Several extremely funny things happened today. I'm sorry to say I can't recall a single one. I remember laughing... I just don't remember what at. Oh well.

We got up this morning and loaded up the crowd and drove down to Los Lunas (about 45 miles from our house) to visit Sister Sally. She's been sick and this was our first opportunity to go see her. She's doing much better now, thank the Lord, and we had a nice visit with her and a good prayer before we left.

We drove into Albuquerque and went to Lowes to do some mental shopping. I was just needing to LOOK and see what our options are so I can start getting a clearer picture of what should be done in this house of ours. We looked at light fixtures and cabinet/storage units, toilets and vanities, faucets, tile--you name it. Unfortunately everything we saw there now runs together in my mind, so it really didn't accomplish much. Still, it feels better having looked. Another problem was that every time we found ourselves looking at something we made the same statement: "Hhmmm... I wonder if that would work. We need to go home and measure!" Still, it was fun to look. The dreaming-it-up part is always fun and exciting and not painful like that actually-part-with-the-dough-and-BUY-it part. For somebody like me, anyway.

On our way back to the mountains this afternoon we decided to stop by the library. The East Mountain branch is 8 or 10 miles from here and is connected to all of the big Albuquerque libraries. We were all thoroughly impressed! Wow, what a great place! It's larger than I would have expected for a little mountain library and they've got a terrific kid section. The people there were very friendly, too. James took the kids to look up books on the computer while I stayed at the front desk to get a library card. In a few minutes Joe appeared behind me with huge, happy eyes and that doofy grin of his and said, "Mom! They have 20 Calvin and Hobbes books!!!" Ha! The lady informed me that they have the great big one, too, so I took Joe with me to go find it. You should have seen his face when I pulled it off the shelf. It's called "The Complete Calvin and Hobbes" and it's a very, very large hardback book that weighs almost as much as Joe does. Oh, to have had a camera! Ha! That kid looked like I'd just given him a million dollars. He toted the thing to the nearest seat and sat down and read and giggled until we were ready to go. I think we checked out 8 books total, but I was blown away to find out that I could check out as many as 50!!! (The limit in Andrews was 10.) And you can have as many as 40 on hold, you can check out 10 CDs, 6 DVDs or VHS... Amazing. And they even have a self check-out thing! I find them rather impersonal, but it's still kind of nifty! You just scan your card and all the stuff you want and march right out. :-) I'm sure we'll be visiting our library now that we've actually made it there the first time and discovered how great it is!

We had to hurry home because we had a guy coming tonight to come run some tests on our water. They had called last night and asked if they could come out and do that and said that if we'd let 'em they'd give us a $20 gift certificate for Chili's. I immediately had visions of that fantastic white chocolate cake thing with the raspberry sauce and... well, I said yes. What I actually said was, "Ma'am, you're just going to come out here and prove to us how terrible our water is and explain all of the different ways it's killing us, then tell us how we need to spend hundreds or thousands of dollars on your product so we won't die." She laughed and assured me that wasn't the case--they are just promoting water quality awareness, or some such hogwash. I was about to say no, but then I saw another vision of that white chocolate cake. Ha! What a sucker I am! The guy showed up and said it would take about 30 minutes (which is what they told me on the phone). The tests were really pretty cool and the kids thought it all very interesting. He did, indeed, prove that there is a big difference between water that came from our tap and the water that was run from our tap through his fancy little machine. At this point, tell us the price and we'll tell you if we're interested, you know?! But a salesman can't ever make it that simple. We had to sit down and watch and listen as he flipped through a mini-easel of diagrams and illustrations depicting the innards of the machine, a copy of the pattent, pictures of the inventors and the impressive factory where these things are produces and who knows what all. --All things that I couldn't care less about. I've seen what your product does. Skip all the extras and just tell me the price! When he finally did quote a price we almost laughed out loud. It was only about, oh, $4,000 more than we were expecting to hear! Ha! Can you imagine?! He was a nice enough guy and I felt bad for him, but we basically asked for our chocolate cake coupon and ushered him to the door. Unfortunately, he didn't give us a coupon for Chili's. He gave us a paper that we have to take into their store in Albuquerque and present, then they'll give us the coupon for Chili's. At least that was the story. There's probably another sales pitch involved at the other end. Ggrrrr. And, of course, it didn't take 30 minutes like promised (it would have if he would have skipped the dumb slide show and accompanying narrative!), it took an hour and 15 minutes. And we still have no cake coupon! ~sigh~ Live and learn. Maybe. ;-)

The kids are sacked out, James is, too, and I'm well on my way. James and I both have headaches today, although mine is very mild. I very seldom get headaches and when I do it's really more of a nuisance than actually painful. Still, my body is screaming for sleep, so I'm going listen.