Big News . . . At Least For Me . . .

I bought a new car! Yesterday, I trekked up to a Honda dealership to check out the Honda Element and Honda CRV because they were having a great financing deal. I really thought that I'd like the Element, but once I drove it I didn't like it at all. The guy I was talking with seemed very standoffish and wasn't willing to go below their sticker price. So, I meandered to Toyota and Nissan just to look. Fast forward to four hours later and I was driving home in this:


My actual Xterra is a Charcoal Grey (Armor, if you want to be technical). I love it and am super excited about it. I can't wait to drive to Nashville this weekend!

I'd been considering trading my little Integra for a while but just didn't want to deal with a car payment. So, I just bit the bullet and did it. The salesman who helped me was very nice, and they worked with me on price. So, I feel like I got a very good deal.

In other news, the Country Music Half Marathon is next Saturday. Because of the blisters and bruising I had from the last half-marathon, I haven't been able to run very much. I hope that I'll be okay on this one. I am assuming I'll have to walk a bit during the race. Let's just hope for no falls! No falls and a finish -- that's what I want.

A Polenta Conspiracy . . .

So, after work yesterday I finally made it to Publix with the grocery list I'd been carting around for an entire week. It was not as crowded as I expected for early on Friday, thankfully, so I didn't have to deal with any obnoxious folks. However, after marking off every item on my list, sans one, I ran into some difficulty. Polenta. I love polenta, it's yummy, quick and easy to make. I've purchased it at this very Publix on several occasions. However, last night when I went to the rice section . . . it was gone! So, I carted over to the spices/baking aisle near the corn meal and breading . . . nothing. I checked in the cereal aisle near the oats and the grits . . . again, nothing! I asked an employee . . . he'd never even heard of polenta. Seriously? He went to see about getting help from another employee who knew they carried polenta but had no idea where it was. It was at this point that we ran across a lovely pregnant woman with her very cute 3 year old daughter. She was also searching for polenta. We were finally able to find it together, sans employee help, in the organic foods aisle. Two tiny little box holders with bags of polenta. Thank goodness!

12 of 12: April

This is super late, but this week has been hectic. This morning has been my first bit of downtime all week! If you're new to 12 of 12, see Chad's site here for the info. I'm warning you . . . this may be the most boring 12 of 12 ever!


12:01 a.m. -- Just getting into bed. This is pretty well past my bedtime for a weeknight.


7:28 a.m. -- Thankfully, because I had a 6:30 p.m. court docket I was able to sleep in just a little.


5:00-ish--Heading to Court for the 6:30 docket. This is Holcomb Bridge Road, heading towards Gwinnett County. All I saw for a good half hour was the steady stream of cars in the opposite direction.


5:30-ish--Finally making it to I-85 North and I'm met with a wall of traffic, which is typical this time of day for almost all of Atlanta.


5:30-ish-- I tried my best to get a better shot of the water towers, but had no luck. You can barely make out what they say, although most people within Metro Atlanta are familiar with them. The tower on the left says, "Success Lives Here", on the right one is, "Gwinnett is Great." My favorite thing about these towers? The fact that in the strip malls at the foot of the towers are several massage parlors. So many prostitution busts right under the glowing recommendation for Gwinnett County.


6:00 -- Finally making it to GJAC (short for the Gwinnett Justice Administration Center) where I had two cases set at 6:30 p.m. I hate the idea of evening court dockets, simply because I'm at work all day then must fight traffic to get there. Although, this week I was in front of one of my favorite judges, which is nice.


7:30 -- Finished up with Court. This is in a small courtyard area just in front of GJAC. There was a nice breeze blowing and the flags all looked very pretty. You can get a rough idea of the courtyard from the previous picture of GJAC.


8:15 -- Finally home from work and sitting down to open my mail. Today's best . . . a running playlist from fellow 12 of 12'er Helen! I've sent her one too, which included the playlist I used for the half-marathon.


8:30 -- Catching up on today's events via the New York Times.


8:45 -- I finished "God's Spy" Wednesday night. (It was okay.) So, I have started "The Reluctant Fundamentalist" by Mohsin Hamid. It's supposed to be really good.


9:30 -- After such a long day I decided some ice cream was in order. Haagen Daz Light Dulce de Leche Caramel ice cream is my absolute favorite!


10:30-ish -- This is my super comfortable bed, which I crawled into pretty early Thursday night after such a long day.

Bonus pic: My random word was "open" and I had several ideas about the kind of picture I could do. However, I decided on the flags. This isn't the same picture as the flags above, but it's close (so hope that isn't considered cheating). I suppose just thinking about the word open with regard to the American flag made me think of how our country is to be such an open, free society and whether or not in some ways that still means the same as it did.


So, that concludes my boring 12 of 12 this month. However, I'm very excited because next month, the 12th is on a Saturday! I'll have the whole day to take pictures!