives (40GB), more memory (512 MB), faster processors (1.33 GHz), and the dual drive, all for a few cents under $1,000, I decided to go ahead and get it. It's a business expense, after all, so I can sort of justify it that way, also getting it before the end of the year made sense.

And Amazon was offering a $100 rebate on it. All in all, I'm very pleased with it and I think I made a great decision. Oh, and it comes wireless out of the box now, no additional Airport card, so all I had to do was turn it on, and I was immediately online using the wireless network that we already had installed at home for Bob (and at work--I'm wireless all the time on my G4 at work).

Later . . .

With all the cooking, Bob wasn't hungry, but I was, so he made me a Reuben and a bowl of soup, and now he's back in the kitchen cooking. It's awfully nice having my own personal chef.

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Criminal behavior

I ordered a new camera today.

I had been wanting one for awhile, but there were so many other things that I wanted more, and I really didn't feel like I could justify it. I had the new camera phone, which satisfied my urge to have a tiny camera to carry around, although the pictures aren't that great. But I'm all about immediate gratification, and I'll settle for a little less quality.

I took a few photos at Misty's wedding, but I wasn't really happy with them--they were dark and kind of blurry, and although Misty pointed out that it was dark, I was still disappointed.

And I'd stopped, pretty much, carrying my digital camera even on vacation, because it's so big and heavy . . . so Bob and I talked about it, and we did some research (which basically consisted of asking our friends which model they had), and decided to get the Canon Powershot SD200. That's the one that Barb has, and John has one, and several other people I know have the same brand, although I'm not sure of the exact model. But this one was affordable, $189 at Amazon. I also got 512 MB of Flash memory for it, since everyone we asked about them said to be sure to get more memory, since the memory card that comes with it holds about ten pictures.

I ordered it today, and decided to opt for the free shipping, since I absolutely HATE to pay for shipping. It will probably be here in about a week, I imagine. So I'll have it for vacation (Disney World the first week of December), and Christmas, and Mexico in February. Bob says it will be our Christmas gift to each other.

[I just checked the link to the camera page, and I see that they've reduced the price another ten bucks since I bought it earlier today! And they've got my order locked ("Shipping Soon"), so I can't delete it and reorder it at the lower price. Now I'm really glad I didn't pay for shipping!]

After I ordered the iBook from Amazon a week or so ago, when I got home Bob said that there was a message on the answering machine from Discover--I'd used my Discover card to pay for the online purchase. The message sounded very ominous. It said, "This is a message about your Discover Card account. If you do not return this call, you may not be able to make future purchases on your Discover Card."

So I called, of course, not having any idea what that was all about, except that I was pretty certain that there wasn't any problem with the card, that it had plenty of credit on it, and the order had gone through fine.

Someone answered, and I gave them my number, and they started asking me all kinds of questions, like what was Bob's Social Security number, and where had he been living when he got the Social Security number, and what was his mother's maiden name, and how old was he, etc., etc. I said, "I did just make a large purchase with the card, if that's what this is all about," and she made me confirm the amount, and she read off the last couple of things I'd bought with it before that.

I guess it was a security thing. After I got off the phone, Bob asked me how much the computer had cost, and I said it was just over $1,000. He said something like, "That's nothing!" and I said, well, yeah, it's not nothing, but it's not like I'd charged a $20,000 car on it or something.

Security is good, obviously, and I guess I'm grateful that someone is keeping an eye on things, but it's annoying to be treated like a criminal when you buy something.

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Creature of habit

Dan is currently working on-site at a client office, so he isn't in our office much lately. He came in late this afternoon to pass some work on to me that I'll be doing tomorrow, and I was going to catch him up on what I'd been doing since we'd last talked. I said, "I got an iBook!" and he said he already knew--that he'd read it in my journal. And he said he'd laughed at my account of getting lost going home the other night.

Actually, it was him who made me think about getting on 635 and finally making it home--he lives basically out in the same direction that I do, and he said that as he's driving downtown, if it looks like traffic is slowing down considerably on I-35, he'll jump onto 635 and go to work that way. I'm still not altogether sure how that works, but I did remember that when I was driving on the unfamiliar highways, and it allowed me to find my way home.

I'm basically a creature of habit. I'm not very good at remembering how to get places. I can follow directions, and I can read a map, but I don't pay attention when I'm not driving, and if, for instance, someone asked me how to get to Bennett Spring, in spite of having been there maybe 50 times, I honestly have no idea. If I had to drive there, I would get out a map and plot a route, and it would look familiar to me as I drove it, of course, but I couldn't tell you how to get there on my own.

Sometimes if I have to drive somewhere unfamiliar, I'll write the directions down so that I can reverse them and get home afterwards. Which reminds me of something that happened a couple of weeks ago, before Misty's wedding. Did I mention that I was in the wedding? I was. I read The Invitation, by Oriah Mountain Dreamer. I was very nervous about it--especially when I found out I was going to have to use a wireless microphone--but it all worked out okay.

