12/29/99

Well, I still don't really know what I'm doing for New Year's, but I just bought two nice bottles of champagne, so at least I'll have those to keep me company. I'm not really planning on staying at home and getting trashed--I've been sort of invited to two parties. Being "sort of invited" means that people I know were invited and indicated that I could tag along with them if I so desired, which is almost certainly what I'll end up doing.

I flew back from Amherst this morning on a brutally early flight. Of course, the nice part about that was that I got in before noon and still had a whole day ahead of me. So, I unpacked, I cleaned, I dropped off my dry cleaning, and I came up with an unexciting design for my 2000 diary index page. Then I went to the grocery store, which was absolutely mobbed with people. I saw one guy whose cart was completely filled with gallon jugs of water, but everybody else seemed to just be buying normal non-survivalist groceries.

If society breaks down on January 1st, I figure I have about a week's worth of food and bottled water, and then I'm done for. I've had the water for a while as an earthquake preparedness thing. I bought a bunch of Power Bars and raisins a couple of weeks ago just in case. I felt ridiculous stocking up on food, though, standing in the huge fully stocked supermarket...it seemed like there was enough to feed thousands of people for months. I'll end up eating that stuff anyway, though, so I was able to rationalize my purchases.

Actually, I've eaten 2 of the Power Bars already because I've been too busy to keep any real food around the house lately.

I didn't do much during the remainder of my time at home. I went to the mall with my mom yesterday, which was a horrible experience. It was terribly crowded, but it wouldn't have been so bad except that my mom wanted to look for shoes, which are one of the few consumer products which still require that an employee serve you, and there were only a couple of employees serving scores of customers.

Actually, I hadn't really thought about it until now, but the shoe-shopping process is remarkably archaic...you'd think that by now there'd be more self-service shoe departments. I know a lot of discount stores do it that way--you find the shoe you want, and then pick through a pile of boxes to find your size. I suppose having salespeople cuts down on the amount of retail space needed, and probably reduces theft, but there are no real advantages for the customer--I mean, I don't need somebody to tell me if a pair of shoes fit or not.

I also read a bunch of books while I was at home, including the three Harry Potter books. Brad got the first one for my mom as a Christmas present, but I picked it up and read it first, and then went out and bought the other two. I found them to be cute and entertaining, but somewhat formulaic (each book follows the same basic plot). It's not Tolkien, but sitting around in your pajamas reading all three back to back and eating cookies is also not a bad way to spend a lazy day.