It was the Weekend of Great Spending

Last weekend I sort of tricked Enrico into going shopping with me. He's not normally the shopping type, but we were going to REI to look for hiking books on Montana and Wyoming (more on that later), and I happened to mention the two furniture stores right nearby that I wanted to visit...which resulted in...

A five-piece patio furniture set, on sale. We've been using a couple of ancient folding deck chairs that I salvaged from an attic in a decrepit group house that I lived in when I was 23 years old, and a tiny bistro table that forced us to eat with our knees tucked up under our chins. It was fine, but now - oh, the space! Room to spread out maps of Wyoming and Montana, with the laptop and a bottle of wine at hand! It's very exciting.

A new office chair and a big blue ball. Now that I've been self-employed for 2 and 1/2 years, I figured it was about time I got an ergonomically appopriate office chair instead of the $10 yard sale chair I acquired 15 years ago in graduate school. It's bitchin', let me tell you. Oh, the lumbar support! The many adjustment levers! And, just for variety, we also bought one of those big blue inflatable balls to sit on. So I have choices!

And, lastly, we did go to REI, where we bought books and maps on Yellowstone National Park. I have a client gig in Montana in the middle of September, so Enrico is joining me afterwards and we're going to visit the country's first and oldest national park (thank you, U.S. Grant!). We're very excited. I'm sure I'll be blogging about that some more.