I had a really weird night's sleep last night. I did go to bed at 11pm, but sometime in the middle of the night, I got up and spent a little over an hour faxing transcript requests out to all the schools I've attended. Because, well, I am crazy like that.

So I was sitting around in my pajamas at 1:30 in the afternoon when Misti called today! What a nice surprise! I hadn't spoken to her in a while, so we started chatting. She mentioned she was getting lunch, but I didn't even think to ask where until after we'd already talked for a while. It turns out she was in my neck of the woods, so I quickly changed into an appropriate-for-leaving-the-house outfit, and met her for lunch!

We sat at the same table as the last time we met up at Whole Foods for lunch, and both of us wondered if the meat bees would be out again (I think they must be hibernating this time of year). Our lives have changed so much in just a few short months since that day. All good changes, too. It was so incredibly lovely to see Misti and spend time with her. We had some great conversation, a lot of laughs, and some yummy food, including chocolate. Seriously, what could be better than that? Then she loaned me a book she thought I'd like (which I plan to start tonight), and told me about a gift she and her husband would like to give me! It's so exciting, and it's something I've thought about getting for myself for a while. I'll write more about it once it's in my home!

After lunch, I headed out to Brookstone, a store Beth suggested for finding power adapters (thanks, Beth!). I bought a universal power adapter there, and eyed some other cool products that were simply fascinating.

One was a tiny little ant farm, but instead of dirt, the ants live in this blue gel that NASA invented. Apparently, astronauts took ants into space to study how well they live in zero gravity, and this is the gel they used to house the ants in the space shuttle. How cool is that? So this blue gel acts not only as their home, but as their food source. Apparently, up to fifteen ants of the same species can live in one of these containers for a while and they're supposed to be really fun to watch. Cool stuff.

Next to that was almost the exact same thing, but for plants. You can watch seeds grow in a green gel that, again, was used in outer space. Where do they come up with this stuff? It's awesome!

Best of all, though, were these glass spheres that looked like snowglobes. Inside were whole little ecosystems. There's a branch of some sort, algae, water, air, and teeny-tiny red shrimp. These shrimp are supposed to be particularly non-aggressive, which makes them good candidates for living in tiny globes with each other for years on end, I guess. These globes (well, the plants and shrimp inside, anyway) are supposed to live for two years, but can possibly live up to ten. I think I just may have to have one of these on my desk! You should have seen me in the shop. I had my eyes plastered to the side of these spheres! The glass magnifies everything inside, so at just the right angle, the little shrimp looked ginormous. And so pretty! Okay, so maybe I'm the only freak in the world who think shrimp are cute and beautiful creatures. Be that as it may, it was a pretty cool product, and I think it's going on the top of my list of Crap I Want But Don't Necessarily Need.

My list of Crap I Need for Travel is an entirely separate matter. I'm working on that one. Luckily, Fredlet sent me two very cool links about London regarding packing and site-seeing (thanks, Fredlet!). It's such a cool idea to have a reference like that that I just may have to create a London page or two of my own once I'm back home!

So yeah, today was super cool! I even got to chat with my mom who informed me that Operation: Getting my High School Transcripts was a complete success and that I should have them shortly. My mom rocks!

It's nice to have nice days. I hope to have another one tomorrow!