(no subject)

I had a fantastic morning.

I picked up Kathy and we drove to Wild Wheat Bakery for breakfast. Eggs Benedict for her and Eggs Florentine for me. Gorgeous meal...so decadent. Their homemade hollandaise sauce is killer. After breakfast we bought some cookies at the bakery counter and chit chatted with one of the waitresses for a bit.

Then we walked around the historic district and stopped in to browse some of the shops. Treasures is a relatively new shop in downtown Kent. It opened a few months ago. It's a really cool antique/vintage shop with really reasonable prices. Then we stopped in at English Cottage Collection (where I bought a tea infuser) and Nature's Vignettes next door to that. All beautiful shops where I could easily spend a lot of money if I had some.

A pottery shop is moving in downtown. Very excited about that. I used to love pottery painting.

Anyway, it was a great couple of hours, but Kathy had to get home. I stopped at Grocery Outlet and picked up a few sundry things, cheese in particular, for tonight's dinner. I already have smoked sausage and crackers. I don't want to heat up the house by cooking anything tonight.

And now I suppose I need to try and get some work done this afternoon. It's hot and I'm not feeling motivated.

new books!

Lance had errands to run this evening, and asked me to tag along. One of his errands included picking up a computer programming book at Barnes & Noble. But since it was next door to Office Depot and he also needed a printer cartridge, he went to Office Depot first. I skipped it entirely and made a beeline for the bargain books.

Finds:
Becoming Jane Austen - Jon Spence
Jane Austen's Guide to Good Manners: Compliments, Charades & Horrible Blunders - Josephine Ross

The second book is cute.

Lance found me at one point, bearing one other book he found for me... 88 Money-Making Writing Jobs - Robert Bly. So I added that to the pile. I checked on the book when we got home and it has a 5 star rating from amazon, so hopefully it was worth the purchase. If nothing else, I can write it off as a business expense.

All in all, not a bad day, though I could do without the heat-induced headache.

And this post reminds me that I haven't read anything since we got back from Ohio. I just haven't been in the mood to read. I'm working on a book by William Zinsser that I have to review, so I should probably try to read some more of that tonight.

It's also ridiculous how many unread books I have sitting in my bookshelf right now. And I'm running out of room for them. Good thing I don't make it to B&N very often.

Meme

Here, have a meme.

1. Reply to this post and I'll assign you a letter.
2. List (and upload, if you feel like it) 5 songs that start with that letter.
3. Post them to your journal with these instructions.

I was given M by x_roxy_ryan_x

1. Man in the Mirror - Michael Jackson
2. Material Girl - Madonna
3. Money - Pink Floyd
4. Maybe I'm Amazed - Paul McCartney/Wings
5. Moonlight Serenade - Glenn Miller Orchestra

No uploads, guys. I have a headache and don't feel like doing much. And the only one I have on .mp3 anyway is #1.

academia

I'm reading an autobiography by William Zinsser and I got to this part that made me laugh out loud. He was instructing at a writing conference in 1968, and a big banner was hung up on the first day of the conference that said "WELCOME WRITERS!" Three days later, the banner was changed to "TRY BOWLING!"

That just struck me as hilarious. HAHAHAHA. Zinsser is delightful. I had to teach excerpts from his book On Writing Well in my first year composition courses, but I've never read the book in its entirety. I should pick it up.

Lance and I were talking a lot the other day about my graduate school days. I really miss academia so much. I am keeping up with the people I worked with in the English department, and most of them are just now finishing up their doctorates. I can't believe how time flies. Of course, I made the choice of getting married and moving to Europe instead of finishing grad school - a choice I don't regret at all. But if I had it to do over again, I would've done things a little differently.

I just wish there was some way we could figure out financial aid so that I could go back to school. I don't want to take out any more student loans. We are deep enough in debt as it is. I just really have the itch to go back.