What a busy weekend this has been! Started off Friday with a "date" with my BF. He treated me to dinner at a Chinese restaurant that opened near him about a year ago; it was a bit expensive but really, really good (and has won an award as one of the Top 100 Chinese restaurants in the U.S.).

Saturday morning there was the annual undergraduate research conference in my field at the nearby U.; I went to hear the keynote speaker and cheer the students on and see a few colleagues from other institutions. Then a quick trip to the grocery store and home to do some chores and walk Henry and cook my contribution for the night's seder. The seder was fun--my friend who invites me every year purchased a small farm 1.5 years ago and is raising llamas. The seder was nice but went on a bit long for my taste. The hostess wanted to sing every song in the book, just about. I agree that a seder should be a leisurely meal, but 2-2.5 hours, not over 4 (the point at which I left) is more to my taste.

Today I pulled the lawnmower out of the basement and did the first mow of the season after first cleaning up the yard of sticks etc. The grass was actually a bit long for a first mow so it was slow going. I also did another grocery shopping trip (yesterday's was mostly for my seder dinner contribution) and stopped at BJs, and at home I'm doing laundry and cleaning and working on data analysis for a dozen undergrad projects.

I'm supposed to go out to another seder tonight but I really don't want to--I have a test to grade as well that I'd really like to have off my back. Not quite sure what I'll be doing yet.

Oh, and of course there was yesterday's hour-long talk with my sister (who was at Mom's, while Mom was out grocery shopping, which means another hour today talking to Mom).

One thing I'm NOT doing today is going to Hillary's talk at the local H.S. a mile away. I've already heard Bill in person, and Barack, and I've made up my mind. If she had come a month earlier, I might have gone. Bill has been in the area 4 times, Chelsea at least twice, and now Hillary. All I can say is that I was really frustrated by Tuesday's debate and the way the moderators emphasized trivial questions for the first half. I don't watch TV much so I've missed the barage of TV ads, but my mailbox has had 1 or 2 mailings from Obama every day this week. I'll be glad to get the PA primary over with. Back in January the local paper was hosting a "Pretend your Vote Matters" poll on its website and PA has turned out to be anything but that!

It's going to be a loooonnnnggg time until November.

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On the spending front, so far it looks good for my coming in with another ~2000 spending month, but there's still 10 days to go. I did buy a couple of books cheap at BJs plus ended up buying an 8 gig thumb drive to transfer a bunch of files from home to work since my DVD burner won't burn disks (but plays them fine), so there have been a few extras but not too many.

I've already planned to buy some Earth Boxes for container gardening and a barbeque grill for my back porch next month. This is my third year in the house and every May I buy something to liven up my outdoor living space. Other than a concrete bench for under the dogwood, this will complete the annual May outdoor buying spree, I think. My two porches and my lovely small backyard are one of the favorite parts of my house, and this is the only area where I've splurged and bought things mostly new rather than used.