After shopping Susie made yummy cheesy bacon Spanish rice for dinner while I tried to help by washing dished. John came home & we ate and sat around and talked & I looked at their scrapbook of cruise pictures, etc. Stacy sent along a peace offering of the really good hazelnut chocolates, I forgot what they're called, and a lychee jello which John said tasted "nostalgic." Susie played the piano and we sang (we’re just a bit rusty). I woke up really early, at 5:30 (but John was up even earlier studying) and left at like 6:15 to try again to beat traffic. It was not a bad drive at all, made better by listening to HBP on CD which Christina kindly lent me. It got to Westwood at 7:30 and sat reading at Coffee Bean until I figured it was a decent enough hour to appear at work. Mr K told Stacy yesterday that he is amazed at how early I have been getting here! I really love listening to the HP books on audio. It’s a lot slower paced then my reading so I notice so many more little details, and I really enjoy the way Jim Dale reads the books. Even on my second time through I find myself tearing up at the “Sirius” moments in the beginning of the book and I laughed aloud when… (see comments) Plus it makes the drive go by much quicker and I hardly notice the traffic! 
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(6) Thu Aug 04 2005 09:51 PST Shopaholic & Sister:
I went down to visit Susie & John yesterday. In an effort to avoid traffic I left work in LA at one and got to Tustin around 2:45 (after a misadventure to Anaheim) and sat reading about May Sinclair in a Barnes and Noble Café until Susie got off work at four. Then we went shopping! I found a really cute pair of brown/pink heels but wanted to see what else there was, so we went to TJ Maxx and Ross and Target as well. I saw a couple more pairs of shoes but nothing I really loved, even though what I wanted was a pair of nice beige sandals, not brown heels. But I did see a nice pair of beige flip-flops at target, on sale for $10, but they didn’t have my size, so I’ll have to stop at the one in Bakersfield on my way home tonight. There was a nice beige corduroy jacket at Ross which was so cute even Susie insisted I buy it, and she cute a couple of cute work shirts. Then we went back to off-Broadway shoes so I could get my heels. I just grabbed a size seven pair, but I must have tried on seven and a half earlier, because when I put them on later to show John they were not nearly as comfortable as they had been in the store… So Susie is taking them back & exchanging them for me today, which means I will probably have to go back and visit next week so I can get my shoes. But it’s ok because I had a lot of fun.