I am having the hardest time getting work done. I leave for vacation this Saturday and I keep wanting to do stuff to get ready for that. Like rent a car (gotta remember to get that done today) and make reservations at the youth hostel for the one night when I won't be staying with friends. This is going to be a vacation on a shoestring. My tickets were $202 - for a flight from San Jose, CA to Baltimore, MD. The car rental will be more than that but I'm staying with friends in Baltimore, Raleigh, and Charleston. One night I'll stay in a youth hostel in VA. Excluding food I think I can keep the whole thing under $600 - not bad for a ten day trip. Certainly better than my $3000 (or so) for 11 days trip last summer. Then again, that was Europe and real hotels and Oberammergau, so it was worth it.

I saw someone else's web page on which she listed, or attempted to list, every book she ever read. I don't know that I could completely list every book I read last week (I tend to forget titles and authors and stuff like that). During the summers in high school I read at least 6 - 10 books a week. That was a combination of having no life, a side effect of living 45 minutes from where you go to school, and being a relatively quick reader. At one point I was down to reading my parents' parenting books. I even gave in once or twice and read one of my dad's westerns. Never gave in and went for the younger brother's sci fi/fantasy though. I seriously tried to read one once, but couldn't get past the first few chapters. (Lord Foul's Bane - I gave up with the rape scene) I tried again when my bookclub was reading Snowcrash. I got farther on that one and might even finish it some day. It was okay - nothing really repelled me - but I didn't get into it that much either. Reading her list brought to mind lots of other stuff I've read too. Stuff from Spanish lit class in high school, and required reading for some of my college classes, and stuff I read as a child. My list would have a lot more 'light' reading than hers did though. Like all of Helen McInnes, most of Dick Francis, Tom Clancy, Robert Ludlum, and, I hesitate to admit this where anyone could read it, but lots of Nora Roberts and Sandra Brown too.

We just found a pretty big wolf spider in our pod (like a cubicle, but for multiple people and with less demeaning types of walls, but still no door or ceiling). We caught it under a bowl and slid a paper under that, then some cardboard so we could safely transport it outside. Ick! I'm okay with small to moderate sized spiders, but once you hit 1 in. in size, that's it.

This morning bereakfast was the rest of the cantloupe from last night. Except for the part that my roommate apparently ate.

I don't mind sharing food, in fact I prefer it to having jealously guarded stashes of stuff, but she always ends up taking "the good stuff." Like we had a gallon of chocolate brownie ice cream that one of my friends brought over. My friend and I each had a small bowl around 10 or 11 p.m. on a Friday. On Sunday early afternoon I went to get another small bowl. There were only about 2 small servings left! So somehow she ate at least half a gallon of ice cream, by herself, in a day and a half. (I checked with my other roommate and she hadn't had any.) Or I buy natural peanut butter. While I was still unpacking the groceries, roommate 1 came into the kitchen and was like "oh, this is great, I prefer this peanut butter" etc. and immediately started making something for herself with it. I hadn't even opened it! I think I used the pb (normal sized jar) twice. Then it was gone. Wouldn't be a problem if she bought similar stuff to contribute. But it never seems like she does. And the groceries she does buy she keeps in some bags separate from the normal canned goods, etc. that we store in our cabinets. So we feel like we can't take the stuff she's bought. Not that we would want to because she never buys stuff for herself that falls into the 'good stuff' category. But if we buy it, she'll eat it faster than anyone I've ever seen. Roommate 2 and I have discussed it and agree that we have stopped, or cut down on buying things that roommate 1 might like because we know that we'll get maybe one taste of it ourselves before it disappears.

Okay, I realize that this sounds ludicrous. And I do have a weird relationship with food. But when I buy a jar of peanut butter I expect it to last about a month or two. Not under 2 weeks.