Juice Bags Super Sweet Reading Glasses at Ace Hardware of All Places

The neutral observer watching me edit an article at an urban coffee shop gets quite a show, I realized today. I needed to buckle down and work on editing a chapter for the prof I work for, so I went to Greg's headquarters (Dunn Bros by the river) where I somehow always manage to get good work done. The chapter was 50 pages, and he warned me that it was "a pretty rough draft." I worked on it for a solid 2-1/2 hours with my full attention. Toward the end, I was getting pretty irritable about several pages full of super long sentences with excessive legalese and complex introductory clauses all in passive voice. Suddenly, I snapped out of the zone I was in to picture what I looked like. I was muttering the words out loud as I followed each syllable with a pencil, making dramatic slashes and notations all over the paper; my face was scrunched in a sour and disapproving expression, and my knees were bouncing up and down super fast. I was getting waaaaaaaay too involved in the thing. I had to get out of there. I finished it up and made a run for it.

Yesterday was a great day. I got to hang out with my little sister Mary. My other sisters Sarah and Greta and my mom all headed up to Montreal for the weekend to check out a school that my brilliant and genius sister Sarah wants to attend next year. Mary is staying with other sister Kate, and I got her for the day. Anyhoo, Mary and I went to Sarah's house (not sister Sarah. This story is getting tricky, isn't it? This Sarah is my roommate from Nerd Camp) because Sarah was working in her yard and offered to give me some good shady plants that she was splitting. OMG, she gave me so many plants they filled up the back of the Subaru. A million hostas, seedum, peony, daylilies, and several other unidentified species. Back home, Mary helped me plop them in the ground.

Mom gave us an anniversary gift, and I was waiting for Shad because I thought he should open it with me. While we were planting, Mary kept bugging me to open it and I refused. Finally, when we were done with the planting, and it had gotten dark out, she convinced me to open the gift. Mom had given me a whole bunch of plant bulbs! Bahaaa! Tulips, crocus, hyacinthe, and iris. So we went out there and planted those, too, in the dark. Fun times. My mom likes to give traditional anniversary gifts. E.g. The traditional theme for the first anniversary is paper or clocks--she gave us a subscription to my hometown paper. Well, the four-year traditional anniversary gift is flowers or appliances. I'll bet my mother-in-law didn't realize she had followed tradition when she gave us that super sweet freezer. Needless to say, I'm super psyched about planting all those bulbs and watching the flowers come up in the spring. I've never planted bulbs before, I hope it works out. Next summer will be really fun, now that I have a bazillion flowers and plants expected to come up.

Took a break from my studying today for lunch at Matt's new house. As per usual, the meal ended with the three of us arguing vehemently about political and economic ideologies (among other things). As usual, Geoff is the unapologetically capitalist champ, while Matt and I argue for some breed of socialism/Marxism/communism. I don't know how we get along, what with that and their incredible love of guns.

Oh, and today's headline? I stopped in at an Ace Hardware on the way to Matt's house to pick up lawn&leaf bags and duct tape, and found a random display of actually cool reading glasses on sale for $2.99. My reading glasses prescription is a pathetic +1.00, which is basically nothing, so I usually can't find any on the little displays you see at Walgreens or whatever (which usually start at +1.50 or 1.25 if I'm lucky). Anyhoo, I lost my old ones, and though I read fine without them, it takes some pressure off my eyes to have them. Yay for Ace Hardware!

Have a great weekend everyone!