But it also meant that I was involved in the wedding rehearsal. It was in Olathe, at a park, and I had directions provided by Misty. I hope Misty won't be offended when I say that her directions bordered on the surreal. I was talking to David earlier that day, and said that I had to drive somewhere that I was unfamiliar with, and he asked if I had directions. I said, well, yes, but they left a bit to be desired. I don't have them in front of me, so I'm paraphrasing, but it was like, "go south on I-35 to 151st Street, then go west until you see a sign with a quail on it; if you see Target, you've gone to far. Once you pass the sign with the quail on it, turn right on the street with no name, and look for a house with a blue door . . ." Okay, now that I wrote that down, I remembered that those weren't the directions to the rehearsal, those were the directions to Misty's parents' house, where they were having a pre-rehearsal pumpking carving party, and I wasn't going to be able to get away from work early enough to go to that, so the directions were moot.

But anyway, I related my directions, and he laughed, and said, well, just be sure you pay attention and are able to reverse them to get back home, and I said, "Oh, you mean like: leave the house with the blue door and go back down the street with no name, and when you see the back of the sign with the quail on the front . . . "

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Clumsy

My spate of unluckiness/clumsiness continues--this morning I was washing my face and stuck a soapy finger right in my eye. Like I'd never washed my face before. Was I just not paying attention? You would think that I could be thinking about something else while I'm washing my face, it's not like it's the first time I've done it, or that it would require any major powers of concentration, but apparently, for me, it does.

And then tonight, I was making my lunch for tomorrow, spooning some cottage cheese into a small container. I picked up the container to put the lid on, and then somehow just dropped it on the floor. Except I didn't just drop it, I kind of flung it, so that the cottage cheese landed not only on the floor, but on the cabinets, the refrigerator, the stove, and in the cats' food dish. The exclamation I made isn't printable.

I asked Bob later if he hadn't heard me (he was upstairs) and he said yes, he had, but it didn't sound like a cry of pain, only of frustration, and he decided the best course of action was just to stay upstairs out of the way. Probably wise.

Let's see . . . the rest of the day. We worked out in the yard--Bob cleaned the gutters and cut down a small tree, and raked leaves, and I cut off all the leggy herbs and spent flowers and ran the leaf blower. The only minor catastrophe was that Bob ran the leaf blower for awhile and sucked up a tennis ball into the mechanism, but he was able to remove it with a knife, a pair of pliers, and some judicious surgical work.

Also, I made soup today, but I wasn't so lucky. I kind of ruined it. I made my regular vegetable soup, then I thought I'd put some pasta in it to make it a little heartier; if I don't get filled up at lunch, I end up buying something from the snack box, and that's not really a good idea. The pasta was a good idea, but I guess I should have waited until the soup had cooled and then added it. It soaked up most of the liquid in the soup, and got really big and mushy; now instead of being macaroni, it's more like really soft noodles. I guess it'll taste okay, but I'm disappointed.

And my arms hurt from lugging the leaf blower around.

Several people noticed the NaNoWriMo icon below and asked me if I was participating this year, and if so, if I was going to post the chapters like I did the last time I did it, in 2002. The answer is yes, and no. I'm going to try very hard to write this month, but I don't have a clear picture in my mind of what I want to write, so rather than just blow it off, I'm going to take their "No Plot? No Problem" manifesto to heart and try to write 50,000 words this month, but not put pressure on myself to make it a cohesive, cogent novel.

50,000 words. I should be able to do that. But whether I'll want to share them, I don't know yet. I'm just going to try to write and not attach any pressure to the outcome, and see what happens. That's the best I can do right now.

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Road to hell

Quite often I'll think of something I want to write about, and think about it and think about it, and then sit down to write about it, and I get distracted, or interrupted, and I don't finish the thought. That's what happened the other day when I was writing about music, specifically the music at Misty's wedding. And the music in Neil Gaiman's Anansi Boys. I listened to the audio book version and don't have the print version, so I can't look up a quote, but Gaiman postulates that the world was created by singing, that things (and people) can be healed by songs, and sometimes I believe that's true.

When I was thinking about music, and the emotional effect it has on me, I was thinking about Christmas carols, and hyms sung in church, and the music played at funerals. I remember sitting next to my sister at my uncle's funeral, and both of us were holding it together very well until they played Oh Danny Boy, and we just looked at each other and though, "Uh oh." We clutched each others' hands and just gave in to the tears. Some songs just tug directly on your heart and there's absolutely nothing you can do about it. Amazing Grace is another one.

Things haven't been going very well the last couple of days. Last night I got lost going home. I've been taking the highway a few times a week rather than going home through town. I'm leaving late enough most nights that rush hour is basically over, and it's quicker than taking surface streets. But I guess I haven't quite got it down yet, because last night I missed the highway onramp entrance and ended up on the wrong highway, heading for who knows where? Not me. It wouldn't have been so bad if it had been daylight. It would still have been bad, just not so bad.

