The Dangerous Existence of Madame Lee

Some things that made me happy today:

+ I finally finished the novel I was reading and kvetching about in the last post. Also, and I totally forgot to pick this nit, if you are going to write about Russians, it does sort of help if you do a little basic homework on their culture. I AM ONLY SAYING.
+ OMG YOU GUYS THERE ARE FIREFLIES. I've never seen them this early, but there were a few when I was out for a walk earlier.
+ Camille and Paige and Tiffany and I were hanging out after work, just outside the front doors, and we had one of those brief work post-mortem conversations (as you do), which segued into the following:
Paige: (to Tiffany) Let's go to Chandler [next town over].
l33: There's nothing in Chandler, y'all.
Paige: Sometimes there is. We'll do a drive-by.
l33: Are y'all regulating?
Tiffany: Regulating?
Camille: LOL WARREN G.
l33: It was a clear black night, a clear white moon...
Paige: Oh, God.
Camille: You guys, I have that as a ringtone on my phone!
(Camille takes out her phone and plays "Regulators". Camille, Tiffany, and l33 bust bad white-girl "gang" signs and "dance" spasmodically.)
Paige: OMG YOU GUYS ARE SO WHITE. I DON'T KNOW ANY OF YOU. :D (goes back into the store)
(Tiffany followed shortly after this, and so the League of Pasty White Girls broke up.)
+ Lolmom made whole wheat bread. Also cake. :9
+ I had a short shift, and I have another short shift tomorrow, and I'm off on Tuesday. WIN.

So Camille had threatened to drag me to the New Age shop in Evansville. The original game plan was this: Camille would go pay her car insurance. I'd meet her in the Depress-O-Mall parking lot. Then we'd go to the New Age store in downtown Evansville.

What actually happened was this: Camille went and paid her car insurance. Then she called to ask if I'd like to grab a bite to eat, and I said sure, whatever she wanted to get was fine, as there isn't much I won't at least try. We visited the Super Buffet on Burkhardt, and Cecil (Camille's fiancé) was in tow; I'd only met Cecil once or twice before, and I'm always trepidated when people bring their significant others, but he's a good guy and it was nice to get to know him a little better. (Camille said she was worried that I'd feel like a third wheel, but it wasn't like that at all.) We got to sit right under the widescreen TV and watch Star Trek: The Next Generation, had fun making up our own dialogue (since we couldn't hear the actual dialogue), and mocked the D&D nerds at the next table. Camille also had a run-in with the chocolate fountain.

We went downtown to Earth Comforts, which for a tiny little shop (that I'd probably passed a bazillion times, given that I worked downtown for yonks and continue to play downtown; it's right next to the main Rape Me Up The Ass Bank building) contains a lot of stuff. It isn't a conventional New Age shop--most of their inventory is locally made and/or handmade, so it's not the usual Llewellyn texts and whatnot. I hadn't been going to buy anything, but wound up dropping $20 on candles and incense, since 2010 seems to be the year of Having A Little Faith so far and I kind of miss my pagan roots. ALSO: they have a fuckton of tea, which you can buy by the ounce, so I bought four ounces of ambrosia tea. I am excited, and will definitely need to pay them a repeat visit.

Camille and I were turning over packets of herbs; I mentioned my childhood/preadolescent obsession with herbs, which has faded but which I think I'd like to revive, and then this segued into a discussion of Camille's encyclopedia of magical uses of herbs and how she'd left it at home.

Camille: Did you want to go to Borders? :D
l33: Well, I wasn't planning on it, but we can. (I was driving, since Camille's car has no working heat.)

Cecil had another obligation, so we parted ways at the New Age shop, but Camille and I headed over to Borders, where I proceeded to go nuts with the rest of my Christmas money (MOST OF THE STUFF I BOUGHT WAS ON THE SALE TABLE. THAT MAKES IT OKAY); I checked out with my bargain notebooks and so on, we sat down for coffee and flipped through tattoo magazines (one of Camille's obsessions), and then I got up to buy archaeology magazines and a bargain book of old maps because old maps are awesome and I totally don't feel any Terra Incognita resurrection coming on why do you ask. (forgottensanity: Yes, I know I owe you e-mail. I will get to that. But first I must sleep.)

Sometimes the best days don't go according to plan. I got almost nothing else on my list accomplished, but it was a good day nonetheless, and I don't feel any self-loathing about it, which is even better and less characteristic of me. Damn braces; bless relaxes.

I'm thinking about revamping my bio entry to include such hot-button issues as my atrocious taste in music and omg I love samurai and so on, but I haven't actually gotten to it yet.

Just a post to the effect that I'm still alive. I don't know that I have a whole lot to say right now, which, true to form, will not prevent me from spewing forth God-knows-what. Thus, I give you this crap.

1.) I think Lol-Mart is getting to me. I hope the darkest hour is going to be just before dawn, in the mildest sense of the word "hope", since it's a feeling with which I'm pretty much unacquainted.
2.) I was eligible for my first profit-sharing check this pay period, so received a paycheck of unusual size. In honor of this momentous event, I intend to make the car payment! Hurrah!
3.) Ainsley asked me to come to Holiday World (local amusement park over in Spencer County) with her and her boyfriend and some other folks. Unfortunately, I have to work that day, so it's not on. Camille and her fiancé are going instead, so at least the Pains will have somebody gr00vy to hang around with.
4.) In only tangentially related news, I drove Camille to her mechanic's the other day so she could pick up her car. In so doing, I discovered vast swathes of Chandler previously unknown to me.
5.) Books, I has them. ZOMG PERISH THE THOUGHT.
6.) Apparently I have a birthday in a couple of weeks. I am putting everyone on notice that I have no intentions of turning 29 and will, instead, be turning 24. Because it's my reality and I can warp it if I want. Solipsistic of me, yes, but we all have our little ways.
7.) Some other stuff is going on, and I don't want to say anything in case it gets jinxed, something I'm damn good at doing. augustuscaesar, who can read my thoughts, is requested not to tell the Int0rwebz my shameful sekrits.
8.) I am concerned about my cucumber plant, which was battered by the storm. I WANT SOME DELICIOUS CUCUMBERS, THX.
9.) Also, I'm probably going to be dilatory and uninvolved--more so than usual, I mean--until #7 is resolved one way or the other. I am sure everyone will manage.
10.) There is no #10.