“Testing the Waters”: 682

Hee hee. After I talked to Ken, he came into the study to noodle on the computer, but I was fired up and grabbed a notebook and pen (too lazy to wake up the laptop) and wrote three pages on the new story, plus half a page of notes on the next scene. Yay me! I’ll post the word count in yesterday’s entry.

This morning we made breakfast burritos and tea, and I read the paper while he caught up on more computer stuff (with all his travelling, he hasn’t been able to get on for awhile, so personal e-mails and such have backed up). I’ve just come out of the shower, and we’re going to head out to Costco and Walmart, then come home and do some house stuff.

Okay, we’re back. Well, mostly. Ken’s gone back out to Home Depot to get a pipe fitting for the solar panels so they stop leaking all over and actually warm the water and send it back down into the pool.

We were about to head to Costco &tc. when Meg and Matt called; they were on their way home from San Diego and wanted to stop by. They didn’t stay long, because Hobbes the greyhound was in the car, but they used the potty and had some water and told us about the terrible dancing at Pennsic. After the left, we finally left ourselves. First we went to Fry’s and pretty much decided what scanner we want (Ken will do some cross-checking online and then probably buy it next week in Portland because Oregon has no sales tax), and drooled over 42” wide flat screen TVs and discovered they had no TiVos. I have to mention, though, that the Fry’s store is really cool. They’ve built the walls to look like stone, and have big tables with huge stone lions holding them up, and faux torch chandeliers, and a waterfall… Nifty-keen. At Costco, we spent an astonishing amount of money as usual, but if you figure that 8 cases of Dr Pepper is a good $50, then it’s not quite as scary. We did the The Lord of the Rings DVD…of course. We were starving by then (it was about 5 p.m.), and were going to go to Carl’s, but we saw a noodle bar across the parking lot and went to investigate, and ended up eating some very yummy Vietnamese food. I had grilled chicken over the thin white noodles and cucumber and lettuce and mint, and Ken had pork and vegetables with the wide noodles. He’s happy because the place is really close to his work, and will be a good lunch option. We decided that none of the things we were going to buy at Costco were urgent, and chose to come home and get some work done instead.

Oh, almost forgot—we were outbid on the garage door stuff! Pooh! One more person has bid on The Fey series, so I’ll have to keep an eye on that. I’ve also looked for scanners and TiVos. This is addicting…

I just realised I never updated as to what we did Friday night. Ken showed up as I was finishing the creation of dinner, so we snuggled and kissed and then sat down to eat. His mom called while we were eating, and I suggested we invite her to go to the movies with us. So we all went. It was only after the movie that she announced that this was the first Star Wars movie she’d ever seen. “So you didn’t have a fucking clue what was going on then?” I said. The special effects were fantastic, Ewan MacGregor was good and had some great lines, and it was great to see Samuel Jackson with more lines and of course to see Yoda fight! But otherwise…eh. It suffered from middle-movie syndrome (didn’t even have a hopeful ending like ESB did), Natalie Portman apparently forgot how to act (she’s normally really good!), the new kid did nothing for me, and you coulda drive a truck through some of those plot holes. Great to see 3PO and R2 together again, although for the life of me, 3PO totally reminded me of Giles from Buffy. Messed with my head, I tell you. Afterwards, we went to the Cheesecake Factory for dessert. Because I don’t like sweet things (except Ken, as his mom reminded me), I had hot wings. I didn’t like the sauce nearly as much as Friday’s. Ken had peanut butter cookie dough cheesecake and Mom had tiramisu. Urp.

I also realised that I forgot to mention one of the things I did yesterday. Between washing all the china, I rearranged the garden window in the kitchen and put only herbs and green or clear bottles in it. I put all the blue bottles on the windowsills around the breakfast nook. I then unpacked several boxes of knickknacks, and discovered we had a bunch of cobalt blue things—boxes, candleholders, etc.—so I put all those around as well. Looks spiffy. Once I’m completely happy with the arrangement, I need to use museum putty to stick down the bottles and other breakables, in case of earthquake, cats, or small children.