weekend anticipation intensifies

 My friend Laura CAN be free tomorrow to meet up in Longview!

So today, after class, I took care of a few things - getting some cash (I often prefer paying cash, and I don't like to travel far without AT LEAST $40 in my wallet in case I need gas and none of my credit cards work), and getting gas in the car.

I also ran the car through the car wash again - it's been very dry here, we've had an absolute population explosion of aphids and leaf miners and stuff, and no rain to wash away the "honeydew*" that they drop on cars. (And on leaves, which wind up on the ground and then stick to my shoes, and get tracked around the house even though I take my shoes off just inside the door and it's VERY gross having a honeydew covered leaf stick to your bare foot)

I also cleaned out the front seat in case she wants to play navigator and have me drive as we run around to a couple places in Longview. We are at least going to the yarn shop and somewhere for lunch; I would also like to go to Michael's (I don't have one near me and I've heard Lion Brand is briefly bringing back a version of Sock-ease and some of the color combos are neat) and Books a Million.

As I said: I don't need more yarn or books. But yarn and books make life nicer, and today IS "Treat Yo' Self" day, so I will observe that tomorrow.

(*a nicer word for "insect poop")

I finished "Anne of Green Gables" last night. I might read more of the books in the series; this one kind of left me going "okay, and then what happened in the future?" and I know there are several more (I think including even after Anne marries). And yes, bad things happen, but they aren't.....bad in the way that violence is bad, or war is bad? They're sad, but they're more or less "natural course of things sad, and not really caused by human evil" and I like that. 

Not quite sure what to start next; I have both "Under the Whispering Door" (a fantasy novel I bought a year or so ago) and "The Colour of Magic" on my tbr pile (I've never read Discworld; I tried some years ago but entered in t he middle of the series and bogged down, so I'm trying again, especially after reading somewhere the quotation from one of the later books (I think the character Granny Weatherwax said it) that "Evil begins when you treat people as things" and yeah, that's a big mood right now. (I have never read Discworld but I have enough friends who are big fans that I know of the characters and some of the things that go on). 

I don't know. I never used to care for fantasy but more recently I've found fantasy novels (at least some of them) enjoyable. I'm still probably not big on the sort of "analog of what I imagine the medieval world/Viking world/Roman world was like" fantasy with lots of violence and women being taken by force, but I like the more whimsical sort - I really enjoyed Becky Chamber's two "Monk and Robot" books, for example. And a lot of fantasy novels fall into the "hopepunk" category, or something like it: where characters who strive to do what is good and right and kind and ethical flourish, and in the end doing the right thing wins out over doing the wrong thing, and I need that right now; there feels like too much wrong going on in the world. (Though perhaps, maybe, the drawstring of the bag is starting to close a bit around the necks of some who have brought great discomfort and harm to many, looking at a recent court case...)