Saturday

I was up at 7 AM and headed over to Saturn to have my car serviced. It believe it was my 117,000 mile maintenance. A while back I received a $500 gift card from Saturn. Each time I use it, I can get 15% off parts and labor on service and so this time the whole thing cost me 15% less than usual and saved me about $7.50.

I headed home after that and did a few errands. I was going to head over to the post office, but I ran out of time. It seems that they have processed my change of address so that I have stopped getting mail at the old house. Probably not a big deal since I’ll be at the new place in less than 2 weeks, but it’s still annoying since I specified July 25 as the last date for getting mail.

I drove to Kelly’s and arrived there shortly before 11 AM. I’d wanted to get a new book so we headed over to Barnes & Noble and after a moderate search, I picked up The Count of Monte Cristo. I’ve been reading a lot of non-fiction lately and thought it was time for a change. I was attracted to the book for several reason. First, I’ve never read it, but have heard that it’s one of the most thrilling novels ever written (it’s about a jail break and revenge). Second, it’s huge: 1462 pages and by my estimate, over 483,000 words. That isn’t quite the longest book I’ve ever read (Shogun was 537,000 and A History of the American People was just over 500,000 words). I have a strange attraction to long books like this. There were several editions to choose from in the bookstore. I ultimately chose the Modern Library edition, but there was another edition that was compressed to 600 pages and I couldn’t understand how, until I saw it was an “abridged” edition. What a sin!

We went to Hard Times for lunch and I had some excellent chili. Then back to Kelly’s. Later in the afternoon (after a nap), we booked four excursions on our honeymoon cruise, one at each of the ports we’ll be stopping in. We have one more to go (in Jamaica) and will hopefully have that booked soon.

Around 6 PM, we headed out to Reston for Todd’s 40th birthday party. The route took us on the Dulles toll road and I did not have my EZ Pass in the car. Fortunately, we had just enough change for the round-trip journey. The party was fun. The house was on a lake and there were lots of people there, many of whom we knew. We left somewhere around 10 or 10:30 PM.