Vampires, Girl Scouts & Science Fairs

I met some friends from school for dinner tonight. Tomorrow, I'm meeting another friend I went to college with, for lunch. I�m looking forward to it except for one thing. All food except soup & tea seems unappealing right now. My senses of taste and smell have been missing in action for the past week and counting. Nothing kills your appetite faster than not tasting or smelling. I tried eating a sandwich the other day, but it might as well have been cardboard and rubber. Being high on cough medicines and antibiotics has knocked me out of commission.

But here are other things that are happening:

1) I got carded and asked if I was at least 18 while buying cough syrup/cold meds at the store. It kinda made my day, which may sound lame and definitely means I'm getting older. A friend confirmed this a few days ago, when we got to talking about Echo & the Bunnymen. I asked if she remembered when they did a cover version of the Doors� �People are Strange� for the movie Lost Boys. (She did).

2) Speaking of teen vampire movies, I'm making my way through the Twilight series. Spring break is one week, and means time to read non-school books! Will I have completed the whole series by March 8th? Possibly!

3) A very dear (male) friend of mine sent me a very sweet message over Valentine�s Day weekend which, though not earth-shattering by any means, just made me feel really good.

4) Remember how I just mentioned Carcassonne? It�s this game that two friends, Martha, and Peggy, have told me about (repeatedly). Until now, I�ve mainly been a Scrabble girl, with rusty Othello skills...and very rusty Backgammon skills which I had acquired while dating a guy who taught me to play when I was 23. So, I�m looking forward to trying something new soon (hopefully this spring), and learning how to play Carcassonne. Of course, Peggy lives far away from me, so she can only say good things about playing Carcassonne with her husband. But Martha is local, and regularly plays with her neighbors, who introduced her to it.Now she'll initiate me.

45) My poster presentation at the education research conference in San Diego is fast-approaching. April isn't as far away as it seems, meaning I�ve gotta get cracking on this poster and my paper revisions. It's my first major professional conference presentation. Hopefully I know what to do! I haven�t made a poster since my 7th grade science fair project on photosynthesis (which won a ribbon prize, and also earned me a trip to the Baltimore Aquarium, thank you very much!). Luckily, someone at school just e-mailed me a hot tip about several professional poster-making websites where they have templates, and all you have to do is upload images and PowerPoint slides and "Voila!" --they arrange it into a poster for you.

6) Bath bombs. There�s a new store in Richmond called Soak!, not unlike the famed Lush. Two bath bombs are waiting to be used (once my sense of smell comes back). It�s been 10 days, and I�m starting to worry that I'll forever be stuck w/ the olfactory equivalent of deafness or blindness. Wait. Is there such a thing? How unfortunate it'd be.

7) Girl scout cookies. Rumor has it the local girl scouts will start selling them this weekend. I need my Thin Mints.