"Stop Me Before I Buy Books Again!" (books, World of Warcraft, basketball, Chinese, and more)

I saw my old church friend Lavone on the bus today quite unexpectedly. We spent the entire ride talking about old church people, people getting married and having babies, your old friends becoming intern pastors (Joe Yu in my case, Daniel Louie in hers), people leaving over what happened last year, growing up in the church, her dad's passing away years ago, my very good memory, funerals, our families, her husband, and other things. It was very nice talking to her, and this proves I haven't lost my knack for talking to people like I thought I might have. :P

I spent a pleasant afternoon and evening in the bookstore, mainly because I missed my best friend Yazmine due to a misremembering on my part. I'm a liability in the bookstore, and am surprised that I only left with three books. Of course I wanted to get more, but I don't have any money to buy up the entire place! Reminds me of a game I played years ago, where you put a price value on things and bid on them. As I recall, buying all the books you ever wanted to read would only cost you $25. If only that really were the case.... but at least I used my "$10 off a purchase of $50 or more" coupon before it expired! (although it belatedly occurred to me that I should also have bought some bookmarks, as I have this terrible habit of dog-earing books sometimes.. next week!)

I finished My Life Among the Serial Killers: Inside the Minds of the World's Most Notorious Murderers (one of the authors has John Wayne Gacy's brain!), briefly considered buying a LOT of the community / humor / biography / culture / music books (except that would put me in SERIOUS debt :P), came up empty on searches for the three books Farrah wanted and the ones Steve recommended to me, and eventually settled on three books. It could have been a lot more, but I was concerned about how much they'd weigh.

* The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (I've wanted this one for some time)
* Sonic Cool: The Life & Death of Rock & Roll (my brother's going to end up borrowing this one from me; I bought it with that in mind :P)
* The Assassin's Cloak: An Anthology of the World's Greatest Diarists (sounds very interesting to me, AND it was only $12.99 discounted from the original price of $56.50!)


Went to church later on, since I'd told Eric to drive me home. Called Yazmine to apologize; good thing she's not mad at me, because I'm always afraid about that when I disappoint others and myself. Since I didn't want to waltz into Fellowship an hour or so late, I hung out in the kitchen and read the Mark Haddon book. It's a very good read so far, and I can see how my brother almost finished Dawn's copy in a whole day of being outside last summer! (I'm almost halfway through already) Citrus told me that Eric had just gotten World of Warcraft, and we joked that he'd stay up till 4 AM every night playing it. We practiced our song for tomorrow night, and we sound okay... we go up after our parents sing. I gave Dawn back the money I owed her from Sunday, although she forgot about it already since she's bad with cash that way. Maxine was pleasantly surprised when I gave her a birthday card, and Justin asked me if my siblings were coming back for the dinner: his sister Fidela gets in tonight. No, they're not... but I did update him on how they were. (it was snowing there when my mom went!)

On the way home, Eric and I rocked out to Metallica's One on the radio. Of course I remember when he, Scott, and Jon would listen to that all the time in high school at our house! When Econoline Crush's You Don't Know What It's Like came on, Eric asked me what it was like. I then responded that for me to answer that properly, he first had to define what "it" was. We had a nice discussion about falling in love and my MSN name afterwards! For some reason, that then led to a discussion of the former "Basement Bowl" (Vancouver Grizzlies vs. Toronto Raptors) and the Memphis-Toronto game tonight. He thought I was a basketball fan, which he'd never known before. I'm not, but sometimes it can be interesting. (I just looked up the score now, and the Grizzlies won 86-75)

We also discussed tomorrow night's dinner and our Sunday plans: no Sunday School because of the joint service, so the kids and everyone else can go home early or something. (Eric: "They can, but you have to have lunch with your parents!") He wondered if the toddlers knew English: some of them do, although it's true that some of them only understand Chinese or Mandarin. This turned into a good discussion of my brother's very limited knowledge of Chinese, and my grandmother's not being impressed with that. There was this time she told him that she was going to sleep in his bed, and he responded, "thank you!" Then there was the time the family was all standing around outside one of the gelato places, and he asked me to please get her attention. Once she was paying attention to him, he said this to her in German: "Hello, how are you? My name is Jon. What's your name?" He thought it would be amusing, but her reaction (after my sister got a translation of "he's talking in German" from our mom) was: "Aiya! You should speak Chinese and not German!" (he WAS taking German that summer, but still...)

Definitely good times with my friends, and more to come tomorrow!