After I returned home from work and the gym yesterday, I decided that I needed a few essentials to get through the week. And so even though I know I'll be making a more serious trip at the end of this week, I took the opportunity to turn off my cell phone and head to the Stop and Shop. The cell phone was turned off because, frankly, when I'm shopping at a nice supermarket, I want my complete concentration. This is partly because I find shopping difficult, and if I'm ever distracted in the process I end up going home with things I don't need (last week, for instance, I took a five minute call from my brother, and ended up going home with a box of feminine napkins and a package of seitan. Which, to be honest, are exactly equal in terms of palatability). It's also partly because I really like food shopping (regardless of how bad I am at it) and I want to become fully immersed in the experience. Same reason I don't read when I'm making love - I'm a big fan of both acts, but sometimes you have to do one thing at a time to really enjoy it.

As I say, I went shopping. Didn't need that many things, but the things I needed were really necessary. Specifically, bread and delicatessen (I hate going to work and paying for lunch. Maybe I'm cheap, but that turns out to be about a hundred dollars a month, which could otherwise be spent on my rock and roll lifestyle. And by 'rock and roll lifestyle' I mean 'solo trips to the movies'). Even though I only needed those couple of things, the trip took over half an hour - mostly because of the fact that I spent 15 minutes in the bread aisle. I decided to change my bread (at least for a loaf or two, try some new things); but this is no decision right into which one should jump. So I took my time, eyeing the breads, attempting to sense their savoriness through the clear plastic packaging, lifting them up, getting a feel for the bread. I was thinking about it last night, and realized that if you can't understand why I need my bread to have some heft, you can never really understand me. I ended up with Oat Nut. I'm pretty excited to try it, but I decided that I wanted to finish this blog entry before I started lunch (how's that for dedication?).

I was chatting with a friend of mine while watching SportsCenter last night (which, by the way, is the finest show on television for the last month and the the next month or two. Do you have any idea how much basketball is being played right now?), and realized how much my life had changed in the past few years. I exclaimed how cool it was that the Wizards beat the Magic last night. And as it turned out, that was a really cool thing to happen and should probably be the premise for a fantasy novel. But I totally missed the interesting point of it, really only caring that Jordans team took T Macs. That's kind of sad to me. But times change, and along with them people (although it would have been nice if my aging came along with a new interest in, say, particle physics, as opposed to a desire to watch grown men throw a ball through a hoop).

The party is in a few days. I am a little anxious about it. Nothing special, the usual - worried about my apartment not being big enough to hold everyone, which won't be a problem because no one is going to come, which is fine because if they did they would leave immediately upon seeing how filthy my place is (no matter how much I've cleaned) and how horrible a host I am. I'm sure it will go fine. Sam said that it looks like a lot of his friends aren't going to be able to make it, which isn't so good. But whatever. Figure worst case, it'll be me, Ben, and Sam in my apartment with cases of beer, bottles of liquor, and an NBA 2k3 season that is barely underway. In fact, that kind of sounds like a best case, don't it? I'm also a little concerned because Sam keeps saying things like "I think we should get a couple of cases of Nattie Ice, and one case of Schiltz, and then we'll be good on beer." I'll be keeping an eye on expenditures.