Birthday

I had to run off in the morning to meet a fellow student on campus. Dave and I swung by the downtown Starbucks for coffee, then I went to meet my buddy. She and one of her friends helped me out during finals week, so I brought her friend a Starbucks gift certificate and I brought her a gift certificate so that she could take her daughters to lunch or dinner at my favorite Japanese restaurant. (She's always talking about wanting to visit Japan and it's one of the few Japanese restaurants in town run by an actual Japanese person. The rest are Korean owned, generally.)

After that, we stopped for breakfast at a beloved hangout near the university. I had a chef's salad and Dave had the heartburn special, enchiladas with red and green chile on them.

I had some time to kill before I had to go up for my evaluation, so I had Dave drop me off on campus and then I went and sat upstairs with my computer. I wanted to work on an assignment I have to finish over the break, but my password didn't work, so I ended up sending emails trying to get that fixed. I also chatted with a couple of people--mother and daughter--waiting to talk to someone in the department about transferring. She had been told that her prerequisistes would work, but when it came time to register, she was told that, oh, oops, no, those prereqs aren't enough. I held back a little, but basically told them that this was how the department runs, on conflicting information and lots of buck-passing.

As if to prove my point, another woman came out of the office, red-faced and angry. The head of the department isn't seeing students until August 18, so she'll have to wait on tenterhooks for two weeks of the vacation to see if she can get a spot next term for a class she'll have to make up. The worst part is, she was fine--low B kind of fine--in the class in question until the final, which was a punitive shit show from the instructor who I despise. I'm not just saying that because I dislike the woman. I'm saying that because I have experience with such things, and it was a final exam designed to fail out as many people as possible. Throughout the term, I got mid-B's on my exams (84% to 87%) in the class, but on the final I got a 50% and it dropped my grade 7%. Luckily I was riding high enough that I still passed the class with a B.

I got my stellar evaluation out of the way twenty minutes early, thankfully, and I sat and gossiped with some folks until Dave came to pick me up.

After he picked me up, we went by the newly opened Container Store (I bought a few little things, but mostly found it to be too expensive albeit nicely displayed plastic things.) Then we went to Sephora, where I bought myself a birthday lipstick, Kat Von D's liquid lipstick in the crazy brown-brick red color called "Nahz fur atoo" (which is the phonetic pronunciation of Nosferatu, a supposed labeling mistake that was let stand). Anyway, I also got the Sephora birthday gift, a Tarte mini liquid lipstick that's so perfumed it's going straight in the trash and a mini Tarte blush that I like but that will last me the rest of my life since I never wear blush.

When we were done with our shopping, we stopped for another coffee, then we headed off to a sushi lunch. This is a fraction of what we ordered:

I had a white rice hangover the rest of the afternoon.

We came by the casita to open gifts. I got an amazing haul. A new computer for school, a new kindle (to replace the version that got locked up when Apple did its big changeover a year ago), and a couple of pairs of headphones to replace mine. One pair is a soft headband that I can wear while I'm sleeping. (I always sleep with my headphones on, and the pair I have now are really uncomfortable, but it doesn't stop me.) I also got gift certificates to Apple so that I can get some new music. And one to Amazon so that I can buy some new books. Yay!!

Then we decided to go for a drive.

We drove the back way to Santa Fe, where we saw this little localized rainstorm in the distance.

In Santa Fe, we had a chocolate stop at our favorite little chocolate store. I had a tiny cup of their drinking chocolate, which is made old school, just chocolate, sugar, and water and Dave had a more elaborate cup of something with chocolate, lots of spices, almond milk, and whipped cream. We shared a brownie, too, and brought home a few chocolates to have for later.

Then we continued on our drive. We went to Los Alamos, where we stopped for an early dinner--Mediterranean food in a little hole in the wall place--and kept going up through the Jemez mountains.

Los Alamos, as you know, is home to one of the larger government laboratories in the U.S.--the bombs we dropped on Japan were invented there and their involvement in such things has continued unabated since then--and it has gotten a little paranoid up there for my tastes. We were stopped on the main road at a big checkpoint and asked our destination. Dave got to show his ID. We were warned not to take pictures for 4 miles as we drove past whatever it is that's going on up there.

But no matter.

We saw three deer to make up for it, including this beauty who waited patiently by the side of the road while we took her picture.

Then we came home.

I lay down with my new Kindle to read some of Robert Falcon Scott's book about his 1901 expedition to the South Pole. I love reading about polar exploration. But about ten pages in, I was out like a light.