I'd forgotten how much work it takes to do research, even though I pretty much never had to get up from my chair for the first three hours. I really, really hate people who carelessly dig through all the pages waiting for pickup at the library laser printer. It totally pisses me off to find my pages all dog-eared and wrinkled, especially when they've only been sitting there for about 45 seconds. Show some courtesy, people!

Anyway, if I ever get to move somewhere else, I'm moving to a university that has windows in its research library. It's like spending the day in a freaking cave, doing research by candlelight, I swear.

This morning, we met our neighbor from across the street. For the first three years, we pretty much pretended we didn't see each other whenever we happened to be outside together. Over the past year, that's sort of evolved into waving and acknowledging each other's presence. That was enough for me, but today, after waving across the street, Catherine announced that she thought it was ridiculous that in five years we'd never talked to the woman, and she was going to go across the street and talk to her RIGHT NOW. Fine, do whatever you want to do. But then I felt really rude after they'd been talking for a few minutes, so I went over, too. So, we found out our neighbor seems to be a nice (and more importantly, sane) woman, with a ten-year-old son who plays the drums and a husband (boyfriend? significant other?) who doesn't like yard work. I think we talked for over an hour, because then Garry and Amanda came out, and they had to get all introduced, too.

So, suddenly, we have a community. Or, as I prefer to think of it: a growing pool of potential rides to the emergency room the next time I need one.