So, now we’re back to Monday. Weren’t we just here seven days ago?

On Friday we had lots of fun. After I got caught up on my schoolwork during the day, we met Thomas and Sherry (and eventually vileone, Janet, and associated vile-lings) over at Quail Ridge Bookstore for a book signing by one of my favorite television personalities: Alton Brown. We picked up a copy of his new book and settled down with a good hundred and fifty other folks for a good hour of entertainment. Alton is an extremely personable guy, and carries a crowd very well. He spent the first ten minutes explaining why he wrote his newest book (people know they want gear for their kitchen, but don’t know what gear to buy and what will be the most useful) then spent the balance of the hour answering questions. The man could do stand-up comedy, I swear. Two of his quips that I remember:
– After a question on the best way to use Reddi-Wip: I can’t think of any proper use for Reddi-Wip that doesn’t involve a pair of handcuffs, a hotel room in Tijuana, and Martha Stewart.
– After a question about how he developed his TV persona: You’ve found me out. I’m actually a short, Latino woman.

After the extremely amusing Q&A period, he then settled down to sign books and answer questions personally. I was very impressed that he was willing to stay for as long as it took for everyone to get their books signed, and to personally chat with each person. It made for a long wait, but it was worth it, I think. We even got some pictures from the evening, including a picture of Alton after he was finding himself feeling a bit short standing between me and Takaza:

After the book signing, we adjourned to Armadillo Grill and had an extremely nummy Tex-Mex. The restaurant is in the oh-so-trendy Glenwood South area of Raleigh, and it was quite amusing to watch the drunk yuppie poseurs stagger about as the evening progressed.

Saturday was given over to working 9-5 at Silvia’s. Not too bad, and Dan was nice enough to stop by, which always brightens my day. I think I’ve determined that I don’t want to work more than about two days out of the week there – yes, I’m sort of doing it for a lark, but there’s only so much I’ll endure for seven bucks an hour. When I came home I was a complete slug, but Dan cooked up a lovely pork roast and mashed potatoes and gave me a lovely foot massage, I love my wolf very much, and I’m going to keep him!

Sunday was going sort-of OK. We were just about to head over to Thomas and Sherry’s for our final Mage/Werewolf when I took a wrong step on the grass in the front yard and popped my right ankle. Now, I have a long history of spraining my right ankle. When I was attending Virginia Tech I reached the point where I had sprained it so many times that the ligament got stretched out and I virtually no lateral support – I could walk on a flat surface and sprain my ankle for no apparent reason. In 1994 I had reconstructive surgery to shore up the ligament and it’s mostly been OK since then. I really hope I’m not starting to repeat that cycle again, though. Anyway, we propped my ankle up in the car (the Element was actually really great for this!), then when we got over to Thomas and Sherry’s I propped it up and iced it down. That helped a lot and it kept the swelling to a minimum. When I woke up this morning I can walk on it, for the most part, though we’ll see what happens when I try to put on shoes and stand on it for six hours when I work tonight.

Not much else going on this week. Plans currently have us driving down to visit my parents on Friday night. I have a project that I’d like to have the first pass on it turned in for the professor to review by Wednesday, though it’s not due until October 15. Then I have another project to work on for another class that’s also due on the 15th – I’d like to get that done by the end of the week. My goal is to have these classes complete by the end of October, so I don’t have to worry about them come November. We’ll see if I can pull it off.

One final note: I use the adware-supported version of Opera (I’d like to register at some point, maybe when money isn’t so tight). They have a feature in their newest version that gives you the option to either show general ads or Google AdWords which are keyed to the content of the web pages you are viewing. I chose the latter, just for fun. I’ve noticed one disturbing thing: whenever I view my LiveJournal Friends Page I consistently get two ads:
1. Something to do with huskies or dogs in general, and
2. An ad for cheese. Gourmet cheese, goat cheese, some kind of cheese.
I think this is a disturbing commentary on my choice of friends, but I’m not exactly sure what it’s supposed to mean…