Here's a couple of things I've learned from my time visiting Albuquerque this second time around. 1.) In June, I fully expected to stay here for two and a half weeks, and thus I completely stuffed my suitcase with clothes in preparation. During my stay, I managed to buy even more clothes, which is completely awesome.

This current trip was intended to last only eleven days, and thus I packed considerably lighter. I ended up staying longer, and it's now almost been three weeks. While I confess that this makes me happy, I must also disclose that having such a limited wardrobe is extremely difficulty. Sure, I've done laundry, but my gay sensibilities get offended when one shirt is FORCED to be worn three times within less than two weeks.

Which leads me to the following: thank heaven for Target. Oh my word*, but Target is a lifesaver. I finally caved and decided to invest in some new clothing. It's pretty much the best decision I've made all week, not in the least because I got the most amazing royal purple shirt of all time.

2.) Just because you bring along certain books to read while on a trip doesn't mean you end up wanting to read them. I snagged a random two or three books from my shelf and stuffed them in my bag. But, even though I've been wanting to read them for some time, I haven't much felt like reading them at this point in time.

While channel surfing the other day, I stumbled across the movie version of Roald Dahl's Matilda. It reminded me that I hadn't read the book in years, and I wanted to change that. We wound up at one of my favorite local used book stores, and this morning, and I found myself a copy. And, over the course of the day, I read the entire thing, cover to cover. All 240 pages. I loved it when I first read it at the tender age of nine, and I loved it when I read it for the fourth? fifth? (I don't know how many times I've read the thing.) tenth? time, over fifteen years later. Talk about some serious staying power. Roald Dahl kicks ass.

*I ran into the parents of an old babysitter of mine while having lunch with my dad last week. The father of said babysitter kept saying "oh my word" to everything I said. Age? Oh my word. Height? Oh my word. Where I'm living? Oh my word. What I'm doing? Oh my word. That shit was crazy.