Reading: David Eggers, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

Moving: No.

Viewing: Gorgeous day.

Listening: Mall Muzak

4 March 2000: Optometrist and shopping

Not only three months of sight but a free sample pair of contacts, woo-hoo! Plus I found a pair of frames I might like when the time comes for new glasses. A bold leap away from tortoiseshell toward pinky bronze.

Friday evening, HPS and HAO and I trooped out into the savage heart of the American Dream, the mall. The first stop was the Clinique counter in Foley's. HAO needed something they were out of and something else they were out of and a third thing they did have, and HPS's purchase wasn't enough to get the bonus pack, but with HAO's forlorn one-third purchase and HPS's effort and my trusty bottle of Dramatically Different Moisturing Lotion, the clerk gave us two bonus packs anyway out of the kindness of her heart. We divvied the spoils right there. I, as ever, laid a stranglehold on the wee bottle of DDML and ooo! a new thing, a tube of DDML. The H's split the rest. HPS got the blue bag and HAO got the flowered bag and I didn't get a bag but I got this cool cardboard insert instead. They take care of me, the Aitches.

Jumping to Conclusions on Wednesday, the Terrible Trivium Thursday, and now Milo's list of quantified stuff. A Phanton Tollbooth week rather than a Jane Austen one.

HAO had not yet seen the Glamour Shots proofs in person and HPS hadn't seen the page. So they came in with me to be introduced. HPS showed her excessive good taste by liking Blake, who was particularly charming. He can't have two Auntie Hil/lo/aries though; that would befuddle his tiny pea brain (or mine).

HPS hardly knows me at all. I don't know what HAO has told her about me, but HAO certainly does know just about all there is to tell, so if she's chosen to gossip, there's no limit. But anyway, HPS knowing me as slightly as she does, was hugely amused by the proofs. It might have helped that the night we three saw "The Sixth Sense," I did a dramatic reenactment of the occasion while we waited for previews. It might have helped that she knows me only slightly but enough, over the past year, to appreciate how slight an aquaintance I have with make-up. It might have helped that she spared herself the stupid entry about it. HAO said the jpegs don't do them justice.

After they left I showed RDC my purchases. The penultimate one I wore under my bathrobe. "That's your same robe," he observed, a bright boy. Then I showed him. I told him men are supposed to like matching lingerie (an effort of coordination I seldom achieve, so few of my panties being underwire. Ow. I can't believe I just wrote that), a titillating tidbit I picked up from Cosmo or somewhere. "We are?" he asked.