A thing that annoys me and a thing that charms me

1. Mormons that are somehow unable to give thanks for RAIN in their prayers. If I hear one more person appreciate the "moisture" I am going to scream and charge out the door of the chapel. I will not wait for the amen.

2. Actually owning The Color Red and The Lost Year by Andrew Rose Gregory. New quiet time music!

DID YOU KNOW THAT...

When you finish loading the dishwasher and start it, then turn around to find a peanut buttery knife in the newly emptied sink, it usually isn't who you think it is? Today I learned the truth about the mystery knife user.

It's Satan, trying to get you to fight with your housemates.


NOW YOU KNOW.

Things I am in Love with recently

My new perfume! I finally moved away from vanilla, and got two great smells for myself. One is Pure Grace (it's all over the internet, I think, or was several years ago at least), which makes me smell kind of like laundry, and the other is Harajuku Lovers Lil' Angel, which reminds me of pineapple and a bunch of other stuff (Plus! It comes in the coolest bottle with a doll for a lid).

My laptop-using spot, on my stomach on the floor with my banjo stand right in front of my face. I'm still getting over my cold (argh, it's been a whole month now) and when I sneeze my banjo reverberates and makes fun noises in sympathy.

My yellow earrings that I bought a few weeks ago. They're big and yellow and go really well with purple sweaters.

I got to sit between a bass and a tenor in sunday school today. Not only are they amazing singers, but they were also the two most attractive men in the room. Don't know how I worked that.

My newly nail-less big toe. You're so cute with your nail-shaped indentation and leftover cuticle! Since the nail came off all in one piece, I'm thinking of turning it into a banjo/guitar pick. What better material to make one out of than a human nail?

Perhaps two hours at the bookstore is inadvisable

1. Why can't I find a good photography book that tells me just what I need/want to know? Please don't condescend (Photography for Dummies and Grandmas!), please don't be a users manual (I already got that with the camera), please don't be like from the early eighties with the haircuts in the example photos to prove it. All I want is something to explain what the mechanics of things are (please tell me about shutter speeds and aperture and how to mess with exposures) and also some helpful composition tips (maybe I need to take a class for this kind of thing. Theory of Making Things Look Good 101, perhaps). I do not need a book that includes a chapter on how to choose the right point-and-shoot for you. That is a waste of pages and I don't really feel like buying ten pages worth of book that I will not read. I ended up getting The Photography Bible by Daniel Lezano, because it is pretty dang close to what I'm looking for. Looking through it again now, after purchasing it, I'm happier than when I picked it up in the store. Good.
2. I think that there is something wrong with bookstore culture? sociologists? the buyers for national bookselling giants? me? I guess what I'm trying to say is that out of the whole shelf full of books in the section marked Sociology, not one of them appealed to me, even though it is the field that I chose to earn a degree in, and I truly do enjoy the field. I suppose there's a difference between academic Sociology with a capital S, and pop sociology sold to middle-aged ladies who quit college after getting their Associate's degree and never looked back. It's just a bigger difference than I thought it was. Again: is it too much to ask? Can we not have both academic and pop literature in the same bookstore? Must we dumb ourselves down for the masses?
3. So many freaking journals! Blank books of so many shapes and sizes! How much do they think people are writing anymore? Granted, the average person today probably records more of their thoughts for the enlightenment of others than the average person of ten or twenty years ago, but I am certain that over 97% of that is happening online, and not in journals. So either (a) I am wrong, and there are legions of people there still keeping Old-Tyme handwritten journals, (b) I am right, and there are a bunch of bookstores across the country with ten years' worth of journals in stock, or (c) people are buying journals for themselves and their friends, but then never actually using them. Depending on how long These Troubling Economic Times last, the empty journals could be made useful by burning them to heat houses and cook dinners.

At least I did find them

The other day as I was riding my bike into work, I had my purse, several hair ties, a year-old newspaper, a banjo capo, some antibiotics, a headlamp, a bottle of honey and a loaf of bread in my bike bag.

And yet somehow, my debit card and driver's license were missing for almost a week before I found them tonight under a pile of clothes in my bedroom. Perhaps now is the time for, if not a Spring Cleaning, then at least a Spring Organizing.