The Saturday trip

Well, I found a smaller, less-expensive "fluster" than what I had been contemplating. (I read some online reviews of the kettle I was looking at; apparently it either breaks distressingly easily or else there are a lot of defective ones out there).

Saturday I did go to Sherman. It was not nearly as crowded as I thought it would be though I did get behind a father with three pre-tween sons who were all fighting each other in line at the Target.

However, I did manage to stock up on some of the small-portion-size things that are easy for me to grab in the morning when I'm making lunch. (For some reason, the local groceries don't have so many of these items. I don't know why). So now I have dried cranberries ahead, and little bags of pretzels, and things like that.

I also picked up a new color of nail varnish. I decided it was time to change the color on my toes.

I had been wearing the "Wild Strawberries," and one of my colleagues commented on it the other day - she said she liked the color, and that she had some glitter polish that would go nicely with it. And I remarked, "Yeah, but glitter polish is really hard to remove." And then our other colleague Doug stuck his oar in: "You admit to having worn glitter polish?" (Heh. I probably should do it at least once more this fall, especially on a time when he and I are teaching together). It's funny. I'm a lot more willing to let my idiosyncratic/girly flag fly than I was a few years ago. PART of that may be a factor of age and giving less of a darn than I once did about what people think, but I also think part of it is a sense of "They know what I can do. They know I'm a pretty dang good teacher and I always keep up my end of responsibilities. So if I want to wear frivolous looking things, who cares?" (Call it the Penny Garcia Effect. Not that I'd ever be able to go full-on Penny Garcia, but I have to admit I somewhat admire the character's fashion sense). I also have a Nemu-Nemu pendant I bought that I've worn a few times this summer, and will wear more in the fall.

Anyway. The new nail color. This is a new brand to me - Essie. It's more expensive than Revlon but I liked the color, and I liked the color name:



It's called Headmistress. Which seemed quite appropriate to me for the start of school. (Well, okay. They have it written out as Head Mistress, a play on words, but I am choosing to think of it as Headmistress. And while I may never be headmistress of a school, I don't expect to ever find a nail varnish called Biology Professor.)

It's a clear bright red, maybe bordering a bit on burgundy. (It's hard to get a true color photo; when I took a picture with flash it was not readily distinguishable from Cherries in the Snow, which is lighter and pinker).

I do think I'll continue to wear varnish into the fall. I usually stop around the start of September, but you know? It's one of those little things that makes me happy and makes me feel like I'm caring for the girly part of me, rather than just attending to the professorial/duty-bound part of me. (Of course, now there will probably be some news story about how wearing nail varnish gives you Toe Cancer or somesuch.)

***

I also went to the new JoAnn's Fabrics. They had moved from their old location (which frankly, was sort of sad and dingy and small...you could tell it was an older location, the building wasn't that well kept up, so on and so forth). The new location is in a former Circuit City store.

It's HUGE.

And it's well-lit.

And it's clean

And it all feels very new and nice and well-stocked.

I walked in the door and thought "ohmygosh ohmygosh ohmygosh" and then spent about ten or fifteen minutes just walking around the store, amazed at how big it was and how much stuff they had. Their yarn section is larger. Their book section is much larger. They have more bolts of quilting fabric, and they have some items (like the plastic stencils for marking handquilting designs) that I don't remember them carrying at the other location.

(Yes, I bought some stuff. I also found a copy of the British Simply Knitting to check out.)

It feels so nice to have this store now. (And it's closer and easier to get to than the older one). I'm afraid this is going to seriously hurt the Hobby Lobby that is across the highway from them, but, meh, maybe Hobby Lobby needs to step up its game. (The one nearest me hasn't had the greatest yarn selection of late, and they seem slow to restock).

And yes, I realize, that people who live in bigger more urbanized areas actually have large, heavily-stocked, indie yarn shops, and would not be so amazed by a super-sized JoAnn's as I am, but when you live kind of in the sticks, things take on a different significance.

***

And tomorrow starts, if I'm calculating correctly, Year 13 of my being on the payroll here. That's kind of...scary. (I don't mean the 13, I mean that it's been that long)