08.14.02
You know, this had the potential to be an excellent day.
I woke up refreshed, ready for action, and left the house earlier than usual. The animals were well-behaved and didn't require scads of my time.
I didn't hit any major traffic on the drive to work, and got into town with what should have been more than enought time to find a parking place, walk to the salon, and actually be early. Except that the sorority girls are back in town. And, although I didn't realize it before, I've been parking my car in what is essentially "Sorority Row."
I just barely made it to work on time, and now I have to find somewhere else to park -- you can't fight the power of the sorority. Yeah, maybe you can take one down, but they're a sisterhood, man. You don't even stand a chance.
Work was work.
I did get a fortune in my fortune cookie that informed me, "You have a healthy appetite."
This is especially funny if you add "... in bed" to the end of that fortune, and take into consideration the fact that I've been involuntarily chaste for the last year-and-a-half. Okay, maybe not completely involuntarily, but romance takes so my energy, what with all the hiding the bodies and all.
(See the anti-line to, "Where do you live?" "I could tell you, but then I'd have to kill you in the morning.." That one is almost as much my favorite as: "How do you like your eggs in the morning?" "Unfertilized.")
And after work, I actually got into Soleil to tan for the first time in about a month. Every single time I set foot into that place, they've made it swankier.
Last time I was in, the walls had been glazed a deep bronzish-orange. Very tan, very soleil. This time, they added beautiful violet pendant fixtures from the ceiling, bathing the salon in warm, surprisingly golden light.
My room was glazed a deep chocolatey brown, and was very lovely. All the wall surface treatments certainly make the place look incredibly classy -- amazing what you can do with some rags and a can of paint. And the tanning bed felt heavenly -- warm, soothing light bathing my skin -- until my face started to sting and remind me that I was using Differin and had to keep it covered, which I did. My neck and the underside of my jaws didn't fare so well, and I ended up skipping out on the last five minutes because I was stinging something fierce.
I got dressed and walked back towards my car, itchy and smelly and tired, but I made it there finally.
Many perky-looking girls were busy unloading, or supervising the unloading of cars and trucks, all around my car. I just wanted to get the hell out of there, go buy some groceries, and get home to shower and eat something.
Instead, I somehow managed to set off my car alarm, and the battery in my keyless entry thingamabob decided to take a header, leaving me there pushing buttons and swearing loudly as my car made loud noises, the girls and movers gawking and snorting. Figuring that maybe there was some juice in the batteries yet, I dug out my pocket knife, and managed to unscrew the case closure, revealing a little tiny battery and circuit board. I popped out the battery, and then popped it back in, pushed the button, and the horribly honking and wailing of the horn stopped -- at least five minutes after it began.
Chagrined, I got my ass in the car and drove off.
I decided to go to the ghetto Hy-vee in Cedar Rapids, because I got some excellent peaches there, and I wanted to buy some more. Unfortunately, instead of the delicious ambrosia-like fruits I had experienced before, I discovered some truly horrid-looking, hard little green things that were allegedly peaches -- I had my doubts. The nectarines looked fairly passable, though, so I bought some.
I also picked up some prepackaged food and frozen dinners, because I don't have the energy to whip up something from scratch, but I can sure sautee some hamburger up, and add in some sort of pasta-and-sauce-based helper. I will eat healthier when I am not the only one doing things around here, wrangling pets and maintaining householdy things. Dishes and laundry don't do themselves, and getting the mail is hard sometimes -- you have to walk far, and then walk an equal distance back to the house. Plus, I have scaley prune hands now.
I got home, changed, put away the perishable goods, and decided to make the hamburger dish for dinner. I also decided that the box of helper was the only thing I wasn't seeing in the grocery bags. I checked the receipt, and saw that it was on there, went out to the car to see if the box was on the floor or something, realized the car door had somehow gotten locked with my keys inside, went back inside the house and rooted around, trying to figure out where the other set of keys were, found them, and discovered the box was not in the car. I went back inside, got more presentable than pajamas and slippers, grabbed my purse, and drove the six miles back to the store.
Along the way, I realized that I had managed to drive about 400 miles on a 15-gallon tank of gas, which I realize is mostly highway miles as opposed to stop-n-start in-town driving, but is still impressive to me. I haven't gotten more than 20 miles to a gallon before, in the entire time I've owned this car. The sad part of it though, is that I filled the car up the sunday before last -- I managed to put as many miles on my car in the last 10 days as I had for an average 2-month period the previous year.
At Hy-vee, the girl at customer service referred me up to the "front shift manager," who turned out to be some 12-year-old who was probably career Hy-vee, and had worked there since he was in Pampers, or something. But he did give me another box of helper, and apologized profusely.
On the way home, it occured to me that the pound of hamburger was sitting on the table in the kitchen, right near the edge, and the dog was also in the kitchen. The dog that I have seen on at least sneak food from places me wasn't supposed to be his. I decided that if he ate my hamburger, I was going to make cocker spaniel helper stroganoff for dinner.
I got back, and passed Stinkerbell on the way out the driveway. She turned around, drove back up the driveway, and hung out with me in the house for a while, watching me as I browned my burger for dinner.
We hugged, she left, and I had a nice salad, a plateful of hamburger stroganoff, which isn't nearly as good as my mother's homemade beef stroganoff -- but remains one of the few dishes that I can't seem to make at all well -- but tasted fine and was quite filling, and a big glass of fruit juice. Boxed dishes like that are kind of like Jell-O No-Bake "Cheesecake," or frozen "mexican" dinners -- they taste delicious and are great things unto themselves, but really doesn't have anything in common with real cheesecake, or bear as close a resemblance to authentic Mexican food as they do to highly-seasoned dog food, beyond superficial external appearances, and a common name.
Everything else was pretty okay the rest of the evening, and I didn't have much to contemplate, except that there was a huge leap of plot information between Knightfall 2 and Knightsend, that should have been accounted for somewhere, but I'm tired of talking about Batman today.
What's in your head?
