It's hard to believe it's the first day of November. I'm not sure how warm it got today, but warm enough that I turned on the air conditioner in the car for awhile this afternoon when I got back into it after shopping. It's supposed to stay nice for a few days, I think. I'll take it as long as I can get it.
We're sprucing up the office a little bit for an open house we're having next weekend. There is a all-female law firm that has offices on one of our floors, and the main lawyer is a plant person. The offices are filled with plants. I went over to talk to her about doing a website for her a few weeks ago, and I was amazed at the plants, and a little jealous. It made me think about getting plants for my office, but I hadn't done it.
I had mentioned to a couple of people that I was thinking about getting plants, and then one day last week she (the lawyer) came over and asked me if I would like to have a ficus for my office. Anna had mentioned my wish for a plant to her, and she had a big ficus that she didn't have a place for. I think she had brought it from her home, where it had been outside, and it needed a place to winter. So she loaned it to me, and I love it.
And just having that plant there made me want to get more, so I went to the nursery today. I'm always looking for a good deal, so I checked out the "scratch and dent" table where they have plants marked down. There were a couple of really pretty ficus trees -- not as big as the one in my office, but really pretty. They had had their trunks trained into curves, and they were $9.99, marked down from $34.99. I'm not sure why, really. They were a little bare of leaves, but not too bad.
So I bought one of them, and I also bought a diffenbachia which really doesn't look bad at all. One of the greenhouse workers came by and said that it was a little sunburned, and that it had also gotten a bit waterlogged the last big rain we had, and they don't like to have their feet wet. So it wasn't perfect, but I'm sure it will be fine with a little time and attention. It was $9.99 also, marked down from $29.99. I was a little concerned about getting the ficus into the car -- it's probably about 5 feet tall, although I don't remember exactly.
I put the front passenger seat down as far as it would go, and leaned the plant down on the seat, and it just barely fit, with just a few leaves peeking out of the sunroof.
I spent a long time looking around in the greenhouse, then spent an equally long time in the bookstore, went to the library to return books and renew my library card, had lunch (a big salad and a bowl of bean soup) at Sweet Tomatoes, and went to Bed, Bath & Beyond to pick up reed diffusers for the bathrooms at work (and a little one for my desk). It was a really good day.
Then as I was heading to the grocery store, my last stop of the day, Bob called. He asked me where I was, and I said I was just turning into the grocery store parking lot. He said, "What's that tree in your car? You have a tree in your car!" I said, "Where are you??" and he wouldn't tell me. I said, are you going to go to the store with me? And he said he might. "But tell me about the tree!" he said. I said, "I'll tell you about it when I see you."
So I pulled into the parking lot, and I saw his van, but I didn't see him. I parked next to his van and walked up to the store, looking all around, and didn't see him anywhere. When I got to the door, he stepped out of a corner where he'd been hiding. Silly boy. I told him about the tree, and we grocery shopped together, then he left and went home while I stood in line to pay. When I got home I made "hobo dinners," an old Girl Scout recipe -- a pie pan filled with sliced potatoes, onions, and a hamburger pattie on top, salt and pepper and a few dabs of margarine, then covered with aluminum foil and baked at 400° for an hour.
And now I'm sitting in my chair with my new-to-me laptop -- my boss' old (not really old, though) MacBook Pro. He got a new one and handed his previous one down to me so that I can be mobile. It's been difficult lately, with the work I'm doing, to stay synced up between home and office. I've been emailing stuff to myself, or saving things on a thumb drive, but envariably I forget something. So he asked me if I'd like to replace my desktop iMac with a laptop, and I said sure.
I spent most of the afternoon at work yesterday transferring the applications and files from the iMac over to the MacBook, and quite a bit of time yesterday evening getting familiar with everything so I can jump into it on Monday.
It was a good day.
