Friends + road trip + shopping = awesome

Monday, three of my friends/coworkers (the 4th grade team at my old school) went on a shopping road trip. We piled into my car and drove 300 miles across the desert to the outlet mall in Cabazon, CA. Yes 300 miles. Susan and I came up with the idea long ago, and when we mentioned it to the others, they were game as well. Why so far, you must be asking. Well, the outlet mall is pretty big, and they have some high-end stores you can't find any closer. Specifically, they have a Coach outlet, which was our major destination. A Kate Spade outlet too, where I was very tempted by a few purses. However, it was a really good deal at Coach, and a lot of egging and nudging by my friends, that made me cave in. I'm still a little in shock over my purchase, but I had sort of budgeted for it. Plus, I got an unexpected stipend today, which more than pays for the purse. So, yeah. Jill and Susan got purses too, and Larisa got a wallet, plus a purse from Fossil.

Along from all the shopping, we had so much fun. I brought a bunch of cds so they could play DJ and keep the music going. We made the requisite stop at Starbucks in Blythe, CA, which was also a time to get out and stretch. I've passed the outlets many times on my drives to and from CA, but I forgot exactly where they were, but they are right next to the freeway, can't be missed. I just got my city locations mixed up. On the way home we listened to Phantom of the Opera and Moulin Rouge soundtracks, and they got to hear my "Single Music" mix. "Walking After You" by Foo Figthers is on it, and I thought none of the others would know it. As soon as it started playing, Susan went NUTS. She loves that song. Needless to say, I was happy that she was happy. Had to stop for gas in Chiriaco Summit, and paid $4.87/gal. We all agonized trying to remember who sings "Sultans of Swing" until Jill remembered, shouting out Dire Straits as we pulled up to the Starbucks drive-thru. The barista might have thought us a little crazy with our giggling.

I love road trips. I love my friends. It was an excellent day.

This reminds me of the pile of books I have, waiting to be read.

Book meme from larksong

"The Big Read reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they've printed."
1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline the books you LOVE.
4) Reprint this list in your own LJ so we can try and track down these people who've read 6 and force books upon them ;-) 
 
My results:
1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte (favorite book ever)
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte (I intended to read this until I saw a new movie adaptation.  Yeah, that was enough for me)
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare (I have read most but am missing 1 or 2 plays)
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens (listened to the abridged audiobook)
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis (I've read 2 of the 7 so far)
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown 
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett (I vaguely remember reading this, but I could be mistaken)
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray (Tried to read this, got bored)
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte's Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Prayer does work

I've been trying to make a batch of hummus, but I couldn't get the lid to go onto the food processor. I looked in the manual. I tried Google to no avail. I emailed a friend, no help. So, I prayed for wisdom on how to make it work, and for me to calm down a little as I was about to break the thing. Then, I tried again, and realized that the container was on backwards. Problem solved. God really does listen, even to little things like how to work a food processor.