A few hours in the life...

In my desire to be as over-prepared as possible for my trip to visit nmissi and to attend GenCon/JadeCon in August, I was just looking at how long it would take to drive from Charlotte, NC (where I have a layover and plane switch) to Louisville, in the event that my flight out got canceled due to cutbacks or for some other reason. (Yes, I do tend to overplan for these sorts of things... but if I don't check into the possibilities, it'll sit in the back of my brain and bug me until I do.)

Not too bad. Estimated about 7-8 hours driving... and, even better, the route would take me right by Cades Cove, TN aka ancestral home to one side of my family (well, after they moved there from Scotland) -- my great-grandparents left before my grandfather was born, but a bunch of his cousins and their descendants are still there. I've never been to the place, but I've always wanted to see it. So, I'm not about to hope I get stranded in Charlotte or anything, but if I did, well, it wouldn't totally suck to have to rent a car and drive.

In other news, I finally set things up to start using Twitter... only to discover that I live the world's most boring life and have nothing to say. Granted, this is based only on one day's worth of activities, but so far the most exciting or even remotely interesting thing I could have posted was "Just got done using the walking track at the local park, may have slightly overdone it. Ow." Except that by the time I realized I should post it, I was already back home in front of my computer and, well, it didn't seem like the thing to do anymore. I could just see the other possible updates now:
"Walked upstairs to make the bed. Cats followed me."
"Downstairs again to move some laundry through. Cats tagged along. Numfar excited about laundry chore, as always."
"Sitting in front of the computer, trying to decide if I have anything interesting to say on LJ. Cats perched nearby waiting for me to walk to another room."

And so on.

On the plus side, shortly after I set things up to send text messages to Twitter from my phone, it occurred to me that I could do it just as easily from the web interface on my phone and not have to worry about using too many of my text messages each month (I have a lot, but I could see where Twitter would easily use them all if I let it).

Nice Skate Shoes

I just bought new shoes!! Squee!!

And those who have known me for any length of time realize exactly how weird it is for me to squee over shoes. For the most part, I don't wear them. At all. I've got one pair of shoes and a couple of different types of "slip ons" that I use for times when they're required, but otherwise, I prefer to leave my feet free.

( Why I don't wear shoes... )

So, add up wide feet with an injury that requires me to find shoes with as little internal molding as possible and the fact that I have two VERY different sized feet (in women's, I wear an 8 on one foot and a 10 on the other -- for some reason, in men's it varies a lot more depending on the shoe), and it can be tortuously difficult to find shoes that work. A few years back, I discovered Nice Skate Shoes (NSS) and fell in love -- they're perfect... wide and flat. My last pair are on their last leg (no pun intended) and I've been scouring local shoe and sporting goods stores for more NSS shoes... with absolutely no luck.

Then tonight we stopped by our local Fred Meyer (sort of a grocery/department store) to pick up a copy of LEGO Indiana Jones and I dashed into the shoe section to look at their selection of men's sandals... when rackham said "Hey, what was that brand of shoes you've been looking for?" And there, behind me, was an entire aisle of NSS shoes. Yes, after all this time of searching, I found them at my local grocery store. For a pretty decent price, too (the only thing that would have been better is if they'd been Buy One, Get One Free). I may have even done the Dance of Joy in the aisle when I saw them, too.

I can't wait to start breaking them in! (Once again, embrace the weirdness of that statement.)