Don't Worry I'll Think Of A Title

Friday night I took Elle out for a belated birthday dinner. It was pretty belated, because her birthday was too weeks ago. In my defense, some of the deferral was because she was busy. We met at Carabba's Italian Grill. I picked up a dozen roses for her before I came. I bought them at Harris-Teeter (which was close to work and enroute) and got an incredibly good deal on them. I got such a good deal I felt a little guilty when she was so happy with me for getting them. I thought I would be embarrassed to be walking around with them, but it wasn't so bad. On my way into the restaurant a lady asked "are those for me?". I chuckled and said no. Then a guy asked the same thing. I didn't like that as much. He appeared to be heterosexual (he had a lady with him.) He just overestimated his comedic abilities. I hope his date smacked him later for embarassing him. While I was in the restaurant looking around for Elle one of the waitresses saw the flowers and asked "are those for me?". That must be the Official Joke for guys carrying around flowers. With the good humor I reserve exclusively for ladies, I told her no.

As I said, Elle was happy to get the flowers. She gave me a big hug when I gave them to her. Dinner went well, and as is usually the case with her conversation flowed like water. Much of it was about Isabel Paterson's The God Of The Machine, which I had recently loaned her.

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Saturday morning I missed my usual walk. I had to get to the post office to mail something. I refuse to miss my weekend walk, so I drove over to my office and took a walk around campus. I went down a nature trail that came out on a road. After a few moments of trying to figure out where I was, I just decided to walk down the road (fortunately in the right direction.) It intersected with a road that I knew led to my office. Even though I was probably never more than an eighth of a mile from my office, I still felt like Daniel Boone. It doesn't take much for me.

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I did get my morning walk in on Sunday, but later that day I was bad. I had lunch at IHOP, with the sole purpose of taking the receipt to the used book store next door for a 10% discount (well, that and the fact that it was lunchtime.) I purchased Flying to America by Donald Barthelme, Dead Babies by Martin Amis (the combination of the title and Amis's reputation as a British comic novelist was too much to resist), and a book called Control Freaks: & Ways Liberals Plan To Ruin Your Life (again, impossible to resist, this time because of the title.) These purchases put me at 5 more books purchased than read for  the year. And I had just eaten fattening food that was bad for me. So as penance, I drove over to campus and took another long walk. When I got to the end of the nature trail, I noticed a tunnel off to the side. I decided to walk through it. I came out  on the other side of the road from where I came out the day before. I'm almost embarrassed to say how much fun exploring that tunnel was. It put me in mind of doing the same thing when I was 10 years old. It was an excellent weekend.