The car problem turned out to be simply a used-up battery. After they fixed it the garage called and said "We got your lil' car all ready to go," which reminded me of the time I went to a Calvinist dinner party and someone said "There's a tiny green car in the driveway that's blocked me in; could whoever owns it let me out?" I guess it's true that in a West Texas town where the F-250 is king, a Saturn SL-1 is unusually diminutive, but obviously these people haven't heard of the Smart Car. Maybe when Smart cracks the U.S. market I'll get one and draw even more attention to myself.

We have a Starbucks! Big-city liberals have the luxury of sniffing at corporate chains, but here they've been a boon. Wal-Mart didn't replace thriving, locally-owned department stores; it allowed us not to have to go to Lubbock for a rice cooker or a hard drive. Chili's, as mediocre as it is, is the only place within 60 miles we can get a plate of pasta and a glass of wine. And Starbucks will be our first coffeeshop. An IHOP is being built, too, which sounds like a ridiculous thing to get excited about but indeed is a frequent topic of conversation.

I took a sick day. This cold has been ideal, really; serious enough to warrant staying home, but not so bad that I couldn't get in a lot of reading, prayer recitation, and guitar practice. The Illearth War has improved now that the narrative has swung back to Covenant and Elena's quest. The battle stuff in the middle section was getting too tedious, but perhaps that's just an idiosyncratic reaction; I read fantasy for its otherworldiness, not for the sort of accounts of large-scale conflict I could get by reading military history.