Monday. Bleh.

I don't normally mind Monday but facing another week of nothing-much-to-do does not excite me.

So...the weekend. Those of you who care about cleanliness will be happy to know I got through almost 100% of my chores. From dusting the ceiling fan blades to vacuuming the floors, I checked off everything on my list.

In other news, the R.C. returned from her business trip Saturday about noon, so we decided to go out to eat.

This week's selection was PFChang. While we fully intend to start exploring some new restaurants, the day someone returns from a five-day business trip isn't really the time to get experimental with food.

Everyone knows PFChang so I won't go on and on. I will say that anyone who hasn't ordered the Mongolian Beef and/or the Lettuce Wraps (on the appetizer menu, but plenty big enough to eat for a main course) is missing a good bet. It's one of those restaurants that has so many great dishes I always want to try something new when I go there...but if I don't order the Lettuce Wraps, I kick myself for three days afterwards. The R.C. always orders the Mongolian Beef.

After that, we took a postprandial stroll through Borders where I spent cough-cough on an armload of new MYSA-AS books. Just research, you understand. (Am I actually still fooling anyone?)

Fiscal Austerity took a backseat to Shopping Mania for a brief thirty minutes, during which the R.C. and I each spent an amount equal to five...or six...times our new Saturday Spending allotment.

If I were a stronger person, I'd feel badly about that loss of self-control. The whole Austerity thing lasted one weekend in a row. Sigh. And I knew I was blowing it, even as I shopped. At any moment I could have called a halt. Instead, I kept running to find the R.C. in the store, counting up how much she'd spent, and running back to the MYSA-AS shelves and grabbing three or four more books.

Assuming that my friends reading this share my (previous) indifference to the whole MYSA-AS thing, I won't bore you with a list of what I bought. (Besides, I don't remember all of the titles.) I now have books by over half a dozen different authors, so I have that many different drawing styles to examine.

This is good, because we topped off Saturday's Shopping Mania with a Sunday trip to a local craft store where I spent cough-cough on drawing supplies. Not quite as much as I'd spent on books on Saturday, but darned close. This included two books, both of which had sections on "perspective," something I have need of learning.

And I used those supplies. When I got home, I sat down at my little table and spent about three hours playing working with my new toys supplies. Much to the R.C.'s boredom, I kept demanding that she admire my beautiful cone or the great perspective I'd managed on a rectangular block. Eventually I graduated to buildings (rectangular ones) and at one daring moment, I took a shot at three-point perspective. As long as I have a ruler, and my forms for tracing shapes, I do okay. (Not cheating. According to the books, everyone uses them. At least, at first.)

The R.C. was kind enough to approve of the various people-shaped bits I did last week, though. The books do offer to teach you to draw people, but I decided I'm not ready for that yet. You need to learn to crawl before you can boogie, after all.

Besides, I see myself as more of a rectangular buildings kind of person. After practice, I may graduate to more exotic (rectangular) buildings and I drew a few tables (rectangular) that weren't bad. Next weekend, I may get all brave and attack some circular things.

I re-read the "fall classes" catalog mentioned previously. Typically, I've procrastinated for so long that I already missed one of the classes I wanted to take. Another one starts Wednesday evening. I was going to bring the catalog with me today so I could sign up for that one, but owing to having set my alarm to go off a full hour later than it needs to go off to get me to work on time, I was a bit rushed this morning.

Anyhow, I was so entertained playing experimenting with all of that that I didn't even manage to get all of the books I'd bought read. That's very unusual for me, and further confirms my suspicion that it's the drawing I'm most interested in.

I also (brace yourselves) worked on the DS story a bit Saturday morning. Since I did not find time to watch any episodes last week, it's still moving slowly, but by gosh it is moving. Tonight I am going to watch episodes, though. It's silly to keep this story dragging on for months just because I never get around to picking up a DVD that's sitting on a shelf six feet away from me. I think it's a reasonably interesting premise and there's plenty of scope for stupid things to happen, so I need to just get on with it.

So...what else? I went to the grocery store yesterday and managed not to buy a cart full of junk food. As of today, I'm officially Back On The Diet. Nothing like going in for your annual physical and seeing that ugly number on the doctor's office scales for a little motivation.

Today's breakfast: yogurt.

Today's coffee: Americano (no milk, 17 calories).

Today's lunch will be: roasted chicken, 1 serving bread, 1/4 cup carrot sticks.

Tonight's dinner will be: roasted chicken, 1 small boiled potato, 1/4 cup grapes.

Sigh. Six hours and fifty-nine minutes until I can go home.

It's going to be a long day. I feel like blogging to kill the time, but I'll spare you. (Besides, if I sit here typing madly for three or four hours, eventually Buehler asks what I'm doing. He knows I don't have any work to do.)