I was sort of afraid to just get off anywhere, since it's not that great a part of town, particularly at night. And, also, it's not like I'm just driving aimlessly around regular streets, I'm going 65 miles an hour down the highway to hell, basically. I couldn't exactly pull over and leisurely consult a roadmap.

And I honestly, truthfully, had no idea where the heck I was, or where I would end up. I had some ideas, and they weren't exactly thrilling. I figured if I got off the highway I would end up in The Bottoms, or someplace in Kansas City, Kansas, neither of which were very good places to be if you don't know where you are.

So I'm driving and driving and cursing under my breath, and I eventually saw a sign that said I was getting close to the Kansas Turnpike, which I'm not exactly sure what that means, but which made me fearful that I would get on it and not be able to get off, and perhaps also have to pay a toll, and maybe eventually end up in Topeka. So I got off onto another highway and drove for awhile, trying to figure out where I was, or at least what direction I was going in, and then I saw a sign for 635, and I thought, well, I've driven on that highway before going to the airport, maybe if I get on that I'll start to see something that I recognize, and wonder of wonders, I did, and I got on the right highway, and I made it home.

Oh, well, not home, but to the gym, where I couldn't get a treadmill except for the ones that I can't figure out how to work. So I just did the weightlifting part of my workout, and went home and played with my new computer for awhile instead of doing the work that I should have been doing, because I just didn't feel like it.

And then this morning my closet collapsed on me.

Bob's been warning me it's going to happen for months, if not years, and I knew it was inevitable, but I just kept putting off cleaning it out. This morning I was bending over to pull a t-shirt out of the lower shelf, and everything that was on the upper shelf fell onto the top of my head. Pyewacket ran in to see what had happened, but I made her leave in case the fallout wasn't over. I guess I know what I'll be doing this weekend . . .

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The power of love

How cool is this? I'm sitting in my chair in the dining room--the green velvet upholstered chair in the corner--and writing a journal entry. Not only am I writing it, I'm writing it in Blogger, and when I'm finished I'll hit "publish," and it will be immediately published. And should I feel so inclined, I could pick up and go into the living room and watch television and continue to blog because I bought an iBook yesterday! And it's here today!

I've wanted one forever, of course, but just didn't feel like I could justify it. Then a day or so ago, when I was on Amazon.com, I noticed that they were offering a $100 rebate on the smallest iBook--the one that I wanted--and I figured well, I could write it off on my taxes since I use it for my business, and if I buy it before the end of the year that would make sense, and I just went ahead and did it.

The reason it's here today is that I splurged on one-day shipping. I really didn't need one day shipping, and honestly, it wasn't because I'm obsessive or anything, it was so I could insure that they wouldn't send it in the mail and would have to send it Fed Ex (or UPS overnight, which is what they did). The postman that delivers mail to our office won't deliver packages. We don't know exactly why, but he never even attempts to deliver them, he just puts a slip in the box and we have to go to the post office to pick them up. I had to do that this morning to pick up another package from Amazon that I had ordered (the complete [only] season of Firefly for Bob's anniversary gift). And frankly, I just wanted to avoid having to mess around with it in this case.

Two day shipping was $26, and one day shipping was another $15, and I just thought, what the heck. Live a little. So it came today and I charged it up at work, and here I am, back in my comfortable chair with the laptop on my actual lap.

I won't be using it for everything, because of course I still have my wonderful eMac with the huge, clear screen, but this will give me some options. It came with Airport already installed, so since we had Roadrunner install a wireless network for Bob, all had to do was turn it on, and I'm online, and I can get on the wireless network at work, too, and, like I told Bob, I can get on the various wireless networks that they have everywhere now--Starbucks, Panera Bread, Borders--so if I'm so inclined, I could check my email or blog or whatever from practically anywhere. How cool is this? Very cool.

I've been listening to the audio version of Anansi Boys in the car, and I finished it tonight on the way home. I won't spoil it for anyone that might be planning on reading it, but something happens toward the end where a song is mentioned, and I started to cry. It's not just the song, of course, but the feeling and meaning behind it, but it made me think how affected I am by music.

Misty and Sam have several friends who are musicians, and they played and sang at the wedding. (Several of them are in a band called Joe's Pet Project. Misty sent me a copy of the ceremony ahead of time, and when I saw that the ceremony was ending with someone singing, "The Power of Love," it made me choke up, and I honestly have no idea why. But every time I thought of it, it almost made me cry. All of their musical choices were wonderful--Ben Harper's "Forever," the Indigo Girls' "Mystery," The Nields' "One Hundred Names." An East Mountain South song--"So You Are to Me." And after the ceremony, when they were married, they danced back up the aisle to "Concrete and Clay." And just thinking about them dancing, with such light in their faces, makes me feel like crying again. But then when Scott--who performed the wedding ceremony--broke into "The Power of Love," it just made me want to laugh and grin and cry at the same time.

So amazing. The power of music. And the power of love.

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