Shopping Trip

On Mondays Thom has to work 4-midnight. At around 3:30 today, he left, and I went out right after him. It was raining pretty hard outside, and so I thought that it would be the best time to find street parking for our outdoor mall. I was right. The outdoor mall in our town has a high quotient of used bookstores (5 in the space of about 5 blocks) and I went searching for a used insect field guide. It was funny watching how people reacted differently to the rain. Many people (even ones with umbrellas) huddled inside doorways, others walked slowly and casually with no umbrella or hood, while others ran through the rain, giggling and having fun. I just walked like I usually do, except holding an umbrella. I don't understand those people who were afraid of the rain even when they had umbrellas. I mean, I got a little wet, but it wasn't bad at all. I've found that there's a dearth of insect guides, apparently. But I did find a used (but you wouldn't know it) Audubona field guide to the weather and a cheap copy of the feminist writings of JS Mill and Harriet Taylor. Score.

After getting lunch, I left downtown and went to the health food grocery, where, after a few...minutes...of deliberation, I picked up a couple of reusable menstrual pads. I've never used anything like that before, but when I think of all the non-biodegradable waste that comes from using over-packaged maxi-pads, it makes me shudder. If I try these things and they work, I'll be saving myself money in the long run and making another advance in my Try Not to Fuck Shit Up mission. Also, there is something that is very "Ewww...it's icky! Throw it away!" about modern sanitary products. I used to get lecture after lecture from my mom and sister about pads in the trash can. Apparently, it's not enough to wrap your pad in the wrapper. What if the wrapper comes unstuck? What if your mother and your sister (and no one else) accidentally catch a glimpse of your menstrual blood? Oh my god! The horror! The only thing to do is wrap them in wads and wads of toilet paper so that way the fact that you menstruate can be concealed from two women, one of whom gave birth to you out of her very vagina!

OK, you get the point. Thom, on the other hand, is far less squeamish about periods than my mom or sister. To him, it only makes sense that something that 52% of the world's population goes through every month isn't weird or repulsive. To him, it's just a matter of, "Oh, Emily forgot to flush her tampon down the toilet. I've always wondered what one looked like, and hey! she saved water." I'd mentioned getting the reusable pads to Thom earlier today and he was totally down with the idea. Anything that saves us money or helps the environment or both is fine by him.

After that, I went and got a haircut...and an earcut, too. The razor the stylist used to finish off my hair actually nicked my ear. Oh well. It only hurt a little bit, and stopped bleeding after a couple of minutes. Anything to keep me from that ever-encroaching mullet that was beginning to develop.

After the hair cut, I went to the dreaded Best Buy to look at laptops. Yeesh. Working in a place would drive me crazy, and this is coming from someone who works in a place where there is a beeping oven, a microwave that just has one long beeeeep that won't stop, a timer that goes off every 15 minutes to remind us to clean tables, a timer to tell us when to take stuff off the grill, and a timer on each and every coffee pot to remind us to throw it out after two hours. There were about a hundred televisions all playing the same baseball game, it seemed. I hate going into places like that, but it's really inadvisable to buy a laptop without knowing what one actually feels like in your hands. We'll probably get one pretty soon. We could buy one online to get a better deal, or just pick it up at Best Buy and take it right home, but I have to get one soon so that I'm fully conversant with it and all the kinks are worked out of it by the time school starts. Thom told me today that he pulled some money out of investments for me to get one. We had too many shares of Bank of America, anyways. After feeling what the laptops felt like, I concluded that I should not get one that weighs over six pounds. I'm really reluctant to buy a Gateway, because of terrible past experiences with them, or a Dell, because they're losers, or a Sony, because they fuck you over on warranties, so that pretty much leaves me with HP, Toshiba, and Acer. I guess we'll see.

That's all for now. I've got an American Buddhist Manifesto in the works, but it may be a few days before it appears.