The rain season in the Berkshires has finally broken. Yesterday was the first lovely day since I arrived. It was kite flying weather, or lie in the grass listening to Joni Mitchell weather. It was also my day off. I went shopping. One of my roommates and I drove up to Williamstown, which is even more beautiful out of season, and visited a few of my old haunts. I bought/made a name bracelet at Where'd You Get That? (no fooling, that's the name of the store. They rock). The letters are reminiscent of the ones used to designate trains on the MTA, and mounted on a slim black band. It's very retro, but not at all like those horrible engraved ID bracelets. We also went to my absolute favorite record store, which is run by an older gentleman out of the first floor of a Victorian house. He knows everything about everything. I picked up a couple of albums for myself and a Father's Day present for my grandfather. I hope that he likes it. It's a Smithsonian heritage project collection of folk songs. He really enjoyed the Oh Brother Where Art Thou soundtrack, so I suspect this will go over well.
After our daytrip, Nat and I went home and had a lovely dinner. She made an incredible dish of chicken breasts, potato, onion, and untold spices. We also had a bottle of Riesling, purchased from the Store at Five Corners. It was a great change from the hurried nights of ramen noodles.
Other exciting elements of Monday: I had my laundry done, and it came back better than I would have done it myself. It was so neatly folded, with the shirts and sweaters hung in a garment bag. All for the bargain price of eighty cents per pound! Now I have clean clothes to wear, shich shouldn't seem like a luxury, and oddly is.
My minidiscs, purchased from eBay at an unbelievably low price, arrived. I bought fifty of them, so now I can stop being hording the sony minidiscs that my aunt gave me for xmas. This is very nice timing, since I'm throwing together a box to send to Willie in Iowa. I can write minidiscs in the studio, though only at realtime rate. It's fabulous because I have much greater control over the recording level than I do when using my portable. Burning from my laptop is pretty hit or miss, because I usually forget to watch the tiny level display on the portable, or just walk away from it.
Also: I got my palm pilot back online, so I no longer have to rely on the palm of my hand as a reminder system. I had to wait for my cradle to arrive from home before installing new batteries, because all of my records were lost. Thank god I'd recently backed everything up on my laptop.