Jeans and Sneakers

So last night I was having a fit of boredom.  I’ve been meaning to get a new book, so I went to the bookstore.  After looking around for about 20 minutes and trying to ignore the 7 year old girl in the cd section with the headphones at max singing along at the top or maybe middle of her voice, I found a paperback copy (I love paperbacks.  They’re more casual, more ME than hardcovers) of Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand.  My friend Eric from upstate was the first person to suggest this book to me over 6 years ago, and I’d never gotten around to reading it.

So I bring my selection up to the counter, and there’s a young guy working, probably a few years younger than I am.  I quickly wonder if he’s going to try to strike up a conversation with me, and if he does, if it’s flirtatious or just business.  Being female does come with some built in skepticism.  Anyway, I put my book on the counter, and he says “EVERYONE is buying Ayn Rand today.  I dunno what it is!”  I told him that I’d been meaning to read the book for some time, but just now got around to picking up a copy.  He asks me if I’d read Anthem, another popular Rand novel, and I told him no.  He said that they’re both “Heavy” reading, and that though he’s never read Atlas Shrugged, he has read Anthem, and he was turned onto them by a friend of his who’s read both and “is very heavy into objectivism.”

Uh huh.  I nodded, completed my purchase, and walked out.  Now I consider myself to be a fairly intelligent person, at least in so far as common sense.  But when you wander into the realm of literary intellectualism, I’m pretty wet behind the ears.  I read what entertains me, reading is a form of escapism for me mostly, so I tend to stay away from anything non-fiction, political, or otherwise boring-sounding.  :p  My point, if you’re still with me, is I had no idea what objectivism was.  The conversation ended there because I had no idea what he was talking about, and didn’t want to needlessly make myself look ignorant.  So I did what any modern 20-something would do, I came home and googled it.

Turns out, I knew what objectivism was all along, and not only that, I’m a pretty close follower.  Here’s a quote from Wikipedia (I know, not always 100% accurate, but mostly. ..):

Objectivism is a philosophy^[1][2] developed by Ayn Rand in the 20th century that encompasses positions on metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, politics, and aesthetics.^[3]

Objectivism holds that reality exists independent from consciousness; that individual persons are in contact with this reality through sensory perception; that human beings can gain objective knowledge from perception through the process of concept formation; that the proper moral purpose of one’s life is the pursuit of one’s own happiness or “rational self-interest”; that the only social system consistent with this morality is full respect for individual rights, embodied in pure, consensual laissez-faire capitalism; and that the role of art in human life is to transform man’s widest metaphysical ideas, by selective reproduction of reality, into a physical form—a work of art—that one can comprehend and respond to.

See, I thought this was just common knowledge.  Reality exists with or without you, you exist and can interact with reality through your senses, you gain knowledge about reality through your senses and thought processes, the most base purpose of life is to enjoy it, and art is your perception and reiteration of reality as you see it, or choose to reproduce it or it’s opposite to directly affect you or others by way of their sensory receptors.

I mean, duh.  There’s a book about this?

I bought it before knowing the word “objectivism”, and because what I read on the first page captivated me.  I wanted to know more about what was going on, and what was going to happen.  I’m still going to read it, but I was interested to find that institutes and societies have been drafted based on something I have always took for granted, to promote ideas and beliefs that I never questioned.  Interesting.

I’ve been trying to get rid of this shirt tan I got when at Marj’s graduation.  Saturday I went out and bought sunblock so that I could put it where the tan already WAS, and therefore tan where the tan WAS NOT while  outside.  I don’t think it’s worked too well so far.

Other things I did Saturday. . .dishes, video games, all in all it was a pretty mellow day.  Yesterday was similar, except I did laundry instead of dishes (crap, I have to finish my laundry!), and then we went to Rob’s parents house for dinner.  We were going to bbq, but it got late really quickly, and we didn’t have any lighter fluid, so at the end of the night Rob made me a pan-fried burger, and I passed out.

The burger was really good.  Actually this is more important than it sounds, because last year, the burger company that makes the frozen burgers that we usually get went out of business because they couldn’t control their E. coli contamination.  (Wow, just a totally off on a tangent comment here– bath & body works honeysuckle body butter REALLY smells like honeysuckle.  It’s pretty awesome)  We bbq pretty frequently in the summer months, even if it’s just dinner for us, and we had total faith that Topps burgers were the best frozen burgers out there.  You didn’t even have to season them, and they came out flavorful and delicious.

So it was with some trepidation that we drove to the supermarket in search of a replacement burger.  It ended up being not so bad.  The frozen burger section was pretty ransacked, considering it IS Memorial Day weekend.  But we picked up some reduced fat Bubba Burgers, 1/4 lb.  They were tasty!  In a pan!!  That means that they’re going to be even better on the grill!

Does anyone know why these are shaped like strawberries?

Today we’re grilling again, though some friends might come over.  I have some more cleaning to do (that I’m NOT looking forward to), and other than that, it’s Monday.  Tomorrow is Tuesday and I have to go back to work.  That sucks enough in and of itself, but I’m also a little bit more wary of it, since I have a dr’s appointment to go to on my lunch break tomorrow, and it’s worrying me a little bit.  I should be fine, but it might suck a little.

Finally done with this!!  Well, after I take it off the pins, I’ve got to weave in a few ends, but I’m not trying to rain on my own parade.  I probably should have woven them in first, but I don’t really care at this point.  I’ve started an Anthropologie Inspired Capelet to celebrate.  I’m really using up my stash yarn this year, it’s awesome.  I unraveled a tube top I knitted in my first year of knitting that didn’t work out, and I’m using it for the capelet.  I still have most of a cone of it left. . .and I have a sweater in mind for it.  It’s half merino half acrylic, so it’s really squishy.  I hope it doesn’t smell like the Cascade 220 smelled when I washed it.  It smelled BAD. I should invest in some wool wash.

Tomorrow is Mother’s Day.  I’m going to Rob’s grandma’s house for dinner, and then to my mom’s house to hang out.  Should be a packed day (I’m going to be so sick, dinner, and then cookies at my mom’s, lol).  Today I have to go pick up some flowers.  I think I might get my mom some too.  And I have to start my trial run Magic Loop socks so that I can show my mom tomorrow how that works.

I’m in a pretty good mood today.  It was sunny out before, but the clouds have come in now.  It’s still a good temperature and I opened some windows to get some fresh air in the house.  I also cooked the greasiest breakfast ever, and I’m kind of regretting that.  But what can you do.

Things are in the works, I’m still broke, but trying to figure out ways to compensate.  We’ll see if any of it pans out.