1. A friend told me that Costco was out of toilet paper the day she'd been there because of all the people panic-stocking for possible quarantine. That caused my own moment of panic, because we really were out of toilet paper. The last two rolls in the house were in use in our two bathrooms. Fortunately, Target came through-- apparently, Target shoppers are not panicked. There was an entire wall of toilet paper. And I was at Costco yesterday and they must have restocked because there was plenty. Phew.
2. I've had a cold all week, and I have to admit that I wondered (briefly) if I was becoming Typhoid Mary after picking up the dreaded virus on the plane last week (more about that in a minute). But my in-house medical expert tells me I don't have the right symptoms, so just a boring, regular cold it is. I have to say it is particularly tenacious. I thought I was practically well yesterday but this morning I am worse.
(Not sure what it means that after not posting for a month, I sat down to post again on a day when I am sick. Probably just that there's not much else I will get done today.)
3. Neither of us really had anything we wanted for Christmas, so we decided instead of presents we would get new flooring for our downstairs. Eight years ago when we moved in, we had so totally blown our renovation budget that we bought cheap carpet that (predictably) was looking pretty gnarly. It's not a lot of space-- just two rooms (also a storeroom and a furnace room are down there, but they're cement and didn't count for this). We picked out the new flooring on Dec 28th, paid for it the first week in January, and they just finished installing it on Tuesday. I will not bore you with the long story of why it took so long, but I am so glad it is finally done. And more importantly, we love it.
4. The laundry room is one of the rooms downstairs, so my washer and dryer have been sitting out in the garage, useless, for more than three weeks. I've been to the laundromat twice to do the essentials, which is a pain, but (honestly) not really that bad since I can get five loads of laundry done in two hours, and have time to sit and read to boot. Last night we finally got our own washer and dryer hooked up again, and I'm on the second load already. There are mountains of laundry waiting to be done, it will take days to catch up. Fortunately, as I've told you before, laundry is the one household chore I don't mind, so it could be worse.
5. One of my favorite things in a book is inventive use of language. If you're the same, highly recommend Motherless Brooklyn, The Hollow Kingdom, and Tuesday Mooney Talks to Ghosts. All five-star reads for me. Also The Idiot, although that one I only enjoyed for the first half, it kind of devolved after that. "Inventive use of language" might make them sound arcane and hard to read, but all of them were fun books that I flew through.
6. I've become addicted to the NYTimes crossword puzzle app. I didn't subscribe (yet)--it's something like $9.99 per month-- but there are a fair number of free puzzles, including a new mini-puzzle every day, and then you can buy packs of puzzles for $3.99 that last for several weeks, for a novice like me, anyway. So far here is my one solid clue that I can pass on: three letters, "designer initials" is always YSL. Actually, you probably know that, because I knew it the first time I saw it. It just has suprised me how often it appears in puzzles--maybe one in ten.
7. A couple of weeks ago I flew down to Louisiana (my sister) and Texas (my mom and my other sister) to get out of the cold for a few days. It was a great trip. Dean went with me for the first few days, then flew back home for work stuff he couldn't miss. We had so much fun eating great Louisiana food and watching a Mardi Gras parade (apparently they're not quite as wildly crazy the weekend before, esp where we were at the beginning of the parade route--it was pretty family friendly and there were hundreds of kids running around and perched on ladders so they could see).
But it wasn't very warm-- only about ten degrees warmer than it was here. So we are extra glad that spring already seems to be coming back at home. Now I just have to get over this cold. Have a great weekend. We re-watched the BBC Emma with Romola Garai as Emma and Jonny Lee Miller as Mr. Knightley this week. The first time I saw it, I didn't like it because the two main characters were so different than I had them pictured in my head. Emma seemed too friendly. But over time I have come to love it--she is still definitely a snob, just a friendly one. She has some truly awful moments, and there are a couple of great scenes where she and Jonny Lee Miller go toe-to-toe. The new version of Emma opens here this weekend, so I hope I will be able to report back next week.
QOTW (Question of the week) -- is Emma a Taming of the Shrew plot? It kind of is. Except she's not being bargained away in marriage by her father (in fact, the opposite), and her sister is already married. Hmmmmm.
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