I keep thinking about my grandparents old house. Last night I couldn't sleep, and in my mind I was going over every detail of the house, trying not to forget anything. The rooms are octagonal, and the house is an L shape, single floor; the roofs in the main living areas ascend to points. Every room has floor to ceiling windows. The kitchen is an octagon with a hollow octagon island in the middle. You can stand inside the island, or around it. The entire house was carpeted, even the kitchen and the bathrooms. The octagonal shape created wierd corners in the bedrooms and bathrooms. I miss my grandparents.

We'd go to the bowling alley when I was young, because my grandparents worked every day. There was a machine used to roll quarters; it was metal, heavy, and had a handle that felt and looked like the 1950s. Sometimes I'd get to roll the quarters into rolls, turning the handle evenly and slowly, watching the quarters spin and drop from chaos into complete order, roll after roll.

When I was young, I always thought that my grandmother would live to be 100.

It's strange when people you haven't seen for a long time die, because you sometimes forget they're dead. My sister emailed me the other day to let me know that Esther told her that Betsy died of lung cancer. Betsy and I used to be friends, but she crossed a line one day and I wrote her off. I never expected to see her again, but I still have email from her in my Inbox.

I had seen a pair of shoes in a catalog which I like quite a bit, but they did not appear to be sold in black, so I threw the catalog out. Ever since, I've been looking for the shoes. I couldn't find them on the internet, in new catalogs, or in Macy's. Finally, a few nights ago, I saw a woman standing outside the restaurant that Mike and I were eating dinner in wearing the shoes. Out I went to ask her about them. It turns out she'd bought them just the day before, and gave me the name and location of the store they were at. I went there today and bought my own pair. They're super comfortable, and I'm glad I finally found them.

Every weekend for the past month, I've gone to the Castro to deal with my eyeballs. It had been two years since my last eye exam, so I went to my optometrist for a checkup. He gave me a new perscription, and I found a pair of sunglasses in his shop that I liked. Unfortunately, I didn't find any regular glasses that were to my liking. I had a hair appointment the same day a few blocks away. Across from my hairdresser was another eyeglass store, where I did find a pair of glasses. I ordered both pairs with my new perscription. The normal way this story ends is that I pick up my glasses a week or so later, and all is well. Unfortunately, when I got my regular glasses the next weekend, after wearing them for a few hours, I realized everything was blurry, even signs only ten feet away. So, back I went to my optometrist, and I got another eye exam. This time he put some bug glasses on me, with the lenses in them, and had me go out into the lobby and read things across the street. He put me in a few different perscriptions in the bug glasses, and it was hard to see through two lenses on each eye. But we finally came up with something which did allow me to read signs across the street, although I couldn't do any sort of decent comparison with my current glasses due to the weirdness of the double lenses. So, I took my new glasses back to the other glass shop, and asked them to remake the lenses to the new perscription. Fast forward a week, and I pick up my new glasses again. This time I wear them for two and a half days. At the end of each day I have a headache. The headache is worse the more I work on computers and read things projected onto walls, which is what I do at work all day. So, I realize that although I can see out of these glasses, which is an improvement over my last new perscription, I have to strain my eyes in order to do so. This makes me unhappy, and I begin to wonder if I needed a new perscription at all. In my old glasses I can read things near, middling, and far, and although things may not be the sharpest ever, they are still readable without giving me a headache. So, today I went back to the optometrist, and when I walked in, the first thing he suggested was just using my old perscription. I'm glad we agreed. Now, both pairs of my glasses are being remade. Hopefully, in a week and a half, I'll have both pairs and all will be well.

The last weekend in the month, I'm taking a mini vacation with Mike to the Russian River area. I've been wanting to go sooner though, since I feel like it's been so long since I've been on vacation. In April I start a new class, which is for 7 weeks, so I might be even crankier than I was during the last class. Also, we're currently without any kitchen drawers. We have these super old, falling apart kitchen drawers, which have been here since the kitchen was done. The landlord finally decided to get them rebuilt, so the handy man took them away today to have them redone. Now the cats keep sitting in the space where the drawers are not. It's pretty cute.