There are ten empty Heiniken bottles sitting on the coffee table...

I went for a run this afternoon. It's a beautiful day for it! I hope that this past weekend's rain washed away some of the pollen, so that you people with allergies can enjoy the weather properly. Paul and I have been running fairly regularly; about once every three or four days. Not too bad, but the goal, my goal at least, is to go every other day. And I'm getting better at it, too! I'm progressively able to run further without stopping. I'd say I'm up to just over a quarter-mile nonstop on the first jaunt. Go me.

Another healthy issue: I've decided to completely stop smoking. See, Paul and I "quit" about three weeks ago, along with a friend. However, Paul and our friend didn't do a very good job of quitting before even a week was up, and I caved when I was drunk on my birthday. Since then, we haven't done a great job at staying away from cigarettes. Our friend even told me to throw his pack away, and still he goes back to buy more cigarettes. Paul bought a pack the day before yesterday.

Now, here's the difference between me quitting the first time, and me quitting this time. The first time, it was a pact, and a way to help each other out. So when the other two counterparts to the pact failed, and refused to listen to me or let me help them, I became disheartened and decided I missed smoking. However, this second time, it's different because I'm quitting completely of my own independent decision. When I smoked two years ago, I had absolutely no problem quitting then, because I was the only one doing it, and all I had to do was stop buying them. But now, since Paul and I sort of started together, and it's been so much more of a social thing and a pass-the-time habit between the three of us, there are always cigarettes around. And personally, I think this other friend began the downfall after the pact, since he caved first then offered Paul cigarettes, which tempted him to cave. But I digress. I'm quitting, and that's the final word. I'm good at quitting things.

Oh, I just bought a new hair dryer. A couple of weeks ago (it may have even been last week-- I don't know), I was using my little yellow space-blaster hair dryer. You could only turn this thing on high, low, or off. Actually, back up a few more weeks, to our spring break trip to Canada. This thing had been acting kind of weird; I always used it on the "high" setting, but it had been sort of-- lacking power, we'll say. It would rev down a few seconds, then go back to normal speed/hi-pitched-sound. But one night when I was getting ready to go into Nelson with everyone, the high speed just stopped working. It revved down to "low" mode (slightly lower-pitched sound) and never turned up to high mode, ever again.

Okay, skip back forward. Last week-ish, I was using the blow dryer on the low setting, as I had gotten used to doing since the power-down incident. Everything was going normally, and I glanced in the mirror on my left (in our bathroom, there's a mirror over the sink as well as a medicine cabinet mirror on the right wall when you face the sink; I was facing the cabinet). I happened to notice casually that the tip of the inside of my blowdryer was glowing yellow-white, much like a flashlight, then continued drying my hair for a few more fractions of a second before realizing that hey, it shouldn't be doing that, I might be in danger right now... I yelled "oh shit" and before I could turn off the dryer, or reach for the plug it just popped, something flew out, and it turned off. And it never turned on again.

So anyway, yeah. I bought a new hair dryer. Those things are getting kind of complicated; they have those "ion" dryers, but I'm not really sure what they do. I got one anyway. I was enticed mostly by the packaging of this one (and also by the fact that I can turn up the speed and temperature separately from one another). It reminded me of the packaging for an Ipod, simply because it seems overly complicated (don't get me wrong though, I love the Ipod packaging) and unique. It's a trapezoidal shape (oh, the blowdryer is Revlon Glamorous Styles, btw), and it's red, with little black shoe-string-type handles coming out of the top. I just opened it up, and there's an outer shell for the package with all the information on it. But the inner, box portion of the package is just plain and red, with no writing on it. Then you untie it at the top, and your product is in a bag, inside. Nothing more, nothing less. Elegant and reusable. I liked it.

Oh, one more thing that happened today: I went to Jack in the Box for lunch, and this boy (fairly cute, but most likely still in high school) totally had the hots for me. He was trying his best not to have a huge smile, and not doing a very good job. Hehe, I played the "cool, collected, in-control college chick" card and he could barely concentrate on his job and his friends in the back. It was so much fun. ^.^ Heehee...