Happiness... is a warm gun, mama.

So much can happen in a few short days sometimes. Other days drag by slowly, but oh no, not on this bank holiday weekend. It all started while I sat curled up on the couch in the living room, typing away. The door opened and I could hear voices then Ryan opened the door and said, "do you want to meet our friends?". Yes, dear readers, the boys have friends, these particular friends being from Derry. No, I couldn't understand them most of the time. Still, the boys were excited to have their friends around, and it was pretty amusing to see them hungover the next morning, then head out to go fishing, yes fishing, and come back and attempt to prepard and eat the "catch of the day". The house smelled like fish for two days. Yuck.

Yesterday threatened rain and turned cold. I was feeling pretty stressed because I hadn't been as productive as I wanted to be, but to take a break from writing a book review (that he changed his mind and didn't even ask us to turn in), I went to the bookshop to pick up some books for class. On my way there, I popped into a little dress shop that sells the coolest looking clothes (and hats). This place is right up my alley, except for the price tag. So, when the American woman and her daughter asked for directions to the city museum and the cashier fumbled, I offered to walk them there myself. I was going that way anyway. Turns out, it was a family from Florida on vacation. Karen was the mother's name and I don't remember the name of her husband, but they had two kids. It was the dad's birthday and they're from St. Augustine. So that was a nice detour. I headed on to the shop and only found one required reading, BUT I also found a book about irish women journalists from 1969-1981. YES. This may work its way into a non-fiction or women's writing project. I'm pretty excited about it.

When I got back to the house, the boys were heading out to buy firewood and a pumpkin. So they built a fire and brought me a pumpkin to carve. I was so excited! Such great roommates! It was a lovely evening with the three of us working away at projects (Kasha was over at Colm's) and then Noel went to get more firewood. This is when we discovered that the outside pane of our glass door had cracked in tiny little pieces. Fantastic. Bertie is currently in the States for a wedding, so...yeah. The door looks sort of cool, but we're definitely not using it.

This brings us to today, which was dreary and rainy from the moment I woke up. Yuck. But, I got FOUR letters in the mail today (thanks Maw Maw, Louise, Sheree and Danielle!) and the rain stopped long enough for me to walk to campus. Excellent. So, I returned my library books, picked up the second required reading (the one I didn't find in town yesterday) and bought myself an almond latte. The barista there is really nice, but she can't hear me. She never hears me say almond and I always feel so bad for having to repeat myself. I also really like the almond latte because they always put AL on the cup, and have no idea those are my initials, and it's a bit of silliness to brighten the day. Today, however, I was also thirsty for something cool, so I went to the vending machine for another splurge, a coke (I haven' t had one in weeks). The machine was broken. No worries, I thought to myself, I just run back downstairs and go to the vending machine there. That machine didn't work either. Conspiracy! Just beside the coke machine, there is a water and Powerade machine. I only had enough change with me to buy a Powerade (which I haven't had since high school when there was a machine outside the back doors of the gym), so of course, I chose the blue one (berry and tropical fruit flavor). Out popped not one, but TWO Powerades (the second one was orange). This I took as a sign and I scooped them both up and headed to class to talk about Marilynne Robinson, plot and landscape. Now, here I am, listening to my cool new Acoustic France cd (thanks Danielle!) and preparing to read more poetry criticism. And eat. Let's not forget that. Kasha brought home cake :)