Random Thoughts From MI

Discovery landed safely, and in Florida. This is good news. Had I bothered blogging much, I would have followed the whole mission a lot better, but it was important. Read about it over at NASA.

Harry Potter fans: go to J. K . Rowling's website, and play with the secret door. It's open again.

I accidentally wandered into a thrift store a few days ago (it was an accident; I wasn't paying attention, meant to go to the dollar store next to it, and didn't realize where I'd headed until I saw all the clothes) and, once I found myself there, was unable to convince myself not to go in. Despite not planning on buying anything. Despite having only twenty minutes to run through the dollar store and pick out whatever I needed. Well, naturally, the only section I made it to in the thrift store is the one I least needed anything from (not entirely true, I probably need anything from either men's or children's even less) - the formal dresses. Not because I needed one; I'm very happy with what I have for my next formal occasion. It's simply become a strange habit of mine, to always look. And I found something. A nice something. A fancy dark blue dress with some sort of pattern on the fabric and just a little bit of black lace, very old looking (my mom says Civil War era style, though I'm sure the dress is something someone made more recently and designed to look old.. handmade, if I can be any judge of sewing - which I'm not - and also for the lack of tags). It has an extremely large skirt and looks like it ought to have a hoop in it, which I could handle making, but it works without one too. It was $3.50. And it fits perfectly. Now all I need is a ball to wear it to... or someone to write me a part in a nice play set in a previous time period.

I was attempting to buy a bottle or two of wine for my dad from the one winery I've ever been to - San Sebastian Winery, in Saint Augustine, FL. I liked what I tasted there two years ago, and not having had much experience with specific and memorable types of wine since, thought it would be a good place to go to order something special. Naturally, this was before I realized that MI's odd laws make it so that I can't buy wine outside of the state (online anyway). Lacking time to drive to FL, I started researching MI wineries. I didn't find anything particularly noteworthy, but I did come across one with an interesting policy - they had NO minimum age for participating in a wine tour, but required one be of legal drinking age to enter the website.