I went to my eye appointment today and was delighted to find out that my vision is still pretty darn good. It is about between 20/20 and 20/25. Yay! Of course, when I was younger, it was 20/15 so it seems much worse to me now but it's not bad at all. The doc said that my distance vision would probably stay like that forever (relatively speaking). He did say that in about 5 years or so I'll probably need reading glasses like the rest of the 40-something crowd. Oh well. I can live with that.

I didn't like having my eyes dilated, though. It gave me a bit of a headache. Afterward, I went shopping for plants (more on that later) and couldn't read the tags that came on them. I was searching for tomato starts with staggered maturity and it was darn hard to read the little letters.

I got some good plants, though. For my culinary garden (I stopped calling it a vegetable garden because I don't really grow many veggies), I have 3 tomato plants (Early Girl, PikRed and Beefsteak), lots and lots of Genovese basil (and seeds for more!), chives, sage, pineapple sage (ooh, that's a delightful one!), curly and flat-leaf parsley and soybeans! I'm going to grow my own edamame! Hope it works. I was going to plant some sugar snap peas but I'm thinking it's too late to get any kind of yield out of them. I've got to go back and see what else I can plant in their place. Maybe more soybean seeds? Or some other kind of bean? I also planted orange and red/orange variegated marigolds as sacrificial plants in the garden. They do a good job of attracting the slugs and keeping them away from the veggies and herbs. (I hedged my bets, though, with some slug bait and then some cocoa mulch, my very favorite garden product.)

For the front beds, I got 3 feather grass plants to plant behind a big rock, some ice plants and 2 kinds of sedum (love those succulents), and some rainbow coleus. Oh, and some pink and orange portulaca plants. I have decided that I need more stuff, though. I need a mess of coral and hot pink impatiens and maybe a few more ice plants. Oh, and several different flat ground cover to mix in with my woolly thyme. I'm thinking corsican mint and maybe something else. I like the idea of creating a sort of mosaic carpet of flat, walk-on-able ground cover for an area in front of my raised bed. I think that will look really neat when it is all grown in. If you have ideas for a good ground cover that is really flat, let me know. I'll probably need to wait until the 15th, though, since I spent >$100 today on plants and supplies. (And 2 pairs of sandal-y shoes for me and a pair of new tennis shoes for Joey.) I need to spread out those big bites.

I am feeling seriously run down. Ed is too. He is convinced it's the allergies we're currently deluged by. Could be. We're both just like walking zombies. I just felt like I wanted to lie down all day. I did indulge in a 30-minute power nap around 2pm but I wanted more more more! This isn't the same kind of sleepiness I felt before--that was more like "why not sleep since I don't want to do anything anyway." This is more like "Damn, there is so much I want to do but I'm just so tired, I think I need to rest first." Big difference in attitude, though the result is just about the same.

Tomorrow is my last day of photography class. I'm going back to the lab on Friday to print my pictures of Lauren, though. And if I negotiated well enough, I'll get some free darkroom time for the picture I sold the school. Hopefully that will be my payment instead of some photo paper (though I guess some photo paper wouldn't be the worst thing to get in trade).

Now I'm craving edamame. (I guess there are *much* worse things I could crave.)

Ed came in to tell me about this family we know who just built a killer home entertainment system in their new house. It has a 128-inch HD projection TV with DVD and 9-speaker surround-sound stereo system, 2 leather couches (with the rear one raised up like stadium seating), padded and upholstered walls, curtains around the projection screen (that he sewed himself), refrigerator and microwave--the works. The TV itself cost $10,000. You know, I'm thinking that I'd have to be really filthy, stinking rich to want to spend that much money on a television. TV, while nice and entertaining, just isn't that important to me. Our friends have a 52-inch TV and it just leaves me cold. I actually don't like watching life-size TV. It's just too, I don't know, in your face, I guess. In the case of the 52-incher, it is so huge that is totally dominates the room and the 2 adjoining rooms, too. I think that the reason I don't care that much about the TV size is that I don't actually watch the TV much when I'm watching TV. I'm often using the computer or reading a book or folding laundry or cooking or doing any number of other things. It is a rare event for me to sit on the couch to do nothing but watch TV. Until and unless my ADD behaviors completely go away, I'm not likely to care much at all whether we have our 27-inch TV or one larger. I'm just as happy with the 21-incher in the bedroom and the 13-incher in the guestroom. I suppose I wouldn't say no, though, to an invitation to watch a movie at their house.

--L