| Monday July 22nd 2002 I'm allowed to feel sorry for myself once in a while, right? On Saturday I took a trip to Sports Expert to pick up some rollerblading wrist guards after calling a bunch of different places trying to find someone who sold them. I didn't like the style of the ones labelled 'Men's' so I wound up with 'Women's' large ... which when I got home turned out to be too big for me, so I went back and exchanged them for 'Women's Small', which are just right. There's my ego boost for this month. Also dropped by a music store at the same mall and stumbled upon a second album by Utah Saints that I didn't know existed - the lucky finds are the best finds. But it has little or none of the spark that their first one had. There's not as much complexity or beauty to these newer tracks. I understand bands change over time, but you could hear the work that went into the first one, and this one sounds like something any other band could have made. I even checked the credits for the two albums to make sure they had the same band members. In the afternoon a friend and I checked out 'Road to Perdition' with Tom Hanks. Not one I'd say you have to go see, but not a bad choice either if you're looking for something. Excellent acting, as you'd expect. After that, we spent nearly the rest of Saturday playing computer games; have a good Civilization campaign going now. Sunday morning I was up bright and early, out the door and down to the parkway to go rollerblading. There's some really great trails there, both in terms of nice pavement for rolling on and for great scenery. I don't know whether I tied my blades up better this time or what, but it's never been so easy before. I must have been at it for an hour or so, but I still quit from boredom rather than weariness at the end. After that I picked up GB again and we drove out to Stittsville Market, a big outdoor marketplace for vendors of all kinds and descriptions. Dropped by all the book and music vendors, naturally, but focussed mostly on looking for framed or mounted pictures for my apartment. No luck, but I was told to check back next week for more selection. In the afternoon we were back at Civ'ing again. Between turns I happened to look out the window and saw a young couple on the park bench, nice and cozy. I'd been kind of proud of keeping myself busy all weekend. But I would have sat around for two days and done nothing else quite happily, if I could have had just five minutes of that. |