Sat Jul 9 - I almost slept in, but Mel (bless her heart) came knocking on my door to see if I was up yet. Quick shower and dress, and I was over at the new place on time. I finally met the manager (on Wed I had met her real estate partner when she brought the application over to the laundromat), we did a walk-through on the apartment, and we agreed on the "to-do list" for the manager to finalize the apartment for us.

I almost can't believe we got it. Gee, I guess my phone charm is better than I thought it was. *grin*

I had breakfast afterwards, spending some time continuing to read "Seven Habits of Effective People." It doesn't resound as strongly as "Time Management from the Inside Out" but it's more of a stretch-read for me. I'm working on trying to expand my organizational and planning skills, and so I've got to continue researching and applying what works and what improves.

Then a little shopping time. Etain and I are working on some site tokens for Crown in September, so I dropped by Michael's crafts to find some yarn or cotton or cord that might make a nice lucet cord (a type of braiding, sort of).

Next door was a Lowe's home improvement, so I wandered around creating a toolbox of supplies for my sword fighting kit. I couldn't find any leather gloves or strapping tape, but I got a great toolbox, a variety of colored duct tapes, a sanding sponge, some WD-40, and a package of zip ties. Whee!

Finally, I spent about an hour or more working on some new lyrics for our next CD and then headed over to the studio. Turns out rehearsal was postponed an hour, which gave me even more time to continue lyrics while waiting. One nice thing about personal song-writing lately is that it's given me the motivation to get back to lyrics for the band again.

After rehearsal, I couldn't think of anyplace where I really wanted to get dinner, so I stopped by the Borders near my new apartment. They had a huge clearance sale going on so I picked up an Ursula Le Guinn book for $3, a coffee-table book with those optical illusions where you can see the 3-D images for $2, and the spinning magazine that Lynn wanted me to read. I'd been meaning to subscribe to it anyways, so getting a copy now made sense. They had some yummy sandwiches at the coffee shop in the store, so I sat over my magazine, the local arts paper, my decaf latte, and a cheese and tomato sandwich until they kicked us out of the store.

Have I mentioned lately how much I love my new apartment?