This morning started out at a good pace.  Jess and I got up, had breakfast, and then were out the door on our way to get our shopping done.  We hopped on the 130 bus, and about an hour later, we arrived at the Blue City mall.  Our main goal was to go to the Decathlon and get some bigger fenders for the bike, and grab a Light for Dale.  But the lights weren’t good, and none of the fenders were what we were looking for.  We did grab some more clips for our pants (to keep them out of the chain and pedals), new brakepads, and Jess got a warm pair of sweatpants for a winter layer.

After that, we went in to the Carrefour nearby.  It’s a pretty sizeable supermarket, kind of like Wal-Mart.  We loaded up on some meat, a few canned goods, bread, and, most importantly, a Brita.  That was one of our main goals, and we almost left the store without it!  But Jess remembered as we were in line, so we ran back out and got one.

Unfortunately, we forgot our backpacks, so we were stuck carrying a few, pretty heavy bags.  We took a break to stop for some lunch at a Sphinx restaurant.  Jess got her usual standby – caprese, and I had a margherita pizza.  It was actually more like a plain cheese pizza, but it was good.  I ate way too much, though. 

On our way out, we stopped in a Coffee Heaven and grabbed a couple of Tiger Chai Lattes.  Very tasty stuff.

We lugged our stuff back to the bus, which was just about to leave.  But we weren’t sure if we were supposed to have drinks, so we stuffed them in our bag and hopped on.  We took a seat near the back and pulled our drinks back out.  The only signs I saw were no alcohol and no smoking.  So I figured we were in the clear – not that we would have stopped if it was prohibited anyways.

After about another hour of being squished in our seats, we arrived back home.  We power-walked back to our apartment (normally an 8 minute walk) so Jess could use the bathroom ("I thought I told you to go before we got on the bus!" ) and unloaded our stuff.

Afterwards, Jess had to get to work.  She’s still at it, and, after she told me her workload, I think it’s ridiculous.  Her one class is actually about 3 or 4 classes worth of work – and little of it is relevant to the class.  Less of that is relevant to her major…  it’s just a "requirement".  Which, in layman’s terms translates to "How the college earns it’s money".  It makes me very sad that even education has become a business…  But that’s something I don’t feel like getting into right now.

So anyways, while she worked I figured I’d get on the computer and work ahead a bit…  That resulted in me doing about an hour of work, and about 2 hours of some solid, spider solitaire.  I’ve been sticking to my idea that you can win, as long as you "play your cards right".  I’m currently on a 15 game winning streak…  But I’m stuck on a pretty tough one.  I keep having to go back and start again.

But anyways…  most of our entertainment resides on the computers, unfortunately…  so when we got sick of staring at the screens we took a stroll out and across the street from our complex to a small cluster of shops.  The cukiernia was closed unfortunately.  I was hoping for a cappuccino and maybe something sweet.  The delikatesy was closed, too.  But the wine shop was open!  So we picked up a bottle of French Bordeaux, which I’m enjoying a glass of right now.

I’m trying to keep to my promise of writing every day, and earlier I started on my kid’s story based on one of our rabbits.  Jess likes it so far, but it’s got a long way to go.  Then there’s the issue of illustration.  I thought of just using photos, but that would be tough and a bit unprofessional.  My artwork is barely passable, and besides, I left all my drawing supplies back in the states.  So we’ll see what happens there, but at least I can get the words down.  We need that first to guide the illustrations, anyway.

I’ve got a few other projects I could be working on, but I just can’t bring myself to do them… I feel like I’m always doing some kind of website stuff, so in my freetime I try to get as far away from it as possible.  But Eric asked me to put together a simple site for Jess’ (his Jess, not mine) webcomic.  I’ve yet to get around to that…  Maybe tonight.  It’s still relatively early, and it should be simple enough to at least start something for it…  We’ll see.  I might just try to crash early, and maybe read a bit.  Just another excuse to push things off a bit longer, I guess.